Forties here I come!!!

We are a month into 2012, a year of significance in my life cycle…Entering the forties, call it the naughty forties, or the roaring forties…For me it’s just the dreaded forties which I will confront in a couple of weeks time. The irony is that I just realised my younger daughter has learned to count until 40 a few days back!!! The joy on her face on telling me of a new number she learnt called 40 was the moment that inspired me to pen these thoughts on a generation that hears forty for the first time vis-à-vis a generation who dread the number. Incidentally she turns 4 when I turn 40 within a gap of 3 days!!!. The similarity lies in the fact that neither she nor I know what lies beyond 40.

The signs have not been good. The great Indian batting line up who are all my contemporaries as far as the era goes have started to crumble, the company that helped capture my face and made my parents create a book called an album has filed for bankruptcy (Kodak). Today the face and the book are juxtaposed digitally turning on the likes and dislikes of millions across the globe.

To begin with the fall of the great Indian batting line up. Dravid, Sachin & Laxman in the order are going to reach their respective 40’s in a year or less. Being sportsmen their physical wear & tear is far higher than mine. But they were cricketers who looked good & played better in their whites more than in the coloured clothing probably because they were fortunate to see a black & white picture tube before they saw a coloured one. We all belong to the generation that went through the Black & White experience an experience that conditioned us to clearly know the good from the bad, helped us draw our line with a white chalk on a black board to know our limits. The cricketers knew how to patiently play out overs and leave the ones outside the off (limits) alone. They knew what ‘off’ limits where. The philosophical iteration is that they knew to be grounded (or knew how to play along the ground) was far better than going over the top.

The impending last rites being performed on Kodak coinciding with me reaching the forties has left an emotional scar. The marketing gurus across the world might use it as a case study in the years to come to explain it as a corporate failure to adapt to the world around them to explain their death knell. But for me, Kodak has been very close to me. Kodak helped capture me in the nude when I was around a year old and my parents didn’t have the option of photoshoping my face or my bum to look fairer!!! They had only one go at it and Kodak never failed them. The number 36 meant a lot to my generation handling a camera, dirty minds stay off the number. It simply meant the maximum number of negatives being developed into positives. Kodak probably was the only company that taught us early in life that negatives can be converted to positives!!!! Philosophically this has a lot of relevance to many of the discourses dished out by the pseudo gurus around us these days.

Thank you the legendary Indian line up for teaching me to be patient & grounded, and thank you Kodak for giving me the hope that negatives can be converted to positives. Both have entertained us and left footprints in our memory. Thankfully, these are not digital footprints that can be traced back, morphed or photoshoped…Wishing all my contemporaries a 15th anniversary of your 25th B’day…