NOTE: Nothing in this blog is intended to
represent anyone, alive or dead, and there is no offence meant to anyone.
When I got to know that my cousin’s
daughter had delivered a bonny baby, absolutely delighted I called her up.
‘Congratulations grandma!’
‘Eeeeks!’ she shrill, nearly
making me deaf.
‘Don’t call me grandma! I am still young!’
‘Eh? But you have become a grandmother and
that’s what the baby is eventually going to call you, right?’
‘No, no….she will call me tai (sister), like everyone else.’
‘But why?! Aaji (grandmother) is such an
endearing term! I certainly want to be called aaji.’
‘No way! You are too young to be called aaji!’
‘For heaven’s sake, being called aaji is not going to change my age or
yours!’
‘Still… aaji
feels old’.
I gave up. How can being called something,
change the reality of my age?
The other aversion is to being called
uncle, aunt, or grandfather. All these are irrevocably considered synonymous
with being old! No matter the age, there are those who still want to be called didi and tai (sister) or dada and bhaiyya (brother)!
I became a maushi (aunt) and was called the same at five, when my cousin
delivered a baby. That same baby grew up and became a mother recently, making
me a grandmother at 30. And what a joy it is to be called aaji (grandmother)! You have to experience it to know what I’m
talking about.
Old and older are relative terms. For my 83
year old father, his 60 plus nieces and nephews are ‘girls and boys’,
‘children’. To me these same girls and boys, being my cousins, are young people.
Of course, I am aware of their receding hairlines, grey hair and lined skin,
yet, I perceive them as young.
It really doesn’t matter, whether we
consider ourselves old or not. We definitely know what our age is. I watch the
youthful exuberance and energetic chatter of my nieces and nephews, aged
between 10 to 30 and it’s obvious I don’t belong to that age group.
Mention your age and pat comes the clichéd
phrase meant to lighten the imagined burden of being old, ‘Age is in the mind! Don’t
worry, you still look so young!’
We grow right from day one, beginning as a
mono cellular organism; and grow in leaps and bounds in the first year of our
life. There is no looking back ever, till our very last day on earth. Growing
is a continuous, mandatory truth of life. Yet, we shy from accepting this
brazen fact. From dyeing black the few hair on top of the bald pate, keeping
long the only line of hair at the back of the otherwise bald head (which looks
horrendous as the hair grows and the line of dyed hair moves down creating a line
of black and silver)! Laser treatments and Botox injections to smoothen out the
wrinkles, wearing youthful clothes that look out of sync with our very
obviously ageing or aged body.
Seriously, who are we kidding? What is it that make us want to present ourselves
as what we are not? Trying to look young, in no way changes the fact – our age,
the degeneration of our body. It is natural, normal and inevitable.
There is also that pressure exerted on
those who don’t. With obvious shock, grey haired people are often asked, ‘You
don’t dye your hair? You will look old!’
A firm, loud ‘So?’ generally gets no answer.
It really doesn’t matter how old we look;
what matters is how we look at life. A change in outlook can change the look of
everything around us. Nothing can make us look as old as when we are desperately
trying to look younger than we are. Today is the oldest we’ve ever been and the
youngest we’ll ever be again. Knowing that, does it not make more sense to make
the best of today instead of trying to live in yesterday?
Let's hold our head high and stride out
confidently; it’s time to let the silver streak(s) shine!
