Today's granny believes in doing her own thing -- aerobics, discos, and no baby sitting.

By Subhadra Menon with Sheela Raval

For a moment forget the big bad wolf of fairyland. Zoom forward to modern-day metropolitan India, the evening little Red Riding Hood goes visiting her grandmother, who's just rushing off to her aerobics class in her black leotards and gleaming Zen. Well, it's not going to be "What big eyes you have". More like, hmm, "Grandma, what nice legs you have".

Not all grandmothers have nice legs and lithe bodies and go discoing into the night. Or ask their grandchildren to call them by their first names. Or take their cues from the wandering ways of the Stephanies and Sophias in The Bold and the Beautiful or Santa Barbara from US soapland. Or even from our very own sultry 50-something grandmother of three, Anju Mahendru, on the small screen in Hasratein who, when she gets a call from an old flame on her mobile phone, excuses herself and moves away to talk while her 20-something son strains hard to listen.

But grannies are getting there. Life begins at 50. The granny of middle- and upper-middle class urban India has begun to stare age in the eye and defy the sagging pull of gravity. And most important, to get a life of her own. Grandchildren are all very nice and cuddly but there's more to life than babysitting and taking care of grandpa. "Women in their 50s and 60s have realised that grandmotherhood is not the end of life, but the beginning of a new phase," says Sheilu Sreenivasan, 49, sociologist and president, Senior Citizens Life Enrichment Services Pvt. Ltd in Mumbai. For Hemi Bawa, 49, this new phase has given her immense joy. Married at 19, first child at 20 and a grandmother at 40 explains her zest for life. "I feel good about myself ... I feel positive," says the artist and grandmother of four.

Usha Bhatia, 58, turned the page by putting away her saris. They wouldn't do for her new, sporting life: her day now begins with jogging and ends with playing tennis with her husband. You could say that life is better the second time round. "I joined Children and Grandmother Swimming classes at 55," says the lady from Mumbai.

Rocking chairs, walking sticks, knitting needles and indeed making pickles are anathema to a growing number of grannies. Little do those who catch a glimpse of a svelte woman whizzing past -- jogging, 10 km actually -- around the campus of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore realise that Jayashree Kumar is a grandmother of five and past 54. It isn't as though Kumar was born a fitness freak. Past 40 when she realised the goodness of physical exercise, Kumar now finds it an integral part of her life. "Youth is just a state of mind, isn't it?" asks Kumar. Perhaps yes. Delhi-based painter Meera Shamsher Singh, well into her fifth decade and a proud grandmother, thinks that "walking is for old people". She is a regular at her aerobics classes. And is not the only granny to do so. At Studio d' esprit, a fitness and modern-dance studio in Delhi, there are more older women than ever before. It is even going to introduce a special package for older women with low-impact aerobics.

This quest for fitness and health is not just one of those seasonal fads or keeping up with the Janes (Fonda) of the western world. Doctors and counsellors see all this as part of the growing awareness among women of this generation that they have to be responsible for their own lives. That they can't afford to fall ill. Dr Urvashi Jha, a gynaecologist at Delhi's Apollo Hospitals, sees this emerging health consciousness as a "self-defence mechanism" in a rapidly changing society in which the joint family has become much looser. "Older women realise that they have to cope on their own. Many of them have children who live abroad or in other cities. So many live alone." In fact, a 60-year-old client of hers, who is on her own but for a servant, wants to take Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), which slows down the ageing process, not because she is in search of an elixir for youth. She just wants to avoid the maladies of old age.

But life for the grannies of the '90s is not just about keeping fit. It's about shedding earlier roles of being daughters, wives, daughters-in-law, mothers and grandmothers. It's about living for themselves. Listen to Sumitra Patel, 53, a swinging grandma from Mumbai who loves kitty parties, coffee clubs, pubs and discos, and wearing her daughter's trendy clothes. "I do what I like. I adjusted to others all my life, now it's time for others to make adjustments," she says emphatically. "It is almost as if these women are saying, I have done my bit for the grandchildren and the family and now I want to live life for myself for the remaining years," explains Delhi-based psychotherapist Akash Dharmaraj, a could-be grandmother herself with daughters in their mid-20s.

Dharmaraj also detects a sense of urgency, "of time running out" among the women who come to see her. Vidya Sharma, 52, who's bitten by wanderlust and wants to "make up for lost time and do my own things", can certainly hear the clock ticking away. "I have had enough of child-rearing having brought up my own children, so I have told both my daughter and daughter-in-law not to rely on me anymore." She plays computer games and chess with her grandson Karan. But only when she's free: she wouldn't miss a music concert or seminar for anything else.

Most grannies think youth is basically a state of mind. "If you are a happy person inside, you cannot really grow old," says the silver-haired, 63-year-old Kumudini Sharma who lives in Delhi, has three grandchildren and feels young at heart. It's all there: in the luxuriant pile of silver grey hair, in the perfectly draped sari, in the daringly cut blouse. Women like her worry little, and take life as it comes. "It's like surfing," says Sharma, referring to her long innings, which shows no signs of slowing down: she joined piano classes last year and started bird-watching a few years ago. Sheela Rajan -- 59 going on 35 -- a retired science teacher and grandmother of four children, who loves partying and going to a dance club in Bangalore, says that exercises and meditation keep her young and good-looking. So much so that a few men at the dance club, on learning that she was a widow, even talked about marriage until they realised that she was a decade older than them.

Bina Modi must have foxed many others too. This 54-year-old grandmother of five runs Obsession, a boutique and fashion line, a restaurant in the capital called Ego and a travel agency. When the first of Modi's five grandchildren was born, friends wondered if she would try and look like a granny. "I really don't know what it means to look like a grandma," says Modi. This granny insists the secret of her youthful body is her love for dancing at parties.

Life can also be one long dance for grannies like Jenny Dias, 47, a receptionist in a Delhi office who has two grandsons. She loves to dance and is often seen swinging at Delhi's night spots. "When my son's friends see me dancing with him, it surprises them no end that I'm his mother." Some grannies even want to put some romance and sex back into their lives. After all, the new granny of the '90s evolved from the much-documented changing woman of the '80s. "Some of my clients come in feeling guilty, restless, even agitated about experiencing romantic feelings for other men," says Aruna Broota, clinical psychologist, department of psychology, Delhi University. "Yet they are also feeling good about them ... Little flings are coming up. They go dancing, partying, not quite sexing, just the eye expression, the toast-to-you kind of thing."

And sex, even if it were dispatched from marital beds, is now being gently brought back. Many of Dr Jha's patients talk about romance and love and wanting to improve their sexual performance. "They don't talk about this right away, but towards the end of the consultation they talk about looking better, and having better sex," says Jha, who finds an increasing number of women interested in HRT because they want to improve their sexual lives. "Many women of this age feel that dry intercourse has become painful and find themselves shoving the men away. And it is not always for themselves but to improve relationships at home." Jha, however, cautions women from using HRT as a mere beauty aid -- it is really to slow down the ageing process and protect menopausal women from heart attacks and brittle bones.

From among the 1,000-odd patients who visit dermatologist Rekha Sheth each month in Mumbai, at least 10 per cent are above the age of 50. Just a few years ago, this number was less than 5 per cent. Like Sheth says, "their desire for an image change is to go in for the gracefully ageing look." There's no frenzied search for youth for grannies like Sharma; she refuses to dye her hair and the youthful glow on her face comes from within.

Beyond the science of beauty, changing equations within the family are responsible for the new-age granny. "I hardly have any problems with my two daughters-in-law," says Modi, who attributes this hassle-free relationship to her busy lifestyle, which leaves no spare time to fret. Murli Desai, who heads the family studies department at the Tata Institute of Social Science in Mumbai, says the traditional family scene is changing completely. "Daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law have become fairly independent of each other," Desai points out. Also, with women's lives becoming fuller by the day, psychologists are noticing how the male no longer figures as the object of rivalry between his wife and mother.

Why the bouncing, sexy grannies now? The media is bringing the little girl in the granny out. Satellite television is an inspiration, if not a sanction and benediction. Sociologists believe this exposure to the print and electronic media is making people more tolerant. "After all, we all sit in our bedrooms and watch these programmes and don't always criticise what we see," says Broota.

Then, there is the undeniable impact that education has had on this generation of women. Compared to the previous generation, most of them are better educated. Rakhi Anand, a psychiatrist at the Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Delhi, believes that an advanced level of education has a definitive impact on these women, and in shaping their attitude to life.

Many older women are now travelling abroad on their own for work, like Pramila Nanda. This 51-year-old grandmother, who markets Time-Life books in the capital, realised what fun all this travel could be. Having been a nursery schoolteacher till just a few years ago, Nanda switched professions and hasn't looked back since. "It is a good feeling to get dropped off at the airport by my husband, after so many years of doing the opposite," she says.

For many grandmas, the change in their attitude towards life took place when they visited their NRI children abroad: the exposure to new ideas and new ways of living made them realise that age is not chronological, but a state of mind. Interestingly, it's often the children who initiate the change. Like Bhatia's daughter, who is an attorney in London. "My daughter insists I should remain active and look graceful," she says. "She also wants me to be a sexy grandma." You sure have come a long way, grandma.

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