Mid-life crisis

You know you are well and truly middle-aged when...

You know you're getting old when a historic anniversary comes along and you realize with a start that you remember the event itself like it was yesterday. Well, that's certainly how I felt when I read that Princes William and Harry were planning to celebrate their late mother's memory by installing her statue at Kensington Palace. This was where Princess Diana had lived and brought up her boys, and the brothers believed that this would be a fitting tribute to their mother on her 20th death anniversary.

It was the phrase '20th death anniversary' that took my breath away. I still have crystal-clear recollection of the morning Princess Diana died. I remember sitting on my purple polka-dotted wrought-iron chair to take a call on the landline in my little barsati in Defence Colony. It was my office calling from Calcutta to tell me that a) Princess Diana had been killed in a car accident in Paris and b) they wanted a feature story on her life and times by 5 pm latest.

I remember the utter shock and disbelief I felt when I first heard the words "Princess Diana is dead." I remember lurching to the TV to see for myself if this unbelievable news was true. I remember spending the day glued to BBC and CNN, breaking away just long enough to file my piece.

Was it really that long ago? Can 20 years really have passed by so quickly?

On a rational level, of course, I know that they have. Prince William is now practically middle-aged himself, loyal husband to his wife and loving father to two kids of his own. And Prince Harry is, well, still Prince Harry. So, yes, the death of the Princess took place a lifetime ago. And yet it doesn't really feel like that. And every time I think about the fact that two whole decades have passed since that horrific car crash in Paris, I can't help but feel terribly old myself.

Nor is it world events alone that make me feel every one of my years. There are many other things in daily life that conspire to make me feel more middle-aged every day.

Last night was a good example. I walked into a new, trendy watering hole in Delhi, with my husband, looking for a post-dinner drink. And the first person we bumped into was the daughter of a friend, a lovely young woman whom we have known since she was a child. We said hello, hugged her, and then exchanged a speaking glance. When you're called 'Uncle' and 'Aunty' the moment you walk into a bar, it may be the universe telling you that this place is not for you, after all!

Of late, these epiphanies pile up every day, telling me that I am now well and truly middle-aged. Here's just a random sampling:

* Watching the controversial Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why, with one of my young nieces, I was astonished to discover that she had never used a cassette tape in her life. When did they go out of fashion? Did nobody make 'mixed tapes' any more as presents for their boyfriend/girlfriend? Will this new generation just see them as a vehicle for a suicidal teen to send a message from beyond the grave? For some reason, that makes me very sad.

* Matters have improved since Donald Trump became President of the United States (now there's a sentence I never thought that I would write) but when Barack Obama was in the White House and David Cameron in Downing Street, I always felt that there was something wrong with the world. These people were my generation, for God's sake! How did they get to be in charge? Where were the real grown-ups? And then came the sobering realization that we were now truly the adults in the room. What a scary thought!

* I guess there is a first time for everything, but I never thought that the day would come when I would turn down champagne on a long-haul flight because it was too early in the afternoon. No, I said to myself, as the drinks trolley rolled up. If you drink that now, you will be ready for bed when you land. So pace yourself and hold out for a nice glass of red with dinner. Clearly, my days of irresponsible drinking and flying are well and truly over. Now, it's going to be middle-aged moderation all the way. (What a bore!)

* And then, there is the small stuff. When staying in sounds like a far more attractive proposition than going out; when you choose the elevator rather than the stairs even if you're only going up one floor; when a gentle walk seems more do-able than a full-throttle jog around the park; when a pair of ballet flats seem more enticing than vertiginous stilettos; when you need those glasses to actually read rather than just work the librarian-chic look; well, that's when you know that middle age has struck.

If any of this sounds remotely familiar, then I have bad news for you. No matter how glossy your hair, no matter how trim your waistline, no matter how trendy your playlist, no matter how exciting your social life, your youth is well and truly behind you.

You, my friends, are now middle-aged. Acknowledge it; accept it; and, if you can, embrace it.

Mid-life crisis?

No, it’s not that bad; but this may be the time to ring in some changes

There is something to be said about multiculturalism. For one thing, it allows me to celebrate New Year thrice every year. There’s the regular New Year on the 1^st of January, when I party along with the rest of the world. There’s the Baisakhi New Year in April that I get to enjoy because I was born into a Punjabi family. And now, there’s also Diwali, which is celebrated as New Year by Gujaratis, a community I belong to by marriage.

This Diwali, though, as I did my puja, praying to Ma Lakshmi for prosperity, I realized with a start that I have more New Years behind me than I have New Years to look forward to. Without even realizing it, I have tipped beyond the halfway point in my life. And from now on, I’m going to be counting down rather than adding up.

Yes, like Bill Clinton said so memorably at the Democratic National Convention, I too have more yesterdays than tomorrows.

But while I am not in the throes of a mid-life crisis quite yet (well, I think so; my friends and family may well disagree), I have come to the realization that time is not on my side. In fact, it is the enemy, racing past even as I struggle to play catch up.

So, from this year on, my motto is that immortal line that has stayed with me since my days as a student of English literature: ‘Carpe diem’. Seize the day. Make the most of every moment because it will be over before you know it.

As is my wont at such times, I began by making a list of all the things I should and should not do to get the most out of the days, weeks, months and New Years I have left. Here is a small sampling:

·       No more revisiting of favourite destinations. I’ve been there and done that. There is an entire world out there to explore. And I should do it while I can still explore – as in walk on my own two feet without the aid of a Zimmer frame. London and New York will still be there when I am old and decrepit. But I may not be able to do justice to the mountains of Switzerland and the beaches of Croatia when I need to stop and catch my breath every 10 minutes.

·       Sit right down on my desk and write that book. No more procrastinating. No more endless revision of chapters that I have written already. No more displacement activity masquerading as ‘research’. No more endless trawling of the Internet. No more excuses about lack of time or mind-space. It is time to sprint to the finish line. And when I’m done with the book I’m currently working on, it will be time to pick right up where I left off the novel I abandoned three quarters of the way through.

·       Prune that reading list. Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have the time to waste on airport bestsellers and other junk reads. From now on, I will only invest time in authors whom I love and books that show potential. And no more feeling like a failure because I can’t finish a book – if that is a failing, then it is the author’s, not mine. (Also, if I intend to re-read the classics that I last studied in college – just to see if they speak differently to me – then I need to get on with it. Middlemarch awaits…)

·       No to endless socializing with people I don’t even particularly care for. No to large parties where no conversation is possible (mostly because you have nothing to say to fellow guests). Yes to small dinner parties with friends and prospective friends, where we can actually hear ourselves talk and listen to those speaking to us.

·       Declutter my life: not just of things that no longer bring me joy but also of people who only bring me down. A ruthless cull is in order, so that I can both simplify and sanitize my life. By the end, I hope to be left with a pared-down existence that allows me to appreciate what I have rather than bemoan what I don’t.

·       No more taking health and fitness for granted. From now on, sadly, it will be a slippery slope downhill. And the only way to make a controlled glide down is to invest time and energy in eating well and exercising right.

·       Ah no, you misunderstand. That doesn’t mean I am going to survive on salads and soups and turn away from dessert. Life is too short to eat rabbit food. Or to drink water rather than wine. But it will get shorter if I forget that magic word: moderation. So, I’m going to keep repeating it to myself in the hope that it sticks even when that pesky memory loss kicks in.

So, that is my magic formula for getting through the rest of my days. Read, write, travel, play. And yes, eat, drink and be merry…Well, you know how that one goes.

And a belated (or early) Happy New Year to you all, whichever one you choose to celebrate.

Who are you calling aunty?

That traumatic moment when you realise you have tipped irrevocably into middle age

Last week a friend of mine called up sounding distraught. Given that she is generally a ‘glass is half-full’ sort of person, I thought that there must be a major crisis in her life. As it turns out, I was right. She was suffering from a serious case of mid-life crisis, sparked off by a visit to a five-star hotel loo.

It happened thus. She walked in and found a gaggle of excitable 20-somethings gibbering excitedly amongst themselves. They were still gathered around the sink when she emerged to wash her hands. And then, lipstick liberally re-applied, they started trooping out when one of them stopped and asked: “Whose bag is that?”

Without missing a beat, the other replied, pointing to my hapless friend, “That’s aunty’s.”

Yes, you heard right. It was that dreaded ‘a’ word. Aunty.

My friend, a well-preserved woman in her 40s, is used to seeing people do double-takes when she reveals her age and assuring her that she looks at least a decade younger. So, the ‘aunty’ bit was a fell blow that left her catatonic for the rest of the evening.

When she called me the next morning, she still sounded devastated. Did she really look so old that 20-something young women would refer to her as ‘aunty’? Did this mean that she was well and truly middle-aged now? Were the best years of her life over? Was she now on a slippery slope heading inexorably downwards?

I have to confess that I wasn’t terribly sympathetic. As someone who acquired her first niece at the age of 12 (in my defence, my sister is 15 years older than me), I have become accustomed to being called ‘masi’ or ‘bua’ over the years. So what, I asked my friend, was the big deal about being called ‘aunty’? After all, technically speaking, she could have given birth to any of those young 20-somethings. And her kid’s friends called her ‘aunty’ anyway, right?

That wasn’t the point, said my friend. “Standing there at the sink, I had this sudden epiphany. Now when people looked at me, they no longer saw as an attractive woman. They saw an ‘aunty’. They saw someone who was well past her sexy-by date. And as I stood there, I realised that soon nobody would see me at all.”

Yes, that’s a fear that all of us harbour at some level, don’t we? That as age takes its toll and nature wreaks its worst on us, we will turn into invisible women. The women whom nobody pays attention to; who are looked through at parties; ignored as they try to make purchases at a store. The women whom nobody leaps up to open the door for. The women nobody wants to chat up or flirt with. The women who are no longer seen as sexual beings.

In other words, the women who fit into the ‘aunty’ category.

And, for obvious reasons, this is especially hard for women who have been considered beautiful or sexy in their dewy youthfulness. They are used to being the centre of attention in any room they walk into. They are accustomed to being treated with deference. They are used to being objects of desire. They are conditioned to think of themselves as special. So suddenly being reduced to ‘aunty’ status comes as something of a shock.

And to an extent, it was this ‘Beautiful Woman’ syndrome that lay at the root of my friend’s trauma. It was a bit like the jolt an actress feels when she’s first told that she not being tested for the heroine’s role, but for the role of the hero’s mother.

But part of it was also down to the fact that ours is the generation of women who refuse to age. We are unwilling to let Nature take its course when it comes to our appearance. Instead, we rely on extreme medical procedures to keep looking young for as long as we can.

Ours is the generation that embraced Botox and fillers, treating them as lunch-time procedures. Ours is the generation that treats cosmetic surgery as an essential beauty aid, treating face-lifts as extreme facials. And not surprisingly, ours is a generation that looks much younger than our mothers did at our age.

We exercise and diet so that we weigh the same as we did in our 20s. We wear the same clothes as our grown-up daughters. We colour our hair every five weeks to get rid of those greying roots. We slather on the anti-ageing cream last thing at night.

We look in the mirror in the morning and we see a young person staring back at us. Yes, the jawline is a little slack, there is incipient creping of the neck, and the laugh lines run a little bit deeper. But hey, nobody would put us down for 40-something. We don’t look at day over 35!

And then, you walk into a five-star hotel loo and a 20-something calls you ‘aunty’. That’s when you know that the game is well and truly over. You have tipped irrevocably into middle age – and there is no coming back.

Makeover mania

Is it ever a good idea to try and change the man you love into the man of your dreams?

So, now for our question of this week: What exactly is up with Shane Warne? The laddish leg-spiner from Australia is doing such a good impersonation of a newly-minted metrosexual that it is hard to believe that this is the same guy who peroxide-tinted the ends of his hair and – judging by appearances – lived entirely on pork pies and beer.

The new, improved (well, okay, the jury is still out on that one) Warne is missing one beer gut, innumerable wrinkles on his forehead, laugh lines and dodgy hair cut. He now cuts an impeccably slim figure with a suspiciously smooth forehead, a sculpted chin and perfectly highlighted hair. Gone are the grungy track pants and baggy jeans and T-shirts that he lived in. This avatar of Warne wears designer togs to show off his new slim-line waist and toned butt.

So what lies behind Shane’s new look? Plastic surgery? Face lift? Mid-life crisis? Perish the thought. Apparently the makeover is down to the new woman in his life: Liz Hurley. According to Liz, Shane’s new wrinkle-free look is entirely down to his using Estee Lauder skin care products – yes, the same brand that, by some remarkable coincidence, pays Hurley an obscene amount of money to flog their creams and lotions.

These must be magic potions of some potency because Shane Warne has been completely transformed after using them. Now, the man who used to drive his first wife, Simone, nuts with his unreconstructed male behaviour – sexting every second woman he met, for starters – is reduced to tweeting to Hurley’s parrot (yes, the bird has its own Twitter handle) to demonstrate his devotion to his lady love.

By now you’re probably muttering to yourself: what on earth is our Warnie thinking? The erstwhile Rajasthan Royals captain appears to have been reduced to nothing more than a pale – though very smooth-skinned – shadow of his former self. So, why is he allowing his girlfriend to change him into something he is palpably not?

Well, I guess you could put it down to the throes of new love. Rare is the man who can resist the blandishments of his woman in the honeymoon phase of the relationship. And if she comes bearing Resilience Lift face and eye cream, well then, what better way to show your love than to slap it on with a trowel?

But my question is this: why is Liz Hurley falling into the oldest trap in the world? Why is she trying to change the man she fell in love with? Why is she intent on turning him into something that he is clearly not? And why on earth is she bent on recasting him in her own image, complete with dewy complexion, skin-tight jeans and blow-dried hair?

More to the point: how long does she think she can keep this up? And how far down the line will Shane protest at being treated like a work in progress rather than a red-blooded male with a mind and personality of his own?

And at the end of the day, when they are done with their His and Hers facials and spa treatments, when they have scoffed down their green salads (dressing on the side) with sparkling water, will Liz still fancy the man she fell in love with – even though she is hard put to recognise him as the same person? And will he still see her as an object of desire rather than a mistress of makeover?

But why blame Liz Hurley alone? She is merely following the pattern laid down by countless others. I’ve lost count of the number of women who get into relationships with clearly unsuitable men with the rallying cry of: “No problem, I can always change him.”

Well, maybe you can in the short run. You can prevail on him to throw out all those grungy clothes. You can buy him an entire new wardrobe. You can tear him away from all his unsuitable friends. You can cut out red meat and beer from his diet. You can introduce him to the delights of a juicer. You can get him a trendy new haircut to go with the spanking new wardrobe. You can even get him to remember birthdays and anniversary – and get you flowers and chocolate.

Yes, you can train him to do the usual dog-and-pony tricks. But only up to a point. Sooner or later the worm will turn. He will begin to resent your overweening influence in every sphere of his life. He will begin to feel claustrophobic in the tightly-controlled world you have created for him. He will sneak out to meet his friends for a night out – and load up on all the forbidden food groups. He will announce his independence by letting his hair grow past his shoulders – and refusing to wash it even if you beg.

And sometimes even when he doesn’t chafe under the burden of your expectations, even when he continues to obey your every command, it still won’t work – because you have changed him so much that he is no longer the man you fell in love with.

Will Shane Warne and Liz Hurley go the same way? Well, let’s give it time. But all those ladies out there hoping to transform the men you love into the men of your dreams: consider yourself warned. You can never really change someone – no, not in the long run.

Back to school

And the promise that the beginning of the school year held out

I am a bit hazy about when new school terms start these days – blame it on not having a few stroppy mites of my own – but I remember the beginning of my own academic year with crystal clarity. By some happy chance, it coincided with the beginning of the New Year itself. And so, as a new year dawned, it was time to enter a new class at school.

There was a certain ritualistic joy to the whole routine. The buying of new textbooks and notebooks, sitting down one evening with reams of brown paper to cover them before sticking on a label with my name and class clearly marked out. The new school bag and pencil box, the slightly larger uniform that I could grow into in the course of the year, the annual visit to Bata to buy the regulation school shoes and, if I could persuade my mother, a brand-new haircut.

The newness persisted once school actually began. There was a different classroom, for starters, and the chance to bag a better seat than the one I had the year before. There was all that jostling to ensure that my best friends were seated next to me. There was some nervous excitement at the thought of meeting the new class teacher, and much speculation about how nice/strict she would be. And then, there were the lessons themselves, comprising completely new information for our impressionable minds.

All told, there was a sense of making a fresh start, the promise of a new beginning. And I am sure it was the same for my classmates.

It didn’t matter if you had failed miserably at maths last year; this year you could do a complete turnaround and surprise everyone. Maybe this would be the year when you were finally elected class monitor. Perhaps, for once, you would not be the last person to be picked when the class was choosing its basketball team. And with a bit of luck, this time round you would land a meaty role in the annual school concert.

And the most brilliant thing about school – as far as I was concerned at least – was that you got this chance to start over every year.

And then came college, with an even bigger opportunity to completely recast your image. There you were, just another unknown in a cast of anonymous hundreds. Nobody really knew anything about you. The professors had no clue what you were good or bad at. Your classmates didn’t have any pre-conceptions about you, nor you about them. As for the smattering of old school friends still around – they were just as keen to re-invent themselves and hence were content to give you a wide berth.

So, here was the chance of a lifetime: to be whatever you had ever dreamt of becoming.

The class nerd could have a personality transplant and become the mainstay of the debating society. The mousey little girl with spectacles and braces, who always sat at the back of the class in school hoping desperately that no one would notice her, could get a makeover and become the star of the college’s drama division. The sports captain could flower into a writer; the swot could blossom into a singer; the class idiot could discover a sudden talent for photography.

This was a world brimming with possibilities; it was entirely up to you to reach out, grab one and then run with it.

I think, to some extent, that’s the problem with growing up – or even, growing older. The prospect of new beginnings begins to fade with each year, becoming more and more remote with every decade that passes you by.

I don’t mean to suggest that adults – young, middle-aged or old – cannot start over. Yes, of course we can. But without the optimism of youth to back us up, we find it much harder to take that leap of faith. It takes a certain insouciance to press alt, control, delete on the keyboard of life and start afresh. And the older we grow the less willing we are to take that risk.

That’s not to say that people don’t indulge in some sort of course correction at some point in their lives. Sometimes it comes as part of a mid-life crisis, sometimes as a wake-up call after a health scare, and sometimes it is the result of sheer boredom with the life you have been leading so far.

This may manifest itself in different ways. Men may cheat on their wives with their pretty young secretaries; women may sign up for plastic surgery to resurrect their younger selves; couples may relocate to a new city to rediscover the romance in their relationship; and people may change jobs, even careers, to recapture that rush that accompanies a new start.

But no matter what you hard you try to re-invent yourself as an adult, there is no denying the fact that the older you get the more difficult it is to rid yourself of the baggage of your past.

You may find a brand new wife/husband but the baggage of your first failed marriage will always weigh you down. You can try and recreate your childhood through your kids or even use them to fulfil your dreams. But kids have a way of growing up and moving on and there you are, left to your own devices once again.

I don’t know about you, but it makes me long for the promise that the beginning the school year held out.

Neighbour’s envy

That’s usually the starting point of a mid-life crisis

I have a theory about the much maligned mid-life crisis. It’s not so much panic engendered by the thought of what you haven’t achieved (and are now unlikely to) half-way through your life. It’s actually angst, kicked off by envy about all that your peers have managed to accomplish in the same period.

It’s not about how you have missed the bus; but how other people have zoomed ahead in their custom-made Harley Davidsons. It’s not about how your life sucks; it’s about how everyone else’s life is so much better. It’s not about how you aren’t living the dream you fantasized about when you were young; it’s about how that joker from the back of the class seems to be living it on your behalf.

Yes, if you ask me, a mid-life crisis is really nothing more than a bad case of terminal envy. And it’s usually brought on by a close examination of what your friends and colleagues have achieved – while you cower in the loser’s corner.

It’s the kind of peer pressure that you never had to contend with in the schoolroom. After all, in those days you were convinced that you were going to grow up to become a star.

You would write a best-selling novel, which would be optioned by Hollywood. You would become best friends with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. George Clooney would have a mild flirtation with you in between girlfriends. Jay Leno and David Letterman would be vying with one another to have you on their shows. You would fly your own airplane like John Travolta (though you’d probably give a miss to all that Scientology nonsense).

Or you would become a world-class cricketer, totting up centuries and notches on your belt with equal facility. You would get within breathing distance of Sunil Gavaskar’s record, you would be an all-rounder to rival Kapil Dev, like Imran Khan, you’d be another big boy who played at night in more ways than one.

Whatever your dream when you were young – whether it involved sports, the movies or best-selling books – I am sure it always had three elements firmly in place: fame, money, power (though not necessarily in that order). And of course, sex. That was a given if you had fame, money and power. But not just any old sex – it was always sex with a woman or man whom the world lusted after but you had snug in your bed.

Well, 20 years on, things aren’t looking quite as peachy, are they?

If you are like most of us, you’re probably stuck in a dead-end job that doesn’t give you enough satisfaction, money or free time. Your spouse doesn’t look like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. Your kids treat you as some kind of bad joke rather than a hero or even a role model. The only holidays you can afford are off-season package holidays in a crummy resort in Goa – and that just once every two years.

And then you open the paper one day and see that that git from your school, that idiot who used to copy your homework every single day, has been appointed the head of an international banking corporation. Or that girl who used to come at the bottom of the class has published her first novel to rave reviews.

You log on to Facebook and find that your friends are having the best time in Koh Samui or the Maldives. The villa here is fantastic, reads their update, wish you were here. Well, so do you – but you can’t afford the air fare let alone the stratospheric cost of the said villa.

You go to your college reunion after many years and schlep out of your Maruti only to find a slew of Mercedes Benzes, Jaguars and BMWs lined outside. Everyone inside is holding forth on the million-dollar deals they negotiated in the past week, they are parading their trophy second wives who all look like Kareena Kapoor in her size zero phase. They hold forth about how their kids have got scholarships to Harvard and Yale (not that they need it, you understand, they can totally afford the fees) and how they’re planning to buy an apartment in Manhattan to be near them.

Honestly, who wouldn’t have a mid-life crisis listening to all these uber-success stories?

You just have to look at poor Vinod Kambli to see what I mean. Here is this young gifted cricketer, best friends with the batting prodigy of all times, convinced that he is going to go places. And yet while his buddy Sachin goes from one batting triumph to the other, poor old Vinod gets left further and further behind on the road to fame and glory.

Are you surprised then that he ended up on Sach Ka Saamna, holding forth on how Sachin could have done just a bit more for him?

Of course, not everybody having a mid-life crisis chooses to self-destruct on national television. Some men have affairs with their secretaries or run off with women young enough to be their daughters. Some women take up shopping as a vocation, others take to horizontal jogging with their fitness instructors. And then there are those who buy a big-ticket car that announces they’ve arrived, even though it’s clear to everyone that they haven’t even got started.

Everyone deals with a mid-life crisis in their own way. But in almost every case, it is sparked off by a bad case of envy.