Seventy . . .

by Shobhaa De

  Within a few hours, I had five people signing up for the trip. That grew to ten. We had a plan! We cheered. We went. And we had a brilliant time. Of course, not all of it was smooth sailing. There were several goof-ups and hiccups. But overall, a good time was had by all. Now that it is official, I take my role very seriously. The minute one trip concludes, I start dreaming about the next. We all have individual dream destinations, but mine get preference! Why? I play the ‘I’m getting on . . . my knees protest, my bones creek. All of you are young enough to climb Kilimanjaro a few years from now. But this is my time to do fun things while I still can . . . who knows about this time next year?’ I further dramatize the situation by clutching my left knee and saying, ‘I have been neglecting it. Must see the orthopaedic guy next week.’ Blackmail! It always works. It’s one of the advantages of growing older. I exploit it to the hilt.

  When I think of my own childhood years, apart from a few road trips around Delhi with my parents, I cannot recall any major holidays. Our ‘native place’, as we so charmingly call it, was Bombay itself. Once we moved here (I was ten at the time), we stayed put. Holidays meant additional expense. My father simply did not possess the resources to give himself, our mother or us a much-needed break. But it hardly mattered. I don’t remember feeling left out when my school or college friends enthusiastically discussed their summer holiday plans to go to hill stations around Mumbai, or farther to visit grandparents in Shimla and beyond. For me, that break from studies meant cycling on hired bicycles down busy streets near our home, and going for a walk on Marine Drive in the evenings to watch a brilliant sunset, and if in possession of some loose change, eat an ice cream sandwich at K. Rustom’s (it still exists, and the ice cream sandwich remains amazing) near Churchgate station. Of course, that walk also offered a chance to chat with boys from the neighbourhood who ‘accidentally’ timed their walks with ours.

  These days, our plans are far more elaborate . . . and I suspect they are going to get further pumped up. I travelled abroad for the first time when I was in my twenties. It was the single most important individual decision for me back then. Abroad! Alone! The whole world was waiting! The love affair was on—a crazy, adventure-filled one. Every minute, every pound and dollar counted. And now? My children are seasoned travellers. My grandchildren with their own passports at three months have taken enough international flights. Everyone is so blasé and relaxed. While my heart still thuds when I get into the car taking me to the airport. I count the hours to take-off. I never tire of rechecking my handbag for passport, travel documents, soft shawl, phone charger (key!). Arriving at a foreign destination fills me with anticipation as I take a deep breath and look around me, hoping to identify a brand-new experience at the arrivals lounge itself! I hope travel continues to enchant me. I hope I never become blasé and say, even to myself, ‘Ooooof! Been there. Done that!’ Thanks to my travels, I have gotten over my old fears—fear of sleeping alone, fear of darkness, fear of ghosts. It took me a while to sort out my fears, but I told myself it’s that or staying put. The answer was obvious.

  When I wrote a book to mark turning sixty, my publisher Ashok Chopra and I discussed the cover and agreed we needed to break the stereotype of a little old lady of sixty imparting distilled knowledge to her sistaahs. At around the same time I had shot for Vogue (India) for its annual Age(less) Issue. The images were uber stylish. We both picked the same one—of me in an electric-blue one-shoulder gown, my hair carefully windblown by the studio fan, and a mischievous smile playing on my lips. ‘This is the one!’ Ashok Chopra declared gleefully, and we had a glam cover. Almost all the reactions were positive, except for a few which we sensibly ignored.

  Ten years later, I am pleasantly surprised the book sold at all. I was debunking age and talking merrily about how to make the most of the sixth decade. Had I posed in a demure saree and said the same things, would the reactions have been different? I’d say yes. Stereotypes are just so annoying. We should all be free to be whatever age suits our temperament. I can go from feeling sixteen to looking and feeling eighty. Give me that flexibility, please. Don’t put anybody into a box with a number on it. And if anybody tries to do that with you—fight with all your might. On days when I want to pull out my ‘I am seventy’ card, I do just that. But that’s my call. It works to my advantage in certain situations, and I can manipulate it beautifully to generate an array of reactions. But most times, I have to remind myself I can no longer hop, skip and jump through life like a twenty-year-old. As the French would exclaim, ‘Quelle horreur! Quel dommage.’

  There is a phrase I hate hearing myself utter—‘as one grows older’. What happens when you get older? Do horns appear? Do your toenails fall off? Well, they can. Your hair certainly does, from all over. Teeth too. Your equipment dries up but doesn’t rust. You may get cataracts, and knees might require replacement, as could hips. It’s all rather pitiable, dreadful and messy, so why talk about it? Nobody but other fuddy-duddies wants to know what really happens ‘as one grows older’. Your bowel movements should remain a deep dark secret. Along with flatulence and fibroids. As some star said, ‘A good doctor can give you what God didn’t.’ So please spare the world. Your medical history is for you and you alone.

  The other equally irritating line is, ‘When you get to my age!’ I say that less. But when people around me use it, I feel tempted to pipe in with a cheeky and rude, ‘Yes, honey, when I get to your age, I will still be wearing high heels and red lipstick. And deep-purple outfits.’ Or I feel like mocking the person with an offensive comeback, ‘Oh dear, are you referring to adult diapers?’ These responses are not intended to offend my age group. I know we all have to endure some terrible affliction or another and suffer. I prefer to suffer privately and not inflict suffering on others.

  Age has its uses too. I use mine when it suits me, like asking for an airport buggy after flashing my senior citizen status. Or promptly accepting help from youngsters to carry heavy shopping bags. If you can’t leverage age, don’t mention it. When I am on a flight, I often meet interesting people. It starts off with a studiedly casual, ‘My wife is a big fan of yours’ (Lies! The man needs an excuse to strike up a conversation!), then comes the selfie request (‘for my daughter . . .’), and once this connection has been established, a free-flowing conversation begins. I wonder what sort of a thrill these men get by chatting with a strange woman they are never likely to meet again. At some point, we end up discussing children. And I mention grandchildren. Something goes ‘boinggggg!’ inside the fellow’s simple, little head. The expression in his eyes alters in an instant. His voice drops. Sometimes he folds his hands and says, ‘Namasteyji,’ reverentially. A few men actually dive for my feet. A perfectly normal conversation abruptly changes course, and we start talking about pilgrimages. The age thing again. This is just so silly! I am not the one who has initiated the conversation. Is the man terrified I might bite him? A little later, I get it. The man is nervous. To start a conversation with a strange lady is not part of our great Indian culture. To start a conversation with a lady who is a senior citizen? A grandmother? A naani—hey, bhagwan! A dialogue needs a filter, a justification (‘My wife is your fan . . .’). Or else, guilt happens.

  At the time of writing, I am a good few months away from hitting that silly number. But my sweet family is busy planning many surprises, which may include a cruise. We are serial cruisers. I believe families that cruise together, stay together, and drink a lot together! I don’t want to cramp their enthusiasm by interfering. But I have a few plans of my own, should someone ask me. A few things I am certain about—there has to be lots of singing and dancing. A few things remain fluid and open. Being an improvisational artist, I like the idea of deciding in December what to do in the first week of January. Everything is possible, if you dream it. Who knows what December may inspire? It’s important to keep options, and the mind, open but I notice most people at seventy are creatures of habit. They don’t want to change a thing. They like their routine
s. They are comfortable with the familiar. Anything else throws them, and leads to confusion and disorientation.

  I want to urge them to break out of that cage of fixed notions. Give life a try—raw, real life. It’s not all that scary, you know. In fact, doing something totally unexpected, even potentially dangerous, may turn out to be the most exciting risk you have ever taken! At the very least you will go to the great beyond having experienced an adrenaline fix, an unbelievable high. That should be tempting enough. I hope my children are skipping this part—or they may tie me up!

  Watching the sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (rather unimaginatively titled The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), I was most amused by a scene in which Richard Gere, playing a tired hotel inspector, first appears on screen. I for one gasped audibly and loudly cheered when one of the senior citizen actresses in the movie commented, ‘The Lord have mercy on my ovaries!’ Yes, it was an age thing. Most of the women in the cinema hall were ‘over the hill’ like me. So were the actresses in the movie (except for the hero’s fiancée). We were responding to a memory—and not the man in that scene. Our memory had frozen, and we were swooning over Richard Gere’s character in Pretty Woman, which had just celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. Just as we were twenty-five years older, so was Richard Gere. That’s a quarter century of nostalgia. We were no longer ‘fan girls’ of Gere—we were fan buddhis!

  That cruel word—buddhi! It has such a deeply wounding effect when hurled at a woman well past her prime. And this is where a small story comes in. At a family gathering being celebrated in a trendy, new midtown cafe, the earliest reservation given to our party of twelve was for 10 p.m. By the time family members started to roll up, the scene outside the cafe was pretty lively—lots of young, affluent people were gearing up for a long and hard night of partying (it was Friday night, after all). Three ladies from our group arrived together and struggled to push their way past the crowded door, where clumps of youngsters were enjoying a smoke.

  Spotting the ladies, a cheeky girl, cigarette in hand, turned to them and said loudly, ‘Wow! What an inspiration you guys are to our generation. Keep it up, aunties!’ One of the ‘aunties’ bristled at this ‘insult’ and ticked off the person sharply. The others were equally miffed. It made me wonder—are we getting extra touchy when it comes to accepting age? Is that why the lady in our group reacted so strongly to what could have been an innocent compliment? Perhaps the young woman had spoken out of turn, perhaps she was a little high, perhaps she was acting smart, perhaps she was being spontaneous. By not giving her the benefit of the doubt, we had betrayed our insecurities. We were talking about the ‘incident’ two days later, thereby giving it far more importance than it warranted. Of course, young people are cheeky and merciless. They appear to lack sensitivity sometimes, but have we forgotten our own youth and how we used to be? In the eyes of the outside world, we are indeed ‘buddhis’—our hair is grey or greying, our gait is slower than it used to be, we look like we may require the use of a walker soon, and our posture is not exactly upright—in fact, we slouch and stoop. So what? Aunty or buddhi—there is no escaping age.

  Women who embrace their years with grace and charm exude a unique glow they may not have possessed in their youth. Acceptance of advanced years is different from resignation—it shows. Most times, I am perfectly in sync with my biological age and happy to be a seventy-year-old woman. Of course, I am vain enough to revel in compliments as and when I receive them. But I don’t get upset if I am called ‘aunty’. This is our ‘Indian’ way of showing respect to our elders. If it sounds odd to foreigners, that’s fine. It is culturally acceptable to us. We address anyone older as ‘uncle’ or ‘aunty’—no offence meant or taken, generally. Young colleagues often ask how I like to be addressed—ma’am? Shobhaaji? Mrs Dé? My answers vary. It really depends on the person and my personal level of comfort. I am perfectly happy with just ‘Shobhaa’—that’s my name, after all. I don’t like Shobhaaji—I find it a bit too Bollywood. Mrs Dé is an option with strangers. Or else, call me ‘aunty’. I am fine with maasi, but draw the line at buaji.

  Age-related issues are extremely sensitive, and it’s important to respect another person’s feelings. Certain women friends are relaxed about being their age and never bother to hide it. Others are positively paranoid and go to great lengths to disguise the year of their birth. ‘I don’t feel old,’ an eighty-year-old exclaimed agitatedly, ‘Why do people want me to state my age? It’s none of their business.’ Still others, younger by a couple of years, love announcing to people within earshot, ‘I have always looked up to Shobhaa ever since I was this high in school.’ I laugh off the lie, adding, ‘Yes, I remember she used to come up to my knees way back then, and look at her now!’ We all have our little tricks to hit back at someone who is not quite in line, don’t we?

  Some of these ‘tricks’ land us in trouble occasionally, as it happened to a friend of mine who is a couple of years older. How do I know she’s older? We used to model together when I was still a student in college, and she was already working. Growing up in the same city has its advantages. The disadvantages are as many—there are very few secrets left to guard. Everybody knows everything. Well, the lovely lady, who had been recently widowed when I ran into her, was hard to recognize initially. Not because the tragic death of her dynamic husband had aged her overnight. On the contrary, she looked twenty years younger and was positively glowing. I complimented her enthusiastically and she seemed suddenly bashful—like she had been caught with the wrong expression on her face when she was meant to look grief-stricken and low. She went into a lengthy explanation as to why she was dressed so elaborately and wearing so much make-up. I had not asked her a single question. Why did she feel like she owed me some bogus-sounding rationale about how her late husband would have wanted her to dress in a particular way and enjoy her life to the hilt, since he loved her so much?

  I recognized her dominant emotion at that particular time—guilt! There was no mistaking it—the lady was feeling sheepish. Our cultural conditioning being what it is had made her suddenly self-conscious about her ultra-glamorous appearance so soon after the tragedy. It was also pretty apparent she had had ‘work done’ (as make-up artists politely refer to cosmetic surgery). I didn’t really care but I had noticed. She had also noticed me noticing the obvious changes—the plumped-up lips, stretched skin and eyes that were now looking distinctly oriental. She started to fidget, and said hastily, ‘Such a bad allergy. You noticed how puffy my mouth is looking? I don’t know what to do!’ I could have said, ‘Oh please, come off it, that’s no allergy. That’s silicone.’ I kept mum. It wasn’t any of my business but I thought it was pretty silly of her to lie blatantly to someone who had watched her closely for over forty years. Here we were, two middle-aged women playing ‘pretend’ and being awkward with one another. Did I really care a damn whether or not this person had gone under the knife? No. But she clearly did.

  Here we were, two middle-aged women playing ‘pretend’ and being awkward with one another. Did I really care a damn whether or not this person had gone under the knife? No. But she clearly did.

  You may think this is a superficial, inconsequential, urban ‘problem’ about vanity and etiquette. It’s much deeper. It’s about games all of us play. And the energy we invest in such trivial matters. The facades we protect so fiercely—just in case the truth spills out and we stand exposed. I am still trying to figure out what the lady was embarrassed most by—her upbeat, cheerful attitude so soon after her husband’s death? Or her botched-up surgery? Or perhaps both? What about my attitude? Did my critical gaze give the game away? Did she sense hostility on some level? Did my body language suggest I was critical? What right did I have to be critical in the first place? Or to judge her? But most of us do that without even realizing it. The encounter I cited is not a significant one if seen in isolation. But put several connected stories together and it points to the same thing—dealing with the ravages of age.
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br />   Age affects women in ways that are terrifying. To dye or not to dye? I asked my children this question when the first strands of grey started showing at the temples. I was unsure what to do about the very visible grey. Children are the only individuals who are allowed to be ruthlessly candid. They put it bluntly, ‘Mama, please do something about it. The grey makes you look really old.’ They were right. And I wasn’t one of those fortunate ladies whose grey strands make them look distinguished and elegant. Mine added twenty years instantly. I wasn’t prepared to be treated ‘like an old woman’. I started touching up the roots, fully aware there was no going back. Once you begin dyeing, you dye forever. It’s frightening to come across women at hair salons when they are between colouring appointments. I was now one of them. Stuck! More than anything else, I found the whole thing tedious and time-consuming, especially since what starts off as a once-a-month ritual soon progresses to once-in-ten-days torture, spread over a minimum of two hours. It started to get me down. I felt depressed at the dependency. Hair colour became an emotional trap. It still is. As it must be for countless women who cannot step off that wretched drill. I admire women who don’t give a damn and go silver with grace and courage. I am not one of them. Should that make me feel like a coward? As if I have succumbed to something that makes me feel less diminished? I don’t know.