India 60, turning 16.

India at menopause. Wow! By the time our Independence jubilee's back-slapping is over, 60 will be the new 40. Sixty will become Sexty thanks to all the media hype — and the media icons who happen to be midnight's children. They will gild, glorify and glamorise the personal Big Sixer, which they too have hit in continuing partnership with the country.

It's stupid but true. At every decadal milestone, women especially say 'OhmyGawd, I'm 30!' or 40, or 50, as if it were the end of the world, happiness or taut butt. Then as they settle into it, they discover that it's an even better life stage. In their 30s, women have shed their giddiness, and got into professional and personal stride. In their 40s, they are in their prime and in control. As they cross 50, they aren't looking at retirement, but only at retyre-ing their Alpha Romeo. And dangling him too.

When will it end? Never, I hope, since it's not over till it's over, as some coach oft-quotedly said. Since 1 2 3 is the flavour of the month, let me cite an American, Gail Sheehy, whose 'New Passages' (1995) was truly my 'Ah-ha!' moment. This cultural observer documented how, for contemporary women, the 40s and 50s were now a second coming of age. They were doing things in their private and career spaces that a previous generation would have considered undoable, unthinkable, and unseemly besides. Sheehy labelled what had traditionally been the dread decades as the 'Flourishing 40s' and the 'Flaming 50s'.

India's experience fits into these labels too. Economically, these have really been her 'Flourishing 40s' and 'Flaming 50s'. And, the next 10 years will be far from boringly 'Serene'. She is already the global IT Girl, and, as she enters her 60s, the world is finding everything sexier about her, from her markets to her merchandise, from her software to her soft power.

What about menopause then? Today's India can forget about it just as today's women have. It's not a time of depression, but of liberation. At this stage, the country no longer needs to worry about unwanted consequences. She can go ahead and just do it.

Even the anxious hot flashes of the early years of economic liberation are behind her, and any flagging of spirits or sagging of enthusiasm can be easily set right. We have the mood-lifting hormonal therapy of the exemplary achievements of our corporate go-getters, and even already have our silicon enhancements. India will find, as women have done, that this is not a period signalling the end of productivity. Like the old Coke ad, it's 'the pause that refreshes'.