In the Land of Middle Age (And the Art of Looking How One Feels)
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Early signs of above – (a) fear of reading the newspapers, (b) being unable to cope with ANY news, no matter how watered down, (c) fearing telephone calls, inability to wake up with the sense of seizing the day, (d) stopping taking selfies and posting them, (e) taking photos of pets and looking at them morning, noon and night when waking and falling asleep, (f) actually using those home and kitchen appliances, (g) having kadak chai at home in the evenings, (h) preternaturally watering plants, (i) walking and bathing the dogs instead of exercising oneself (j) online shopping for all essentials and pretty much everything else (including clothes and shoes) instead of going to actual shops (k) avoiding going out (even meeting & hanging out with friends) and preferring the company of horizontal pets when horizontal oneself (extending to conducting all manner of work -mental and physical – when horizontal as well).
The list goes on and on growing as old and long as I feel every passing day. The only activity that doesn’t induce exhaustion and a kind of laissez faire vibe for me is shopping online which actually induces a feeling of youthfulness and brightness like bright morning sunshine on a day with blue skies. When you cross over from using social media to engage with friends to posting photographs along with your urgent political views on the state of the nation and global warming and all the animal activism to start to shop buying another sari you don’t need or, a glass cloche with wooden base you know you will never use, or worse, a chevron rose bedspread in queen size with sham pillows, you know you’ve hit the sweet spot as far as the land of middle age and menopause are concerned. In fact, things have gotten so bad that you actually write about it. So, here’s (l) complete and utter disregard of self awareness and one’s image or physical appearance – come to think about it, this is the most hardest hit of my effervescent youthful now-lost-forever qualities – the ability to not care a fuck who thinks what of me, or my appearance. The mental equivalent of not wearing a bra when going out to walk the dogs because it just doesn’t matter whether they’re hanging out like rotting mangoes or who’s looking (the plumber most possibly, but then he’s been at it since I had small little lemons in my teens).
Then, just now, a few new ones occurred to me. (m) Not checking one’s weight (n) Not measuring one’s waist ever , skilfully avoiding this when tailor comes to take measurements for a new kurta or blouse (o) the start of two important new vital relationships in life – with the tailor, really more of a darzi (an artist whose talents I cannot but envy), and with the mali and also, the maid who dominates ones every decision and life all of a sudden. (Suddenly the people who were passing by hellos, people you at best tolerated and greeted when your mom was getting her XXXL size kurtas stitched, or chuckled and snorted at her lack of fitness and exercise -but here you are, doing exactly the same thing (except you are some twenty years younger than she was when she was doing it). Whew! That’s a stressful one to digest. Definitely need my evening chai to wash that down with. I mean the stress of course, and one coconut-cream biscuit – the mandated one that I now allow myself every evening with my evening chai. Oh! And (p) Money stops mattering all of a sudden. The car service cost 45,000 this time, but do I care? I’m too busy cramming a salted caramel chocolate bar (have you tried them? The one’s from Theobroma are divine!) into my mouth to care what the bloody car service cost me. Considering I hardly drive the car at all these days. My life is an Uber trip from beginning to end, even when traveling away from home on work in a different city . Who has the time and energy to actually drive and park one’s own car these days. Uh-oh. Not me! So here’s (q) not driving your car long enough to let it rots static-ally until you have a repair bill as though the car has driven cross country like a hundred times. (Note to self: If the damage while static is equally proportionate to damage while being on the go, what was the point of movement then? Perhaps, it would be a better idea to stay static and rot since one is wont to rot anyway.) Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. As my mother would have sung back when she came up with Murphy-logisms like these.
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There are moments – moments that follow a random, stray glance at the mirror when trying not to when passing by a mirror- when I feel a sense of loss of my younger self. But these moments are short lived and pass before the brain allows itself to feel the actual side effects of growing and looking older. This brings me to (r) stopping looking in the mirror to admire, check or critique your appearance. Looking in the mirror has become a very select activity, like reading the newspaper (even though all newspapers are subscribed to). Along with self-awareness, any need to appraise and improve oneself seems to have evaporated. Instead there are nightly checklists of bathing and grooming the dogs, combing and deworming the cat etc. The other thing – I notice how old some of my social media dp profile pics are. Even this article, the dp pic has me with long hair whereas I cut my hair super short (formerly known as a pixie cut but now a sort of disparate crew cut that makes me look butch when I am not really butch). But I have to say, this list if things I no longer care a fuck about is becoming more fun my the second, I like how rebellious I have become in middle age when I was a conforming little squeaky thing in my twenties and thirties. Also, whilst being super lazy, the fact that I act – I mean I actually take action. When my long hair started to piss me off, I just woke up one morning and headed straight to the hair salon and got the hairdresser to chop it all off. In fact, his layered staging of the whole thing was really annoying. He actually believed that I would have regrets and want to go one step shorter at a time. No such thing for me. I was happy to push him to cut and chop until he had it down to small close shave length . At times when I meet or pass a person with long hair, I revel in how much I enjoy admiring their hair without a care about the fact that I don’t have any of my own to flaunt and consequently, won’t have to comb and wash my own now. The feeling of new found freedom from hair combing and maintenance actually is a freeing feeling, I’m sure many other women like me who went over the edge at a hair salon near home also feel. So here’s (s) Chopping off all hair without a care in the world. Or letting a pierced ear close in on itself. Ha!
Recently, when someone I connected with did not return my calls, I realise this free fall feeling can extend to people too, I mean other humans. They don’t want to be reached or contactable, off with their heads. Delete their number and contact info. With over five thousand contacts in my phone contact sheet, god knows I can do with one less! Besides, if they call me back and choose to reconnect, I can always add them back. I’m reviewing my Facebook friends list now and thinking actually how many of those thousand plus folks do I actually want to be in touch with? Probably none. Or just a handful. Those I want to be in touch with, are already in my life. Facebook or not. The main thing is to get off Facebook altogether so the urge to shop for saris and bedding online can be nullified. At least ensure the app is off my phone to begin with so scrolling through sari after sari is not something I can do while riding in the back of an Uber when my serviced car sits parked in the lot for weeks on end.
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Here I will take a nap. Because, I can. Yes, right in the middle of writing this piece I will go ahead and save draft and take a nap because I feel tired (too much salted caramel chocolate) and sleepy (too much writing when horizontal) and one of the amazing things about being middle aged is the fact that watching your pets snooze in the afternoon induces no regret whatsoever in commandeering one’s own nap navigation to sleep mode for the duration of the afternoon (to have enough energy for the evening walk with said pets after evening chai…).
And so long and so forth. More notes on middle age and menopause after the above mentioned siesta now.
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Activities done between nap as above and now, back to horizontal position in bed, writing and reading mode. Evening chai. Coconut biscuit. Feeble attempt to walk the dogs but read newspapers instead (at 6pm). Stress from newspaper report of former cabinet minister being taken to jail made me order an aglio olio online on Zomato. Dinner at 7pm of Aglio olio (ordered) with scrambled egg with mushroom (prepared at home). Not bad considering this was from being in classic fight or flight mode thanks to reading the newspapers. Nagged the maid into walking the dogs who came running back in five minutes to join me in my supine state in the living room. An hour of hanging with the dogs – all totally chill and flat on our backs. Priceless. The cat emerged from her little mini-home in the bedroom. The dogs scrambled and wanted to be let out and I scratched her back to make her relax (she doesn’t like seeing the dogs when she wakes up). I made sense of (t) relaxing on my back all evening and eating what I felt like afterwards. Why not? Being middle aged means being at the mid point of your own plot. Things can either start to resolve or go worse from here on. Why not lie on one’s back and enjoy the chai and biscuit with the dogs while stroking the cat’s soft, furry back. And eat some creamy and spicy aglio olio afterwards.
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As I write this, I am tucked in bed with my cat by my side. My dogs have left the house on their nightly neighbourhood prowl. I will read until I fall asleep once I ‘m done writing this blog. The dogs will scratch at the door and ask to be let in (at midnight) and then let out at the crack of down. My cat will curl up around my head and lick my short cropped hair until she wakes me up and when I do wake up it will be to the sound of her purring and grooming and attempts to groom me by extension as well. I will brush away the phone when the alarm goes off at 7am and wake up after 8 when the bell rings incessantly. I will — (t) not feel a tinge of regret for oversleeping, or under sleeping, or doing precisely nothing the whole morning because I am not in the mood for it. So this brings me to my final point – looking as old as you are, a bit over weight, a bit unfit, or living life excessively – shopping too much sometimes, working not all at other times, eating everything one wants to and feels like at other points – these are things that seemed to me scandalous a few years ago. But at 46, I am more interested in the moment being exactly what it is than anything else. Even if it means looking like how I feel – soggy, faded on the edges and a bit fried (I know it sounds like bacon but isn’t bacon just delicious as well?!) . Thats what I mean by middle age – its juts bacon, deep fried curled up bacon on an expensive, pricey and finely crafted plate. Would be a pity not to turn up to enjoy it for exactly what it is!
And so I present my last sign of middle age – (u) doing things the way you please and then staying with the consequences whether its a bit of extra flab, a migraine or, a hangover from not having had a drop of alcohol but too much coffee or kadak chai . Its your funeral after all and you don’t need to share it on social media with pics. Just die a quiet death while playing with your pets. Now wouldn’t that be a lovely way to die? This brought my attention to (v) the notion that you can edit the bad parts of life. Like how I skipped the part when I turn older than I am now and more immobile and straight cut to divine death after having aglio olio while playing with the pets. Surely this kind of brazen editing is only possible in middle age. No need for stages and progression – just cut to the end of the chase.
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…and (w) (x) (y) (z) will follow soon… when this middle aged bird feels like it. And then, maybe not.
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