Meet Man Kaur. She is from Patiala. Recently, just about a week ago, she won the gold medal at the World Masters Athletics. The event was the two hundred meters running race. She won a gold medal last year as well. We must say that this year she improved her own record as last year she won the gold medal for the hundred meters running event. Hey, come again! What did you say? So what? Punjabi and Haryanavi women have these days anyways made it a habit to excel at sports, right?
Well, let me tell you, Madame is just hundred and two years old. YES! You heard it right, she is all of hundred and two! Wonder of wonders, she started her sports career at ninety-three! Her seventy eight year old son encouraged her. He, too, participated in this Olympics for the senior citizens. But Mum is the wor(l)d always, right?
Hey, you are sniggering that with some practice, anyone can do it, are you? Okay, then! Meet Prof. C R Rao. He heads the Statistics Dept at prestigious universities like the Penn State and SUNY. At hundred and one, he won the Nobel prize for Statistics which tires and wears out the tiny little tiddly widdly brains of many a young at the oh-so-tender age of eighteen!
Indeed, like the proverbial wine, age enriches abilities as well. In Vizag, for instance, ninety three years old Shanthamma regularly teaches Physics! What a great , fitting and much needed antidote are these stories to the much touted but always extremely vacant and most often quite stupid and silly 'youth dividend', mostly good at nothing.
The only thing most of them are adept at is arrogantly showing off their so-called attitude, or minor achievements praised sky high, and/or silly six- or eight- or whatever packs. Extremely lazy intellectually, they are alecky smart at dramatising their minor, easily managable problems, and "issues'' to gain/get every possible sympathy, or rather self importance.
The moral of the story is: one can bloom -n-blossom and fructify at any age. Old is gold after all!
Pratima@ i loved Aai's committed study of the Marathi Sant Sahitya in her late sixties. Papa joined social work devotedly in his sixties. Huge respect!
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