My prayer at 83

Shriniwas Joshi

I  am 83 today and I feel ancient enough when I am introduced to the youth of Himachal as a person who had seen Mahatma Gandhi. I have two children and both are settled in places of their vocation and we, my wife and I, now very senior citizens as per the income tax rules, live twosome to be the caretaker of the house that we had built when we were earning. My prayer on this day when I am stepping into the 84th year of my life is: 

“Oh God! I am grateful to my body that aches and to the body of my wife which suffers from osteoarthritis and various other diseases and I carry these two, still breathing, bodies to the hospital very often, which shows that I am not unemployed and I have a work in hand;

“Oh God! I am thankful to my children living abroad and in metropolitan towns in India who on our birthdays send messages like ‘happy birthday, you twinkly, wrinkly’ or ‘despite your ripe old age, you are like spring chicken; happy birthday’.

“Oh God! I am thankful to my teeth because these come out at night and remind me of the poetic starry nights, which also come out in dark;

“Oh God! I am grateful to the monkey on the street who forces me to keep myself off his route which shows that I still can see objects, of course, through the glasses;

“Oh God! I am grateful to the truck driver who comes from behind at a breakneck speed and I jump to the nearest drain to save my life which shows that I can attend to the rumble of a running truck and am not hard of hearing;  

“Oh God! I am grateful to my shadow in my balcony which shows that I have open space in my house where the sun shines; 

“Oh God! I am thankful to you that I have more rooms than one in the house because often I go to the next room to get something and do not remember what I came for;

“Oh God!  I am thankful that, so far, even in the present set-up, I grumble and continue finding faults with the government and share those with others which shows that I live in a democracy where there is liberty of thought, expression and speech; 

“Oh God! I am thankful to the government that it pays me pension for the service that I had rendered to it when I was young and from the amount so received I spend more than Rs 47 a day which the Rangarajan Committee considers enough to keep the wolf away from the doorstep; 

“Oh God! I am grateful to my neighbours who sometimes invite ‘Uncleji and Auntiji’ for dinner or tea which shows that there are still people who want to break our loneliness;

“Oh God! I am thankful to my brother who brings a cake on my birthday and says that the candles depicting your age are costly, so light a diyaa and say tamaso maa jyotirgamaya — move from darkness to light;

“Oh God! I am thankful to the newspaper-man who gives two newspapers to me daily, despite rain and snow, which shows that I still keep myself abreast with the happenings elsewhere and I do not figure in the obituaries, showing that my flame is still burning.”

Amen!