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Spice of life | Living longer, staying younger with aplomb
As we are in a better position to hold on to our youthfulness, today, there is nothing wrong with keeping ourselves in good humour, as our health and well-being depend on how we accept our age
When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.
Yet we tend to bask in the belief that old age is still far off, trying to resist ageist stereotypes, and stay cool in a youth-obsessed society. As we are in a better position to hold on to our youthfulness, today, there is nothing wrong with keeping ourselves in good humour, as our health and well-being depend on how we accept our age. The quick-witted among us can enjoy their senior status with adages such as, “Old age is when the width of your mind and the waist change places”, while the grumpier ones would only whine and whinge, suffering the pangs of old-age blues.
The other day, a couplet on old age by Urdu poet Daag Dehlvi, disappointed me a little. “Hosho-hawaas, taab-o-tavaan, Daag ja chukke, Ab hum bhi jaane wale hain samaan toh gaya. (Now that my strength, sanity, and energy are gone, I too will leave soon).”
Come on Daag sahib, why so despondent? How can you talk of going so easily and so soon? As poet Dylan Thomas wrote, “Don’t go gentle into that good night…. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” You should not give up your hold on life so easily!
We, the 21st-century generation, are fortunate that with AI (artificial intelligence) and Google to strengthen and supplement our mental faculties, our ‘hosho hawaas’ are intact and secure.
Moreover, there are other items that we humans would not let slip away easily. Here, let me take on the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare. Sir, why only seven stages of human life? If you allow me, I can fit in seven more in-between, using pre, post, and mid prefixes. And let me correct you, old age is not a second childishness, but a second, or rather extended youth. And did you say “sans teeth, sans eyes”? If only you could come and see for yourself that we have all the facilities available to furnish and refurbish these waning faculties at the asking now. Ophthalmologists with their specs, plain, bi-focal, or progressive; and cosmetic dentists with their implants, capping, and crowning, are working 24x7 to retouch, renovate, or even reconstruct the crumbling monument. Not to mention orthopaedic surgeons and the various replacements. I assure you that we human beings will never reach the stage that you call “mere oblivion”.
Since the olden days, two aphorisms have been in circulation about the two points of time when man tends to turn senile, “sathiya jaana” at 60 years, or “sattreya-battreya” i.e. around 70-72 years. I crossed the first one long back, and am on the borderline of the second. Yet, I am trying to hold on to my sanity as well as my ‘samaan’ with aplomb.
We boomers are here to stay! njkaur1953@gmail.com
The writer is a Patiala-based retired associate professor in English
