At this age!” Gitanath Ganguly had exclaimed when a 64-year-old man had gone to meet him recently asking for advice on how to initiate divorce proceedings against his wife of 40 years. As executive chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, Ganguly regularly comes in contact with couples on the verge of divorce. But he is yet to get used to such requests from elderly people. But it’s time he did. Admits Ganguly, “Though fewer in number than, say, those in their 20s, 30s, or 40s, cases of elderly couples splitting up are clearly on the rise.”

Legal experts dealing with matrimonial issues across India agree. Says Delhi-based lawyer Pradeep Norula, “There is a growing incidence of divorces taking place among couples who are in their fifties.” He adds, however, “Divorce is on the rise among all age groups.”

Mumbai lawyer Mihir Desai too feels that while it may not be a huge trend as yet, there is definitely an increase in the number of couples who are going their own way after living together for 20 to 30 years.

To be sure, hordes of late middle aged or elderly couples are not splitting up. Calcutta-based divorce lawyer Trinath Ganguly puts the figure of those who have filed matrimonial suits between September 1 and September 30, 2005 at “approximately 0.5 to 1 per cent of the total number of matrimonial cases that got filed” in several district and civil courts in West Bengal. That’s not an awful lot of cases in a month. But the very fact that they are happening is significant.

Take the case of Subir Basu and Aparna (names changed), his wife of 27 years. They decided to file for a divorce recently because they found it impossible to communicate with each other any more. Basu, 61, is still sprightly for his age. He plays tennis regularly, is an avid club-goer and is intent on enjoying his considerable wealth after his retirement. His wife, on the other hand, loathes too much of socialising. Moreover, she is deeply religious and prefers to be home most times. “We never really had too much in common,” says Basu. “But now that our only son is settled abroad, we suddenly found that we had nothing to talk about. The last few years have been pretty intolerable for both of us. So we decided to do the civilised thing, namely, to live separately and go in for a divorce.”

But why divorce? Why take such a drastic decision? “It had to be that,” says Aparna, who has an income of her own and will receive a generous settlement from her soon-to-be ex-husband. “I think he may have other plans. He may even get married again. I wanted to set him free and be free myself,” says Aparna.

So why are long-standing marriages breaking up when earlier, elderly husbands and wives ? no matter how incompatible they felt they were ? would carry on together? Says sociologist Bula Bhadra, “The trend is more evident among the urban upper and middle class. Elderly women of this class are more educated and aware of their rights and are less willing to spend the rest of their lives in a bad marriage. Also, they are more economically independent than an earlier generation of women, which makes it possible for them to walk out. Men too used to stick to bad marriages earlier because they felt they were responsible for their dependent wives.”

Arun Banerjee (name changed), a Calcutta-based academic who is in his mid-fifties, is splitting from his wife of over 20 years because he feels they have drifted apart. The real reason, his friends know, is that he is seeing someone else. His wife, who is economically independent ? she is a senior teacher in a reputed school ? did not make a fuss about agreeing to a divorce either.

So is it only the economically affluent elderly who are going in for a divorce? It would seem so. But as Flavia Agnes, advocate and women’s rights activist, points out, “Often, it’s the woman who wants a divorce after giving the marriage a lot of time. Almost always, the woman has put up with either domestic violence or sexual abuse of her children for many years. She has taken this long to make up her mind because she has waited for the children to grow up.”

The causes of divorce among the elderly are usually not very different from those for others: indifference, abuse or an extra-marital affair. Points out Norula, “Older people have various reasons for seeking a divorce. Sometimes it’s because one partner has an extra-marital affair. And sometimes it’s because you want the right to lead your own life in your own way.”

That’s what Rajendra Yadav, noted Hindi writer and editor of the Hindi magazine Hans, wanted when he and his wife ? also a writer ? split up six years ago. Though they did not go in for a legal divorce, they decided to live apart. Says Yadav, who is now in his seventies, “We had reached a stage in our marriage ? after 35 years ?where it was difficult to live together. I felt claustrophobic. Now, we help each other when one of us needs the other. But I am no longer answerable to her. It matters to me that I don’t have to answer questions such as ‘where are you’ or ‘who are your friends’. We live our own lives.”

Yadav feels that this is a more mature way of dealing with a troubled relationship. “Now we connect more than we did earlier. We try and find bridges between us.”

Reporting by Dola Mitra, Bishakha De Sarkar and Gouri Shukla