Why fear ageing?
Arresting biology can only lead to a sense of retardation, writes Namita Gokhale I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE FUSS ABOUT AGE. It’s a linear obsession, while our actual mental, emotional and physical ages are in constant conflict. Somewhere within I’m always a 17-year-old girl with a wild streak in her. My grandmother, at 90, is the same, while there are people I know who have been middle-aged all their lives. The real wisdom of age comes from that rare confluence of experience and flexibility that few of us manage to achieve. Our passage through time is marked by individual responses to the crises we encounter along the way. Our courage and generosity, or lack of it, mark the quality we give to our life. The inability to invest in faith and hope, the receding ability to commit, are among my personal definitions of the ageing process. Until not so long ago, before the age of gymnasiums, women tended to age faster than men. Their shelf life in the desirability bracket and their resultant self-
