Older people are from Mars

Offbeat

Times and attitudes change but many things don't

Papa you got a pimple, said my teenage daughter, peering closely at my face, and added in wonder, I didn't know old people got pimples. That one statement of hers captured the twin characteristics of her age "" an obsession with pimples and treating older people as if they were mysterious aliens from Mars.

Then seeing the expression on my face and wanting to make amends, she added consolingly, I don't mean you are old, I mean that old. The colleague to whom I was narrating the story added her own little bit: My son isn't even so polite. When he sees me wearing something he feels is too bright, he simply declares, it doesn't suit you.

Age is so important to children and the younger they are the more so. Ages ago, when my son was barely five, we went visiting friends who lived in Delhi's Vasant Kunj.

Though it would be late by the time we returned, we decided to take him along as my friend had a daughter of the same age and we thought they might have a good time together. My son also willingly came along once we replied in the affirmative to his standard question before going along anywhere with us, are there children in their house?

But somewhere, the chemistry was not right. Within minutes of the two going off together to the play corner, my friend's daughter came back to the sitting room with a long face.

What happened, I asked with consternation, has he already started beating you up? No no, she replied with a nonchalant wave of the hand which indicated such problems were small beer for her. Something far more serious was bugging her.

With an expression that said how can we be seriously at play, she turned to her mother and said, he is only five-plus. My friend's daughter was not a day less than six. At that age, it was an almost an unbridgeable generational gap.

As my children have stepped into their teens and we have begun to have meaningful discussion and exchanges of ideas, I have been trying to change their attitude towards old age. Old is not as old as it used to be, I have argued.

People at 50 today act like they did at 40 a generation ago. I have tried to buttress such arguments with statistics about rising life expectancy. But I am not sure my logic has been able to carry much weight.

When you are young and eagerly waiting at the doorstep of an exciting world, you are terribly near-sighted. Not very far from your age group the rest of the people merge into a formless grey background, barely seen, not to speak of being heard.

The reassuring part of this is that it has been so through all ages. You don't start noticing older people until you get to knocking at their age group door.

What is interesting and new is the change in the attitude of older people towards old age. When my mother-in-law comes to stay with us, my wife keeps haranguing her every evening that she should change into a brighter sari, despite the fact that she may not be going out anywhere.

I cannot remember my mother ever doing that. Instead, my abiding memory of her till into my teens is how full of drudgery her life was in the joint family, doing endless chores for all and sundry.

The big event for her would be the odd day when my father would come home early and we would all go out together, mostly to visit a relative or the odd friend. And red letter day was when they would go out to see a movie minus us children, of course. Until we were in our teens when we didn't want to see the movies they wanted to see.

These days age matters so much less to older people, except when it shows up as a nuisance. My bad back has a habit of acting up once very ten years.

That's par for the course as I am able to lead a fairly trouble-free existence courtesy the introduction to yoga early in my working life. The only thing is that every time the backache comes back to say hello, it stays a little longer than ten years ago.

Ever since I have crossed 40, I have looked forward excitedly to the day I will be able to hang up my boots and get into real good walking shoes that also allow for some easy trekking.

That's when the real fun will begin as I will be able to do all the travelling I have always wanted to do but never found the time for.

While still in Delhi, I surprised my family a few years ago by declaring that I was taking two weeks' leave and going to the hills, all by myself, entirely by bus, with a knapsack and a cellphone if they insisted.

My wife thought I was being a silly romantic but eventually hid her anxiety and agreed. All went well till the second day of the holiday when while lifting a rather large pile of books from the floor, I realised something had given way in my back.

That kept me in bed for the next seven days, put paid to my travel plans and caused no end of amusement to my wife who kept pointing to my supine self and saying, here's the great birpurush who wanted to discover the hills on his own.

Something tells me that the day I am ready to have all the fun I have missed out on it will be too late. That is the modern dilemma about getting older, your mind and body are often totally out of synch.