One is never too old

Several years ago, a visiting professor to our organisation began his talk with an impish smile, ‘When I was a young adult, I thought that at 50 a person is old. But as I turned 50, I realised that 60 defined old age. Now, I am 64 years of age and I still believe that I am not old!’ I suppose this is what all Baby Boomers are thinking at present and this is what the Generation X will also think by the next decade or so.

We, too, were brought up with the belief that turning 50 meant the beginning of old age. When my father turned 50, I had thought he had become old. Days before his golden jubilee, I started writing his biography in poetry form, which I presented to him as a book on his birthday. It was my way of consoling him! In my early 30s, while I was in America, I had asked a senior Indian colleague who was to turn 50, ‘Oh, so now you will be old?’ ‘No!’ she said, alarmed, ‘No, I do not intend to be old!’

Sometimes back, my son came and told me that one of his friends had asked, ‘Are you taking your old parents out?’ ‘What did you say?’ I queried. He said he had answered him in the affirmative. I asked him why there was a prefix of ‘old’ attached to parents. ‘Did you agree your parents are old?’ I questioned him. He felt embarrassed. What is the definition of being old? People of our generation are looking after their parents devotedly and are still selflessly managing the endless problems of their children! Old age is not defined by what other people perceive.

Recently, there was a news report stating ‘Old age now begins at 80!’ Ian Robertson, a Scottish neuroscientist and clinical psychologist at Trinity College, Dublin, who has been studying the effect of age on the brain, realised that people had become younger by roughly 10 years. The extent to which people can retain their faculties after 50 years was subjective to their activities, including a healthy diet, sufficient exercise, mental stimulation and stress-free social life.

An ageless comedy written by Saumya Joshi and converted into a film, 102 Not Out, depicts a 102-year-old man, who jovially disregards old age to accomplish his goal, and seeks to get rid of all the negative, unenthusiastic and boring elements surrounding him. Not only that, he also looks after his grumpy 75-year-old son, who believes he is too old and fragile to enjoy life.

In a lighter vein, everyone born in this world is old! Because don’t we ask little children, ‘How old are you?’ And they meekly answer — three years old, five years old and so on!