WHY I WROTE FEISTY AT FIFTY!

When I was 15 I used to think anyone over the age of 30 was old but when I got to that age, tired, a little bruised from giving birth, raising the offspring and the dozen other things I was doing around that time, I discovered being thirty was magical. Thirty was not old. In fact, I was brimming with energy, raring to go with my career and the scores of new plans buzzing in my head.

I don’t know where the next decade went but when I reached forty, the spring in my step was less bouncy. The first whites had started appearing on my temples and there were deep grooves running down the sides of my nose to my mouth, grooves that carried my tears- there were plenty in that decade-from my eyes to my chin, from where they splashed onto my laptop because even in those days I was writing away like my life depended on it.

I wrote past everything that happened in my frantic forties- I wrote past the first signs of menopause, the soul-searing pain of having my only child go away to pursue her studies, an empty nest, past the numbing reality of seeing my parents aging and shriveling up into miniature versions of themselves. I wrote past my bewilderment at my body becoming a stranger and the fact that I was becoming a person who I would not befriend, if I had a choice. I’m talking , of course, of the dreaded hot flashes and mood swings that left me in pools  of sweat and great deluges of tears, several times a day.

I wrote away frantically until one day, miraculously, my writing took me past the darkness and I could see the brighter side of my life. At fifty, the very things that scared me about ageing, such as the lines on my forehead and the grooves around my mouth – turned into symbols of a life well lived. The lines around my mouth and eyes were from laughing out aloud and from smiling at the world; and if my hands and legs did not always look well-kept, it was because I worked hard at making an honest living for myself. The faster I wrote and the deeper I went into my writing, the more I was able to see the positive side of my journey till one day, it all started coming out in a series of humorous articles about the bits and parts that make up the life of a fifty.

I have laughed while writing this book and I have wept copiously while writing certain parts- about love,loss, parenting, parting, rediscovering myself and finding liberation from my own inner demons and the boxes in which I have tried to fit, from time to time. I am hoping that each of you will find something in its pages that touch your heart and makes you laugh. I know some of you might not look at things or agree about the way I have looked at my own life and written about it.  I have this to tell everyone who reads my book: it has been written from a place of absolute and complete authenticity with no intention to ever hurt or offend anybody. I have simply written about my life and my world, the way I experience it.

And of course, I think I have somewhere been influenced by  my trio of grand aunts, as feisty a gang of girls as you will ever find, who lived by themselves in a rambling old house on the coast and weathered many a storm in their lives by simply sticking together. They needed no men in their life and if they did, they never did anything conventional about it, such as get married.

 And I am influenced on a daily basis by amma who, at 70, has decided that she will paint her nails every week and exterminate any hair that ever dares to sprout on her chin.

Sudha Menon’s new book,   Feisty At Fifty, is available in stores and on Amazon and other online-platforms.