Feature: Ageing Gracefully
Grace while greying
Ageing is not all bad news because the years also bestow certain attributes.
Praise it or blame it on the times we live in. Ageing can be retarded, arrested, prevented in many ways, ranging from top-draw and extremely expensive lotions and potions, Botox and fillers, myriad
surgical interventions, and the like.
And so, we can remain forever young, and never mind how it could come off as a rather juvenile mindset. The legendary quest for the elixir of life seems to have finally ended or put on hold. Except, I’m not thanking God for it. Because I see something sad in our denial of age.
For all the ads that feature elegant white-haired women ‘of a certain age’ and tall spare and handsome men, on the ground, almost everyone is fighting age. It could be in small ways, like dressing young. Like refusing to sport spectacles; I have a friend who wants to go in for corrective surgery rather than wear glasses. Like refusing to admit to their (real) age, even if it means not celebrating birthdays.
Like having at least one face-lift done, at some point in their lives. Like colouring their hair; I know a couple of women, siblings, who are still at it, in their 70s and 80s. Men and women, they are all fighting the fight, most times consciously, sometimes unwittingly; and if they have heard of the term ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ well, they are not going to acknowledge it.
Women have always been seen to fight this particular battle with more ferocity than men, but that, a closer look will reveal, is a skewered picture. There are many men who go in for discreet ‘procedures’ to their plastic surgeon, their dermatologist, their hair-weaving stylist. And we are not talking of film stars and suchlike celebrities, people who live under the Damocles sword of youth; many of the men who don’t want to age, are PLUs…people like us. In fact, they are us!
The encroaching, intrusive, aggressive new media plays its part, too, forever chasing PYTs, making snide remarks about age and ageing, making it out to be that those who have hit the prescribed
watermark (which is forever moving, at that) have no place in that precarious, ephemeral Page Three pantheon.
Women’s magazines, for the most part, are no better; I know of at least two publications where the brief is to aim at those below 30. If you are in your forties and beyond, well, you don’t exist for these magazines.
Then again, women have it tougher than men, when it comes to ageing. A man loses his hair and becomes ‘distinguished’, a woman starts to get lines on her face and looks ‘ravaged’. Men marry women years younger to them, to flaunt as trophy wives; women who do likewise, as did the American actress Demi Moore, are viewed askance.
Put simply, it is those women who do not look their age, who are valued most in our society. And of course, there is the matter of menopause, with its attendant hot flashes, thinning of hair and sundry indignities, all of which pile the odds against women.
The French beauty Maxine de la Falaise used to say, “Try to look as beautiful as you can. Or try to be interesting.” Which was easy for her, coming as she did from the land of femme fatales, all of ‘a certain age’.
Closer home, however, despite the likes of a Nafisa Ali, a Shobhaa De who proudly reveals that she has crossed sixty, an Amjad Ali Khan, a youthfully grey Karan Thapar and Hariharan, the majority of Indians, men and women are still locked in the battle against age.
So? What are the advantages age bestows on an individual? Well, self-confidence, for one thing. Youth is all about tentative steps, a mixture of cockiness and nervousness. As one grows older, one has less to lose, in terms of saving face or image.
If age gives one’s face some unwanted definition, well, it also gives one’s character some fine-tuned definition, and that can only be for the best. Show me a man or woman whose personality towers above others and I’ll show you someone who has gracefully piled on the years, without conflict.
Self-acceptance and not being at the mercy of others’ whims and fancies, are other attributes of ageing. Self-assurance, a shedding of tension, yet other invaluable gifts of age.
People who have shed their youth are more free, in many ways; free about the way they are, the way they look, the things they say and do. They are totally at ease with themselves, and this kind of milestone can only be crossed with age and experience.
One can really be who one is, the time for donning and doffing masks has gone or is going. Think about it. This is the time to really sit back and relax, even as you continue to work, to do a good job at whatever you are good at, to make significant contributions to society.
This is also the time to revel in the comfort of being yourself, being with family and old friends who know you, doing things you like doing and really, making a gourmet meal out of life. All of them, joys that come with the passing of years. All of them, joys never to be underestimated.
And so we come to the individual of a certain age, who, when asked, will blithely… and truthfully…say, “I don’t think about my age at all.” There is no doubt that there are quite a few such individuals around. However, more’s the pity, rarely does the spotlight fall on them.
http://www.hindu.com/mp/2008/08/12/stories/2008081250160200.htm
This ran in THE HINDU of 12 Aug 2008.
Related Links:
Sheila Kumar • August 12, 2008