Happy Birthday

'Oh, so young, so perfect!' I sighed wistfully. It wasn't a brand ambassador of any international beauty conglomerate on glossies, it was my 12-years younger self that Google Photos flashed with 'Memory for you'.

Difficult it was to trust my eyes and believe how I've transformed silently over the years; these photos perhaps hold the right mirror to portray inexorable ageing that time has sketched on me-canvas. Is age really just a number?

'Birthday is a perfect time to cogitate,' I whispered in retrospection.

How can it be just a number? It's a passel of numbers, going haywire, and I'm running after them to tether them to where they should be. Apparently, the medical reports these years and their insane numbers have supplanted the scores on progress reports of academic years. Is it a surprise then that I brace up to address the abysmal ones in the next term with as much urgency? Blood sugar, cholesterol, thyroid, bone density, and to elude their crazy levels - number of steps during evening constitutionals, grams of sugar per cup of tea, spoons of clarified butter added to my curry, hours of rest, and more recently screen-time - all under laser focus just to stay healthy; health that came for free when I was younger.

Did I forget to mention my haggling with the weighing scale? It can't be that many kilos, come on, take away at least 500 grams from that - 300 for my clothes and 200 for the breakfast that's trudging down my entrails!

Along with the numbers and sighs, I stretch the skin on my cheeks and wish they invented a painless-beauty-stapler to pin up the sagging folds; I flatten the thinning fringe in despair to cover up the brow that's getting broader by the day; I tuck my tummy in like Baba Ramdev and desperately wish it didn't budge upon exhalation. Childbirth took its own little toll, but middle-age hormonal mayhem has wreaked havoc on my body and mind in a way unbeknown to me before. A perfect BMI has warped, a moderate appetite has dried up (I hardly hear the wambles), and the bones that carried me around effortlessly have started crackling like they host colonies of chirping crickets in certain joints.

Is that all ageing is? Yes it is, but then there are other numbers to track. Fortunately, these numbers aren't threatening; in fact they get me going - more years of merriment and fulfilment, more areas of knowledge to attain and achievements to rejoice in, more pages to turn and words to learn, more brush strokes to splash on canvas and karaokes to tune to, more stories to tell and pieces to write, more people to love and places to explore. In short, it's all beautifully balanced in the end.

The years have attenuated the hubris of youth, making me more patient and less argumentative; more accommodative and less judgemental - liberated from blinkered views; more understanding and less querulous. They have taught me to appreciate the benefits of the rainbow-colors in Mediterranean diet over just potatoes; who'd have thought I'd stop flinching at the veggies? They have added darker tint to my carbohydrates - white bread and rice have been superseded with dark rye bread and rotis. They have gradually influenced the dresses I wear, the thoughts I bear, and many other aspects of life - all of which I certainly cannot pen down in one go. Only a motley mix of memories have escaped the clutches of these years, unscathed. Intense moments of pride and pain, triumph and mortification, remorse and reparation, love and enmity are as vivid today as they were when I went through them. Now when I introspect I see they have carved out the 'me' that I am like iron being forged from smelting through anvil. 

No doubt, ten years down the line, when I unmoor from mid-forties, I'll feel the same way about today as I'm feeling for my mid-thirties now. But I'm doggedly determined to reflect on how many more strings I've added to my bow than contemplate on how deeper the crow's feet have grown around my eyes. The glabella that has been deepened by furrowing brow may not smoothen, but the deep thoughts behind the furrows should grow more illuminating. The love handles may not reduce, but the love I spread should grow in equal proportion.

And I have my mum as my north star. Often reflecting on what she did, and how she was at my age, helps me feel 'It's ok'. The cherry on the cake, of course, is watching the cherubic child beside my younger self grow. Time has stealthily stretched him beyond my height. As his toes steadfastly crossed the bars on Brannock Device and the circumference of his head increased, so did mine, albeit at the navel! But I see the glow of my skin, shine of my tresses, and glint of my dark eyes in his svelte frame; he is my true reflection, and I'm growing again with him. Progeny is like that fabric of new tissues that takes place of old beneath a bad gash; eventually the pain and scabs disappear to make way for the new! Once I was that new fabric, but it's natural to get withered. This is, perhaps, how we weave the tapestry of time; call it ageing if you will!

(Click on photos for clearer image)

Ageing or Growing?

Class/ Grade/ Year VI

Class/ Grade/ Year VII

Class/ Grade/ Year VIII

Happy birthday to me!

Dona, Sydney, Oct '21

Epilogue: Instead of simply fretting about feeling heavier in the middle and being osteopenic due to ageing, I saw a football-player-turned-physiologist, referred to by my general physician. Since then, as suggested, I've followed a regime of moderate exercises for half an hour everyday with pertinacious effort - no, not to trade the abdominal flab for firmer glutes, but to contain my osteopenia from creeping into osteoporosis and to feel better from within. The lustre of elusive youth is ephemeral; I can't be after it. Neither do I clamour for a sculpted figure of pecs and abs. But delaying the ageing and keeping the waist-circumference (another crucial yardstick of health) within permissible limits is absolutely essential to evade alzheimer, dysania, and other debilitating ailments. Who doesn't want to walk around on their own till their bodies are their souls' abode? Hoping to not turn out to be a tongue-hero with vim and vigor du jour.

These exercises are nothing too ambitious to impair my joints. 70% of the regime is as simple as climbing stairs; stairs that are growing less germane in the face of a world that is increasingly relying on escalators and elevators. You've to literally search for them, hidden away in some nook of steel-glass-concrete frames, only meant to be used as emergency exit during a fire hazard. I often ponder if it's a malfeasance towards a community to cripple the young and healthy by leaving no choice to opt for steps. Luckily, I have a flight handy at home to serve my purpose.

The coda of the story - I'm kind to my heart, I take care of my body and bones, and have embraced the stairs for my cardiorespiratory well-being; have you?