skydiving: Niroop 54 and Rupa Mohanty 50 Hot-air ballooning: Vijaypat singhania 67 scuba-diving: prahlad kakar 54

Rupa Mohanty didn?t want jewellery from her husband for their silver wedding anniversary. Instead, between scuba diving and parasailing on a holiday in Phuket, 50-year-old Rupa told Niroop that she would like them to celebrate the day skydiving.

The Mohantys have since then jumped off an aircraft to mark what Rupa calls ?25 years of a beautiful friendship?. For the couple with adventure in their veins, parasailing is too tame, and scuba-diving is just too regular. ?I am not going to be afraid of death and contaminate life,? Rupa told Niroop, as they planned their vacation in the United States by registering at Sky Dive Dallas for the $1,000-aircraft hop a little over two years ago.

At an age when most people start worrying about pension plans and retirement benefits, the Mohantys are rushing from one adventure to another. And, clearly, they are not the only ones going against the grain. Boxed in a 24x7 corporate world, men and women in their 40s and 50s are looking at ways to make the most of a driven life.

So, the Mohantys skydive. Adman Prahlad Kakar runs a diving school, while Bharat Dhabolkar traipses through the rain forests. And industrialist Vijaypat Singhania plans out a hot-air balloon ascent.

And each endeavour, Niroop says, proves to be a humbling experience, for the adventure-seeker is pitted against nature ? forces that are not of man?s making. Kakar adds: ?I am a collector of experiences and people, not wealth. I need to replenish myself constantly, or I?ll become a relic like most of my contemporaries.?

Kakar, 54, learnt early that he had to defy what he terms ?the rot called respectability? to make any tangible difference to his own life. ?My face was not my fortune and I was constantly up against all the studs in college. I had to beat the stereotype to get the girls,? Kakar, who still walks off the beaten track, says with a laugh.

Clearly, there are some who are finding ways to beat the comforts of middle age. Mere recreation is not for them. There is money pouring in, the global world is a village ?and adventure is their calling. ?Adventures keep you from taking yourselves too seriously. They remind you that success and failures are transitory and what is important is the endeavour,? says Dhabolkar.

So, after many years of flying, Vijaypat Singhania, at 67, has embarked on a mission to create a world record by flying a hot-air balloon 70,000 feet above sea level, to beat the existing world record of 65,000 feet. At the additional stretch of 5,000 feet, human blood boils and the chairman of the Raymond Group of Industries would have to ride in a special container to keep intact. ?I wish to touch the face of God,? says Singhania.

Age is not what it used to be. In the new world where children grow up before their time, middle age is just a state of mind. ?Middle age itself is being redefined, just as the definition of youth is changing all the time. Fifty is not considered old today, given that the lifespan of the urban Indian has stretched to 70- plus,? says Vimla Nadkarni, senior sociologist, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

It is easier to be adventurous today than it was even a decade ago. Incomes are high, families are smaller and offspring are more independent than they were. ?(All this) gives them more time to experiment with new avenues. With the opening of the new world, this is another face of a consumerist culture, albeit with positive overtones,? Nadkarni says.

Of course, those with the X factor have always nurtured a love for all that is challenging. ?I have been adventurous all my life,? says Singhania. ?I love taking risks and like challenges.?

But for Dhabolkar, it all started with a pair of marmoset monkeys. A few years ago, a friend gifted the 54-year-old head of Zen Communications with the primates whom he happily lodged in his office. Then he put some fibreglass trees with drooping branches there, and got a chattering mynah in to enliven the office. A little while later, a pair of cockatoos and a friendly bulldog joined the office menagerie.

The floor of the office turned into a fish tank with 10 piranhas swimming inside it. The maverick adman sat atop the tank to create some of his best lines. ?The atmosphere of the office completely relaxed me, though the piranhas did pose a challenge. I had to befriend them,? he says.

These are people with a feel for joy ? and, perhaps ? as Mumbai-based psychotherapist Anjali Chabaria holds ? a sense of self. ?This is often an expression of human vanity. We love ourselves and constantly seek to find new things to enhance our lives,? says Chabaria. ?It is an attempt at self-actualisation by extending the horizons and is certainly preferable to indulging in destructive acts like taking on a new lover frequently or becoming too obsessed with looks.?

Market pressures ? egging on an increasingly competitive world ? push some people more and more into work. Some, like Niroop, vice-president, human resources, Tata Steel, strive to keep their jobs from intruding into their lives. ?I am saddened when I come across people who are all set to quote management gurus and talk numbers during job interviews. There is no joy in their lives, and all they aspire to is a corporate culture,? says Niroop, who wears a suit only when he walks into Bombay House, the headquarters of the Tata Group in Mumbai. Niroop?s screensaver in the office reads ?Your job is not your life?.

He has flown 10 kinds of aircraft. He and Rupa, who runs an independent management consultancy R.M. Associates, were the first Indians who went on the Great Outback Ariel Navigation Adventure a few years ago. They have scuba-dived off Singapore, the Andamans and South China and aspire to enjoy the sport at the Great Barrier Reef soon. Another dream is to fly a micro-light aircraft ? ?to sit in an open cockpit with the air blowing across my face?.

While all his colleagues play golf and rummy at the clubs, Niroop gets his kicks from challenging himself outdoors. ?I live for the thrills. These adventures also teach you discipline and the fact that there are no short cuts in life,? says he. Rupa adds: ?I look at adventure as a spiritual activity. It frees me from any attachment to symptoms of success.?

Middle age usually translates into an evenness that is often too comfortable to be disturbed. Rupa, in fact, believes that people start taking themselves too seriously as they grow older. ?They become sensible and let time pass them by,? says Rupa ? adding that the best compliment she ever received was when someone described her as the ?most stereotype-averse? woman. Adds Kakar, ?People are very scared. They can?t cope with change, not realising that what they have is extinct, and that they must constantly stretch themselves to renew themselves.?

Kakar knows what he is talking about, because he took to scuba-diving to conquer fear. When he became seasick in a boat while on a shoot in Mauritius some years ago, he donned scuba-diving gear, got an instructor and plunged in ? ?only to be transported to paradise?. This inspired him to do what he considers the maddest thing ever ? open a diving school in Lakshadweep. ?I experienced something very primal and had to act on my instinct,? Kakar says.

Dhabolkar is not your stereotypical middle-ager either. A few months ago, he travelled to the rain forests of Borneo, where he lived in a 10-foot long wooden boat for a week. He walked through the jungles and lived in an orangutan sanctuary for a few days. ?These adventures continue to fill me with the rush that a small boy experiences when he goes dancing in the rain,? says the man who has just given his car a makeover. He cut the roof of his Mitsubishi Lancer and fitted it with a glass top. The doors were replaced with those that open upwards and heavy-duty jeep tyres came in place of the sleek original.

?Like a small boy, I have an urge to do something new all the time. I never realised that I was never a teenager,? Dhabolkar says. ?My adventures give me tremendous energy. My life remains stress-free and I am constantly dogged to strive for something bigger and better.?

Like the Mohantys. Rupa says she was filled with a sense of serenity when she leapt off the aircraft in Dallas. ?I felt that I had conquered fear,? she says. But Rupa is not content with that ? she is working out an adventure to embark on, on her birthday later this year. Others blow out candles when they get older ? Rupa probably plans to mark the day sliding down a volcano.