The Illusion of Age

We are always the same

age

inside," said

Gertrude Stein

. And while one is not sure that one is the same inside as when one was five, it is true that there is a significant mismatch between one's objectively measured external age and the way that one feels inside. One's sense of self is stubbornly ageless, if not young. One is constantly bristling at being called

Uncle

, although one is incontrovertibly one. More than anger, the reaction is one of surprise, of genuinely not recognising why the other person should

address

one so.

On the other hand, all through one's life, one has regarded older people primarily through the lens of their age. Their personhood is defined first and foremost through the frame of age. So much so that we are unable to grant them, in any material sense, a right to their youth. Younger photographs of older relatives not only represent another person but another country.

This is particularly true of grandparents. The very act of us being born guarantees them that status if they were not already part of the third generation. We can see them only through the lens of that role, and their relationship with us is equally defined by the distance that exists in our ages. They are meant to be old and can, over time, only become older. Free of any direct parental responsibilities, they are meant to dote over us and appear when needed without asking us for anything in return. Their assigned role is to surrender to time and cede the right of way to the younger.

Cinematic and advertising depictions of the old have tended to portray the old not as subjects who act with a sense of agency, but as objects whose role is to either support the young or be supported by them. It is as if the old lose a sense of individual identity and must fit into the scheme of things as determined fit by the younger generation. So, we have doting grandparents, childlike octogenarians revelling in playing street cricket, put upon parents who are victims of their children's callousness and coughing elders who must be looked after. In most cases, the story is told from the vantage point of others and the role of the old is to react to the expectations of others.

The young fear age and seek to distance themselves from it in a variety of ways. Our grandparents were, thus, never young, for if they were, I too would become like them one day. We also work hard at defanging age by emphasising its toothlessness. The societal expectation from the old has been that they become naturally sacrificing and behave as large cuddly toys that make few demands.

That implicit mental model is no longer true. Old age today does not resemble that of an earlier era. Today's grandparents can be shockingly well preserved in appearance and disconcertingly frisky in manner. Greater consciousness about one's health and diet has meant that one is physically much more robust at a more advanced age than was the case in earlier times. Advances in healthcare have also allowed people to live with ailments once considered debilitating.

The idea of saath saal ka buddha propagated by an old ad is no longer valid, as 60 is now seen as being very much an age where one is embracing the pleasures that life has to offer rather than a time to slip into dotage, dribbling drool. If anything, the period immediately after retirement has become a coveted one. For many people, this is a time of greater affluence and lower responsibilities, and thus an opportunity to do everything that their earlier lives did not permit them to do.

For that matter, retiring too seems to be becoming passe. Most people one knows beyond 60 are engaged in some form of work, in its formal and informal sense. In some circles, it is difficult to run into a 65-year-old who is not a 'consultant' of some kind. Retiring at 58 seems like a quaint practice, quite at odds with one's physical abilities at that age.

In any case, we live in a world where physical capability doesn't mean much as it once did. We don't have to walk long distances; the mobile phone brings the world to us in so many ways so easily that as long as we are able to operate our fingertips and thumbs, we are on a par with anyone else in the world. The internet adds to the irrelevance of age, for it equalises us all when it comes to being able to do things one desires. Provided one can get over one's discomfort with technology, the digital world is a boon for the elderly, for it allows for an alternative existence independent of the physical. One may still get baffled by NFTs, but chalk that up as the wisdom that comes with age.

And yet, one is surrounded, particularly in these Covid times, with the news of many peers passing on suddenly. Perfectly fit people drop dead of heart attacks. You hear of friends you met just a few months ago battling a terminal disease. Reminders of one's mortality sit uncomfortably with the internal assertion of one's eternal youth. Reconciling the two is not easy. One yo-yos between a feeling of indestructible well-being and mortal anxiety. The sense of time running out sits awkwardly with the feeling of being at the top of one's game. And perhaps greater than the fear of sudden mortality is that of a slow, painful decline, which is now a possibility that hovers uncomfortably in one's neighbourhood. Woody Allen once quipped that he wasn't afraid of dying; he just didn't want to be there when it happened. That sounds like a plan.

Age is just a number. Till it isn't.

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