According to a number of reports, the average life expectancy of an Indian male is in the ballpark region of 70 years. There are, of course, a number of factors that can impact this number: place of residence, ease of access to medical attention/infrastructure, ability to afford a (comparatively) privileged lifestyle, and so on. But by and large, barring accidents and ailments, one may expect to trod along until they hit the 70s.
Which means that tomorrow, when I turn 35, I will undeniably and inescapably enter the ‘middle-aged’ category of adulthood.
In case you wish to commiserate, let me assure you, there is no need for all that. I am perfectly fine. I know there are many people who baulk at the thought of growing old. They view their birthdays with horror and loathing. Every year as the day approaches, they assume a facade of happiness to display to the world; but in solitude, their souls are tormented by visions of wrinkling skin and balding scalps. They celebrate their birthdays with friends and family, cutting cakes and clinking wine glasses with smiles on their faces. Later, they cry into their pillow as they wait to fall asleep while worrying about waking up with dark circles from all the crying, which makes them cry some more. I am not like these people.
I’ll be honest: when I turned 30, I was devastated. I thought my best years were behind me. Everyone talks about how people experience the prime of their lives in their 20s. I cried over the loss of ‘my youth’ and the infinite ‘missed opportunities’. But what if your 20s were absolute rubbish? What if you achieved absolutely nothing noteworthy in that decade of your life? What if you led an entirely nondescript, uneventful and frankly, irrelevant life? It could hardly get much worse, could it? This epiphany cheered me up a great deal and delivered a much-needed dose of perspective. If there are no past glories to pine over, one needn’t be sad about getting old after all.
I have continued to adhere to this philosophy ever since.
Every day I wake up and gingerly test various parts of my body for aches and/or soreness. Sudden movements spell certain doom - I recently pulled a muscle in my back from sneezing too hard. At any given point in time, there are at least three to four areas of my body where I can feel the muscles misfiring. Every time I bathe, I can see the hair thinning on top of my head and have to spend many minutes meticulously combing a few stubborn strands over the exposed scalp. I have stopped correcting kids who call me Uncle - I benignly smile at them and ignore their requests to throw the ball back over the fence (I am not made of stone). Often, I have to Google the acronyms I see on social media to make sense of a random jumble of alphabets (I mean, what the hell is uwu). I cannot, for the life of me, figure out Instagram. And though I take pride in my adroit use of emojis on WhatsApp, my gif game is mediocre at best.
So, tell me, what new challenges can the ‘middle-ages’ threaten that I have not already faced? What do I have to fear about growing old(er)? Bring it on, I say. My tube of Volini and I will be ready for it.
As I never tire of mentioning, I moved to Bombay in 2010 as a fresh-faced college graduate, who was about to begin his professional career. At the time, I had not imagined I’d last too long in the job, much less in this city.
A dozen years on, I am still here but I struggle to think of Bombay as home. And tragically, the passage of time has eroded the sense of belonging I felt with Kolkata (which had been home throughout my school and University years).
An essay I wrote about this feeling of homelessness has found a home at Livewire. You can read it on their website here or on Instagram (link below).
I hope anyone who has left one home and tried to find another, will relate to this. And even if you don’t, please remember: it costs nothing to hit that like button.
P.S.: My heartfelt thanks to everyone who voted for my story in the fiction competition I’d been banging on about the past few weeks. I appreciate the support and your responsiveness to my persistent heckling. At the close of voting, my story had accumulated a fraction of the votes garnered by the top-10 entries. So, while the popular category awards are out of reach, I hope the story will be in the running for the editorial awards. Results will be announced today so keep your fingers and toes crossed! (If I never mention this again, assume the worst and we’ll pretend I never entered this competition.)