How old is 'old'?

Eons ago, when one was in school, 60 years seemed like a ripe old age. 'Saathh saal ka buddha' was a common expression used for someone really old, with the inherent presumption that if you were on the wrong side of 60, you already had one foot planted firmly in the grave. There were many juvenile and tasteless jokes about 'old' people who somehow always turned out to be exactly 60 years of age. The 60-year stereotype was strongly reinforced by popular culture, not least Bollywood films. Everyone would recall the popular song from the early 1970s, 'Jab hum honge saath saal ke…'. In the final stanza, the ever-versatile Kishore Kumar even imitates a doddering old man with a wavery voice, supposedly of a sixty-year-old!

Now, that one is just months shy of achieving that significant, if somewhat intimidating, milestone, it seems wholly unfair even to think of a person of 60 as 'old'. Increased longevity has no doubt done its bit in changing perceptions about what constitutes old age but, at an individual level, it probably has a lot more to do with what is referred to as the Baruch's Rule for determining old age which states, "Old age is always fifteen years older than I am." What is 'old', therefore, seems to depend quite a bit on one's own vantage point in life.

"Age is just a number", they say. That, however, offers little consolation, especially to those who have spent much of their lives grappling with the myriad symptoms of congenital numerophobia — the lifelong fear of numbers. Moreover, as the Minions — the little yellow creatures from the popular Hollywood animation film — reminded us, if age is just a number, jail is just a room! Mark Twain offered far greater solace when he remarked, "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter". But the question is, in the long run can either the mind or its (grey) matter withstand the onslaught of age?

In the developed Western world, they refer to the stereotyping of, and discrimination on the basis of, age as ageism. Thus, seeing your older employees as lower in physical capacity, resistant to change, not sufficiently creative, slow to make judgments, and difficult to train etc., and treating them unequally as compared to younger ones amounts to age discrimination or "ageism". Over time, it is pointed out, ageist ideas get so ingrained that the elderly themselves, having grown up believing in them, tend to conform to the stereotype, thus making ageism a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some countries, like the US, have gone far enough to make age-based mandatory retirement unlawful for most professions. Back home, being still an 'emerging' economy and evidently not having as yet sufficiently 'emerged', we do not entertain such far-fetched and fancy notions about ageing. Thus, the common word in Hindi for senility, still remains 'sathhiyana', which quite literally means being over 60 years of age and, therefore, naturally, not quite all there upstairs.

For those in the service of the government, the prospect of turning 60 can be particularly unsettling. The rumours about an impending change in the retirement age have run their full course (from extension by two years, to reduction by an equal number of years, to 33 years or 60 years of age, whichever is earlier) and died a natural death. Thankfully, no one suggested that it should be two years before joining service. The seemingly irresistible force of speculative logic met a truly immovable object and failed to produce any forward movement. As a result, the age of retirement on superannuation remains, firmly, 60 years. The much anticipated, and equally dreaded, 'R' word brings with it momentous changes in the life of a career bureaucrat. The protective umbrella of a secure and predictable, recession-proof job is suddenly gone, and along with all the trappings of office and authority. From bidding goodbye to colonial style houses in the very centre of the city to parting with the luxury of a chauffeur-drive car which can boldly go where the average citizen fears to tread and is also exempt from of the sundry parking restrictions and charges, retirement brings untold misery to the hitherto privileged and 'powerful' bureaucrat. Golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez once famously remarked that when a man retires, his wife gets twice the husband and half the salary. He may well have been talking about an Indian bureaucrat who gets by way of pension 50 per cent of the last pay. Worst of all, after retirement you are no longer entitled to leave of any kind whatsoever (unless of course, you include taking leave of your senses eventually due to old-age dementia as 'leave')!

All that said, the question still remains, how old really is "old"? Personally, I am willing to go along with Ogden Nash's prescription about 'senescence', the process of deterioration with age. The master of delightful and often equally insightful verse, once said, "Senescence begins / And middle-age ends / The day your descendants / Outnumber your friends". To ward off old age, therefore, one must surround oneself with friends, argue and quarrel with them often over trifles, just as one used to do in schooldays. For it was good old Ogden Nash again who said, "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

Views expressed are personal.