When Shobhaa De turned 60 recently, she remarked that 60 was the new 40. Three years ago, at the age of 50, I joined the Pune University’s three-year LLB degree course. Going by De’s arithmetic, my 50 would actually be 33. I stood out glaringly in college, perhaps like Prakash Karat would at the IAEA. Maybe I would have been better off on the cricket field, as I had just got to my first half-century. For years, I had been laying down the law at home, and my family thought it high time I legalised my actions and joined a law course. I took the plunge. The students and lecturers, at first amused, soon took it in their stride. But it took me a while to get on track. Unlike my voluble classmates, I was hesitant to speak out. Where were the forceful arguments I used at home? In Mina vs Others, sweeping away all dissenting opinions, the final interpretation rested with me. The first semester exams were looming and so was Australia’s cricket tour of India. The timing could not have been worse. A cricket fanatic, I am glued to the TV whenever a match is on. In fact, I haven’t missed a game for the last 20 years. My husband and teenage son were amused. “How will you go to college when the Test matches start?” I wondered if I should take a transistor with me — it had bailed me out before, in my salad days, when Tony Greig and his team toured India. But that might result in an offence for disturbing the peace. And would I get away with it by pleading guilty to temporary unsoundness of mind? Would that be a sound defence?The last option was to do the unthinkable — bunk college — but that could set a bad precedent, especially for my cricket-crazy son. But when it came to cheering my favourite cricketer, Sourav Ganguly, in a Ranji Trophy match (in 2005, at the height of Ganguly’s “exile”), I succumbed to temptation and skipped a lecture on “Grounds for Appeal”, entered the more appealing cricket grounds, and was privileged to witness Ganguly’s century. I managed to survive the three years and get a law degree without sacrificing my cricket.
