Soumya recently turned sixty-two. He looks back at the years gone by and reminisces about his birthday in a write-up for Different Truths.

Unlike earlier, I spent the day at home with my wife, drinking beer and watching India win the world cup for the third time.

First time was in 83, on a TV in the hotel lobby, with a bunch of screaming colleagues drinking rum, as I’d just left college and was undergoing training with my new employers at Chennai.

The second time was in inox, alone as LOH doesn’t watch Bollywood or Hollywood films, only art cinema from Africa or eastern Europe.

This time it was on OTT in the comfort of home, and the kids had sent over cake, Thai food, and books.

I was overwhelmed by around 1000 greetings from readers, friends, classmates from four decades ago and colleagues from the industry, including many who attended my classes. And many I’d never even met. They just knew me by reputation, even two years after retirement. This included kids, who joined the industry after I had left the company, they’re in.

One of the epithets that I loved was being called the icon of iconoclasts.

Readers were being kind with superlative praise for a one-book author and largely a social media writer and blogger, but they do on this day but still it made me feel great.

I missed my children, who were far away, and we connected only through video chats. But I am going to bed feeling blessed, and not lonely at sixty-two!

Photos by the author

Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.