Internationally acclaimed sculptor K.S.Radhakrishnan turned sixty years old yesterday. I did not ask him how it felt; the transition from fifty nine to sixty. If asked about age most of the people would say, ‘Age is just a number,’ or ‘age is in one’s thinking’ and so on so forth. If I had asked K.S.Radhakrishnan, he would have said something in his characteristic style; ‘The transition is just like a day turning into night and again a day, natural and beautiful. Have you seen how the molten bronze of the setting sun is poured into the mould of horizon and on the next morning a new sun coming out of it? It feels exactly the same.’ He would not have chosen any other analogy for expressing his views on ageing as his art comes out of the moulds into which he pours the molten bronze. Thirty five long years he did the same, almost resisting the temptations or pressures of working in other mediums. Ram Kinkar Baij was his Guru and Sarbari Roy Chowdhury was his mentor; however, while making no distinctions between them, he chose the medium practiced by the latter than the gravel throwing gleefully practiced by the former.
In Kerala, from where K.S.Radhakrishnan hails, turning sixty
is a ‘historical’ moment in everybody’s life. They call it ‘Shashtipurthy’
(completion of sixty years); next milestone is ‘Navati’ (completion of Ninety
years). After that a person is called ‘Poornakaman’ (one who has fulfilled all
the duties and desires in life). If so the intervening thirty years between
sixty and ninety, for a person there must be still duties and desires to fulfill.
Not really so. In the Indian way of life, sixty years is a milestone because by
this age, one would have fulfilled the familial duties and it is the time to
think about leaving the ‘urban’ life and entering into the phase of ‘vanaprastha’
(living in forest). In those days, living in forest did mean that shedding of
worldly desires. In forest, once again you become one with the nature. Your
duties are not to the forest/nature and your desires are not different from
those of the nature. You could be accompanied by your wife but you should leave
the domestic pleasures behind. Then as you age further, you take up Sannyasa
(penance for redemption). What develops in one’s mind during the years of
Vanaprastha becomes the phase of wisdom when one embraces sannyasa. Then one is
on the way to nirvana/moksha/deliverance/redemption.
(Ojas Art Gallery director Anubhav Nath and Sanjoy Roy of JLF cheering the KSR couple)
We no longer live in those old days. At the age of sixty,
people are still young. The celebrities in our society supply us with examples
of good, healthy and youthful living. So they say, sixty is the new forty. What
could be the forty then, the new twenties? Then what would be the present
twenty, ten or five? Health care and education have helped people increase
their living age. But is it necessary to grow in the reverse order? Why should
one be forty when one is sixty? One could be sixty and still be sixty, live
sixty and feel sixty and there is no parameter how one should feel and live at
the age of sixty. If you are healthy you could live a healthy and vigorous
life. If your body is not coping with the desires in your mind, then definitely
you could slow down. Always hark to what the body and the mind have to say unto
you. Sixty is a beautiful age when a normal householder starts his journey to the
path of wisdom. It is so ridiculous to see people coloring their hair, pumping
iron and wear ill fitting clothes just to look young even at an advanced age.
There is a grace in ageing and there are so many advantages in growing in
age. If we grow in reverse process the earth will be a living hell. All the old
people will behave like young people and all the youngsters will behave like
kids. A young society does not mean a society that behaves young. A young
society means a healthy one both in mind and body.
The biggest advantage of growing old is the slow waning of
competition with oneself and the world. But for that one has to accept the age.
All the new age gurus tell people that they should set up parameters for
excelling in their own fields and these parameters should be raised at each
step. When you are ready to age, you no longer feel the need to raise these
parameters of excellence. You are happy in what you are. You need not dress for
the society but you could dress for your comfort. You need not brag about anything
because the very idea of bragging would sound useless after certain age. The moment
one fulfills the duties and desires even within the domestic front, then he/she
would never feel the need to fulfill any other duties elsewhere. The primary
aim of a living being is to be happy and healthy. One need not become a social
worker; one need not become a philanthropist after the age of sixty. One could
just think about one’s own happiness. I am not preaching selfishness here. The moment
one looks after his/her comforts and happiness after removing the idea of
competition from the minds, then rest of the world would take care of itself.
When you do not splurge on food, you leave a lot of food for others. When you
do not squander your money, a lot of money is left for others. When you do not
indulge in money making projects, others automatically get chance to involve in
them and build their lives.
(KSR with his trusted Studio team)
A calm and collected society could be generated only when we
accept the ageing process. Look at the people who exhort the semi-literate fringe
population in our societies to take up cudgel against other human beings in the
name of politics and religion or vice versa , we could see most of them are
good old gentlemen. What are they trying to achieve by building a mosque or a
temple? What are they going to achieve by wrenching political power in the name
of an ideology? Are they going to serve the young and growing population in our
country? Are these young people really interested in such things? In fact, the young
people have started taking a hostile attitude against the older people not just
because of the Freudian psychological reasons but because they find these
oldies as a hindrance for their movement upwards in the social scale. If the
people were ageing gracefully and paving way for the youngsters, then the world
would have been much better, calmer and devoid of strife. It is so sad to see
the old people occupying the social space in the name of organizations and
communities and leaving no space for the youngsters to express their opinions
or act out. If a pair of young lovers hold hands, it is not really the
young people who get offended, but the moral ideologies spread out by the
oldies. If they let the lovers to be lovers and let them hold hands or kiss in
public, then the world would have been a better place. We say that three fourths of the Indian population is young and also a majority is living in the cities.
There too we see the old men pointing guns at the heads of the youngsters and asking
them to behave. What an irony it is!
When I say this, I do not demand the old people to go to the
forest and cease to exist. What I say here is that after the age of sixty they
should be thinking only about themselves. They need not become presidents and
secretaries or cultural wing advisers of the local residency associations even.
Most of the people do this because they want to be active and still hold on to
some kind of power. Why don’t they instead tend the garden, look at the
flowers, read, write, sing, create art, meditate, go for long vacations and
give space to the young populations to make the world a better place? The old
people with their age and experience, wealth and fame in their hands should
focus completely on their happiness and comfort. They should become gurus of
the society. It is the most ridiculous sight in the world to see an old man pretending
to be very young. One could be young at heart and in thoughts. But those things
should be expressed in their choicest mediums and they should not be in
confrontation with the ideas and expressions, however immature they look. Old
people could lead the march by making way for the youngsters to march on.
(KSR with the 'rare' art collector Parimal Roy)
Sixty as we have seen earlier should not be treated as new
forty. This is the falsification of the consumerist society. The corporates that
make consumer products, health care products and life style apparatuses want
more and more people addicted to be those things. For that the people should be
told that they look young, vibrant, sexy and sexual even in their old age. This
false notion makes them to strive for an imaginary youthfulness and even after achieving
it through health care and exercise and spending money over the products, they
are made to believe that the more they become youthful the more they become
desirable. None in the world wants to be undesirable. They want to be desired by
others and also they want to be useful in the world. But in my view, the best
way to be useful for the world and still desirous and desirable is to pave way
for the new people to come in. One need not do it deliberately by eschewing life
or creativity. One should just do what one could do best. If you are a sixty
year old dancer you should dance to the satisfaction of your heart and mind.
You should not stop some other dancer getting a chance in showcasing their talents
on a stage. You should be the guru who gives a platform by seeing their talent from your own abode of doing. You no longer need to practice. You just
need to be in. The world will follow your dance. If you are a singer the world
will follow your song. If you are a
sculptor the world will wait for your new sculpture.
Do not believe in the idea of sixty being the new forty. It is
the trick of the celebrities who are simply the stooges of the corporate
markets. They are the bodies through which the market economy sends its ideas
across. Good life is healthy and happy life. Good life is when you do the
things that you want to do irrespective of your age. Good life is when you
become the inspiration for many. Good life is when the others see your life worth
following. And I see that in Radhakrishnan’s life. A person who has no
competition with anybody, a sculptor who promotes other talents, a human being
who does not push himself onto any platform and a guru who has wise sayings for
the seeking people- that’s K.S.Radhakrishnan for me and for many others. A few
friends who attended the sixtieth birthday celebrations of K.S.Radhakrishnan at
the Ojas Art Gallery, New Delhi asked me whether he turned ‘only’ sixty
yesterday. Some of them thought he was much more than that. K.S.Radhakrishnan
exudes the aura of a wise man, of a guru, a caring human being, a welcoming
host, a smiling savant and an inspired creator. He cannot be thirty, he cannot
be forty, he cannot be fifty, not even sixty. Like the Zen masters he should be
ageless in ageing. K.S.Radhakrishan is one such Zen master amidst us. Happy I
am for being with him and in the vicinity of his wisdom.
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