BENGALURU: A tuft of hair decided to rebel and turned grey, ensuring its prominence was pronounced enough for the mirror to tease me and my friends to advise me to colour it black to synchronise with the rest of my crown. “More than your resume, it is important to look young. You will be competing with the 20-year-olds,” most of them cautioned.
I took the bait, for at age 30 it was not great to look grey while hunting for a job in journalism, which, like many other professions, was evolving into a new work order. So, the next day, the grey blacked out. In those days, one did not have a choice of VIBGYOR to colour their hair. It was a monochromic affair with the ultimate option of brown.
This is not a fabled Grimms’ ‘once upon a time’ introduction to the saga of a timeless yearning to stay and look young. Fast forward to now, many years from when I first coloured my hair to reassert my youth against a rebellious lock of hair. The compulsion to look young has waned, as is evident in the salt and pepper-hair of people who are at ease with the way they look. But that is it. The pressure to be young is at an all-time high. They say that age is in the mind. That is true, but in whose mind is the question?
If you have crossed your mid-50s, be prepared to answer a volley of unwarranted and unsolicited questions from the curious lot – your peers among others. Questions may range from whether you still have a job and why; if your health is okay; and if you have adequate medical health insurance, because what you have may not be enough in times of corporate healthcare and sky-high insurance. If your children are settled, how and where? And if you brazen them out with positive responses bordering on indifference, there are always more queries lurking in those dark spots of suspicion and stereotyping.
The funny thing about ‘growing old’ is the pile of assumptions that are heaped upon you like a garbage pile strewn around Bengaluru streets like charity. The pace at which you are supposed to wade through them without getting soiled is a tough test of your resilience. “Growing old is like being increasingly penalised for a crime you haven’t committed,” stated well-known costume designer Anthony Powell, and rightly so.
Joe Biden may be going through one of the toughest challenges in his long political career for being ‘old.’ Whatever it requires to become the President of the United States, the campaign cry this year is on being young and relevant enough to deftly handle professional pressure in an era of rapidly shifting geopolitics and heightened media scrutiny. Any slip of the tongue and gaffe is being read against Biden’s slowing cognitive skills now that he is 81 and contesting for another four-year term of the presidency. That is the pressure the man occupying the highest office in the world is facing.
For those who are in their late 50s and 60s, it is no better. Peer pressure in the ‘retired’ years of life is gruelling and insensitive. The forced isolation in the twilight years can be testing. The greying hairline, balding head, progressive lenses, hearing aids, growing cataracts, wobbling knees, faltering steps, and mumbling to oneself to keep company are tell-tale signs of ‘growing old’ and the slowing down of hormones. Senescence is as natural and normal a process of human physiology as childhood, adolescence, and youth, each with its characteristics. Why do we then taunt a stage in life embellished with years as decay?
(The writer’s views are personal)