It is after passing through the treadmill of life for over six and a half decades, men get respect as senior citizens. Such seniors are eligible for certain prerogatives. Middle-aged men these days are quite curious to know the age of oldsters. They abruptly ask the grey-beard, “Sir, May I know how old you are, if it is all the same to you?”
At this, if the sexagenarian or the septuagenarian candidly discloses his actual age, the instant reaction from the youth will be a slow and smooth rock of the head like an empty boat at the full of tide accompanied by a simultaneous raise of the eyebrows to their zenith on the forehead, together with the inevitable goggling of the eyes and wrinkling of the eyelids as if in great wonder since they seem to be a tad jealous of the longevity of the dotard.
At times, old people have to hear and swallow some taunting remarks from yuppies without a mind to repay such remarks in kind. Under such situations due to the mellowness of his age the elderly one keeps mum with a mirth on his puckered face, though he feels squirmed.
The other day, a co-brother of my son who had dropped in at my door after over a decade at his invitation was sitting in the drawing room. As I came out of my study, he put me an abrupt question at his very sight of me, “Uncle, you are all (as if I were flanked by some of my contemporaries at that moment) seventy plus — the positive mathematical symbol meaning ‘add’ or ‘addition’ quite often used by the present generation— aren’t you?” To this provocative query I gave him a nod in the affirmative albeit that I felt like asking him whether he was at fifty alone without growing old, but biting my lips I refrained from retorting. Some middle-aged men in particular seem to forget that the wheel of time keeps rolling on at equal pace for all, irrespective of age.
Once when it was tipping down non-stop, I resorted to entering a police station, of course a tad quavering— with not fear but cold— given no other shelter in sight on that long stretch of a barren road. I parked myself on a chair behind the entrance door chittering and hands folded tight and squeezing my body. One of the cops sitting round me casually asked me my occupation. I replied to him I was on my second innings in a private professional institution following my long service in the Air Force. One of them curtly intercepted asking me my age.
Though I mentioned a figure shy of my actual age, he instantly remarked, “Sir, at your age I doubt if at all we will be alive or not.” At this, I felt a bit bitter since I never looked forward to a snippy question from a stranger. Those in the twilight years of life are not time-worn but only time-lined. Senior citizenship is that stage of life when the aspirations sprouted in one’s early life mostly bear fruit. Being a senior citizen unfolds a field of experience hitherto unseen in one’s life, and is for sure, a pride to be one.
