We’re anti... ageing

Aradhika  Sharma

I met my college chum Hema after 25 years. She had recently retired as a senior lecturer of philosophy. A couple of glasses of Chardonnay down, we were congratulating ourselves on the wisdom and foresight of chilling two bottles of the glorious elixir instead of just one.

“Remember how you would shun girls who were known to tipple in college?”

“How prissy of me, but wisdom, like maturity, comes with experience my dear,” she drawled, drinking deep.

I laughed: “We may call it experience but the world calls it age! In fact, if there’s one phrase that I’ve started to detest, it is ‘natural ageing process’. How casually people seem to be bandying the phrase around us these days!”

“Right! Just the other day, I’d misplaced my car keys and was getting hassled when my son said: ‘Relax mom! At your age, it’s natural to forget things.’ Very condescending, I thought.”

Bah! The young think they have the right to patronise. We’re still pretty hot!”I responded.

“We do get hot flashes at any rate. Thanks to menopause, you could say we have smoking hot bodies!”

We rolled on the floor laughing and agreed that probably another glass of Chardonnay was beckoning us.

“Vaise, do you realise how sneakily this odious thing is creeping up? It all starts with that silvery strand that you nonchalantly pluck out and before you can blink, your entire head is silver-grey!” I said.

“Yes, and that’s the moment to hit the bottle — the dye bottle — not the wine bottle!”

“The thing is that the process itself doesn’t let you forget that you are ageing. Like I keep forgetting names, dates and even familiar words. Very embarrassing! Oopar se, I can’t see properly without my spectacles, so people think I’m being rude.”

“The actresses who used to be the sex bombs at our times, have either turned judges at film festivals or are members of the censor board,” she agreed.

“My favourite pants are tight on the waist but loose in the legs.”

“I sleep like a baby — erratically and never through the night.”

“I think of excuses to avoid late-night parties. Where’s the resilience of the thirties? I miss it,” I sighed, sipping on the wine.

“Ah! The conundrum of age is that every woman desires to live long, but no woman wishes to be old!” Hema said. “Besides, isn’t ageing better than the only other alternative — death?”

“How morbid!”

“That’s the thing! Ageing doesn’t have to be morbid. Look, no one is immortal. The reason we fear ageing is that society doesn’t value old age as it does youth,” Hema explained.

“True! If people valued the natural processes, the cosmetic and pharma companies would quit trying peddling the ‘fountain of youth’ to reverse the ageing process and we’d spend less money on cosmetics and pills.”

“There’s no “fountain of youth”. There are only fountains of wine!” she laughed.

“Let us take a dip in that fountain!”

“Open the Chardonnay!” we chorused.