As I grow wiser

It was a rainy March mid-morning when I reached the college from where my brother did his graduation. Now before you start wondering what this middle aged lady of thirty-seven was doing at this institute for young, robust teenagers, let me clarify that I went to get the Principal’s signature on a document which my brother required from his alma mater.

I felt good, rather, euphoric! The young crowd with lively chatter, the fresh faces of bubbly girls, the stylish boys, cute couples on trendy bikes – I almost felt ecstatic!  Suddenly life was no longer a mundane routine of breakfast, work, kids’ homework, dinner and managing the monthly expenses...I felt young, energetic; and why shouldn’t I? After all, I am not a crabby, computer-illiterate fossilized specimen of humanity! And I have an amazing butterfly tattoo on my back to flaunt too.

Stereotypes of growing older, whether positive or negative, do real harm in the real world. We have made decades' worth of little miscalculations we can't completely erase from our memories, as well as a number of big mistakes that made life permanently harder. You ask what people in their 30s, 40s, and older, regret when they look back at their lives. I suppose it’s wise of you as a teenager to think about how you might avoid a future regret. But I would suggest you to take any good path open to you, do the best you can, and be happy. I look at all the youthful energy surrounding me, and I decide to save regrets for my 50s and 60s. And I will have them, regrets I mean, at a later phase of my life. This may sound a little melodramatic, but no matter how happy we are, at a certain age, our regrets are countless – I have decided to dwell upon mine at a later age.

The group of lean and young boys make way for me as I walk in the rain-bathed corridor towards the Principal’s office. The pretty girls stop their gossip and maintain a dignified silence as I pass by..I've sure gotten old! But it is not that I have had a couple of bypass surgeries, or a hip replacement, or new knees... I'm half blind, I agree, but I have been so for as long as I remember! And it is not that I can't hear anything quieter than a train’s whistle, and neither do I take dozens of different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. A freckled girl with a cute dimple smiles at me, and I wonder if I know her...Is it that I am having a  bout of senile dementia? Nahhh!!  I am just on the wrong side of thirty, thank God, and I still have not retired from my job.

A couple of smart lads in dapper uniforms look at my tattoo..I catch them glancing at it with some interest. As I start feeling a bit youthful, one lad whispers to the other, “Isn’t it too flashy for aunty?”

Ahem! Point noted...Maybe I AM growing old. I know I am old because I stopped growing at both ends and have started growing in the middle. I hear my favourite songs (which are NEVER played in parties as they are passé) only in elevators of government offices. I talk of my favourite movie-stars, and my young friends look at me with a dumb expression.

Age creeps up, unnoticed and intangible, something like maturity....The good news about mid-life is that the glass is still half-full, the bad news is that it won't be long before your teeth are floating in it – this quote which I read long back comes to haunt me on this rainy March day.

Tell me, why I should not feel ancient? As I watch the cell-phone flashing crowd around me, I consider the changes we have witnessed. (‘WE’ refers to all my friends who are struggling like me to fit in into the middle age)..
In our times, closets were for clothes, not for "coming out of”. We existed before television, frozen foods, contact lenses, Transformers and the Doraemon! If you think that I date back as long as the Qutb Minar, read ahead.. We were living even before credit cards, laser beams, gel pens, electric blankets and online shopping. Dishwashers were human (usually our mothers), clothes dryers were long ropes, air conditioners existed in the moon and playing cards and not memory cards were around. 

Smoking involved ‘Navicut’, grass was mowed, Coke was a cold drink and pot was something you cooked in. We knew the differences between the sexes but nothing about sex change. Hardware was something found at a Hardware Store (Hindware) and Software wasn't even a word.

I move at a slow pace towards my car, the signature duly taken from the Principal. The girls and boys rush past me, energetically. I am still trying t recall the girl’s name who seemed so familiar. Is it that I am ‘slowing down’ with age? But just then I remembered my cousin telling me that brains of older people are slow because they know so much. People do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information in their brains - much like a computer struggles as the hard drive gets full, so too, do humans take longer to access information when their brains are full.

Old age is perplexing to imagine in part because the definition of it is notoriously unstable....I suddenly feel that I do not like being stereotyped as the ‘elderly’.

Maybe I am still a HOT babe for my first love, but now it comes in ‘hot flushes’ (pre-menopausal)..

I recall my prayer to the Almighty (from a recent movie I watched) to suit my age, “Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.”