Fifty on the Sixtieth

August 15, 2007. For the nation, it was the 60th Independence Day. For me, it was my 50th birthday. Fifty is a peculiar milestone. It is the half-century—heavy with meaning in cricket, and not entirely light in real life either. It is the point from which you can look back at the steep climb of youth and, with a faint unease, look ahead at the long, level road of middle age.

I woke up that morning with a jumble of feelings—gratitude for the life we had built in Sevagram, a quiet satisfaction about my recent sabbatical at Berkeley, and the usual curiosity that arrives with round numbers: what had I done right, what had I left undone, and how much time did I really have?

I didn’t get the luxury of introspection. My family had been plotting.

For months, without my knowledge, a conspiracy of love had been brewing in the Kalantri household. Ashwini (then a busy third-year medical student), Amrita, and Shaily had been working behind the scenes on a secret project. They reached out to a constellation of people from my past and present—family, childhood friends, colleagues, students, and even those new friends I had collected in California.

The Black Book
The reveal was theatrical in the way only families can manage without trying too hard. They handed me a heavy, hard-bound book—sleek, shiny, and black, with the letters “SP” embossed on the cover. It looked like something between a biography and a file from a detective’s desk.

Except this book wasn’t written by one person. It was written by a chorus.

Shaily had curated the photographs—an unbroken visual line from my knobbly-kneed childhood in Arvi to the convocation robes of Berkeley. Ashwini, despite the cruelty of exams and ward duties, had edited and arranged the text. Amrita had coordinated the outreach with the persistence of someone who does not accept “I’m busy” as a final answer. They had printed it professionally in Nagpur. It had the weight of effort, not just paper.

When I opened it, I realised it wasn’t a photo album. It was a mirror.

The Mirror of Relationships
We often assume we know who we are. But we don’t really see ourselves—at least not clearly—until someone holds up a different angle. Reading that book, page by page, I met several versions of “SP,” some familiar, some surprising, and a few mildly embarrassing.

Bhavana wrote about our twenty-five-year journey—the beautiful stretches, the rough patches, the small quarrels that now looked almost comic in hindsight. She teased me about my stubbornness, including the famous “names controversy” when the children were born. But she also wrote about the one thing she valued most: the way I had made learning a shared habit in our home. Her piece reminded me that our marriage was not merely a domestic arrangement. It had become, over time, an intellectual partnership—two people learning how to grow without drifting apart.

Pushpa Jiji, my elder sister, took me back to the beginning. She wrote about my early fascination with the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and my strange childhood hunger for books. She traced the arc of my life to that steady pull I felt toward Sevagram. Reading her words, I realised something I often forget: many choices I thought were decisions had been, in some ways, destinations.

Then came a piece from Dr. M.V.R. Reddy—my friend, my anchor. He wrote about a chilly December night years ago when his son Shridhar was born. It was a difficult birth. He described how I stayed up with him through those long hours—pacing corridors, calling surgeons, hovering without fuss, doing the small things that matter when someone you love is scared. In the rush of everyday life, I had forgotten that night. His words returned it to me, intact. Friendship, I learnt again, is often forged in hospital waiting rooms, not in celebratory dinners.

Dr. Suhas Jajoo wrote about my college days. He brought back details I had not expected to meet again—my sketches (a hobby I had quietly abandoned), my “widely acclaimed” final MBBS practical exams, and my obsession with research. He called me shy and self-effacing. I smiled at that. I had spent years trying to outgrow shyness, only to discover that it doesn’t disappear; it simply learns better manners.

The Teacher and the Terror
Then came the students. That section made me laugh, wince, and soften—all within a few pages.

Dipesh, a bright young doctor, described a bedside clinic where I had lost my temper. The final-year students had arrived unprepared, clueless about even the basic causes of fever. I refused to teach. “Go to the library,” I told them, and walked out. He wrote about the terror of that moment, but he also wrote about what happened next: the following day, I returned and spent two hours teaching them properly—how to think, how to investigate, how to treat, and how to respect a patient’s story before chasing the lab reports.

Dipesh also mentioned something oddly tender: he had noticed my signature, found it distinctive, and secretly started imitating it. I had never imagined that a teacher’s influence could travel through something as trivial as handwriting. But perhaps that is how teaching works. You don’t just transfer knowledge. You leave behind habits, gestures, and tiny imprints you never planned.

The World Shrinks Again
The book then crossed the ocean.

My Berkeley quartet—Christine Ho, Maureen Morgan, and Joseph Ezoua—had sent their notes from far away. Maureen thanked me for helping her with her thesis. Christine wrote about the “atmosphere of learning” I created, and how my small studio apartment on Channing Way had felt like a second home. Joseph, with his characteristic warmth, wrote that our laughter would stay with him forever.

Reading their words in Sevagram, thousands of miles away from Shattuck Avenue, I felt the world contract into something manageable. The distances remained, but the relationships did not.

The Legacy, as Seen by Children
And then came the voices that mattered in a different way—the next generation.

Ashwini wrote something every father hopes to hear, but rarely does. He admitted, with a kind of reluctant affection, that he was beginning to notice himself becoming more like me. Amrita thanked me for the one thing I valued most: trust. She wrote about how I supported her decisions without hovering or interfering, and she remembered the nonsensical rhymes we used to make up when she was a toddler.

Shaily wrote about my “mastery of languages” and called me the cynosure of all eyes. That line made me blush—not because it was untrue, but because it was too generous. Families, I realised, are often kinder than facts.

A Book to Cherish
We cut the cake, laughed, and took photos. But the real celebration happened later, in the quiet moments, when the house settled down and the noise thinned out. I sat with that black book in my lap, turning pages slowly, as if I might miss something important if I rushed.

Fifty is often described as the age of the mid-life crisis—panic about time running out, anxiety about unfinished dreams, fear of irrelevance. But that day, thanks to Ashwini, Amrita, and Shaily, my fiftieth felt less like crisis and more like integration. They gave me the gift of my own history. They reminded me that my life was not merely a sequence of events. It was a web of relationships.

That black book still sits on my shelf. It is more valuable than any degree or award I have collected over the years. It is proof—not of achievement—but of something quieter and rarer: that I have lived, loved, and been loved in return.

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