Are You Old Enough For This?

‘Old enough’ going on ‘too old’.

Photo by Himanshu Singh Gurjar on Unsplash

Part 1 of 2

This is how you grow old; not one birthday after another, but in the one minute of the microwave oven, in the four minutes of the french press, and in the hour point five of the dishwasher. 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be older. On my thirteenth birthday, I trotted round the house, triumphant that I had transitioned into something that wasn’t a child. 

I was eleven when I started reading literary fiction. The grown-ups were visibly discomforted by what they imagined I was reading. Are you old enough for this? They recommended the likes of Carolyn Keene and R.L. Stine, but those books never did strike my fancy. This race wasn’t against time; I was watching from the stands, cheering time on. I would count the years before I could grab the wheel, cast my vote, enter a nightclub, get a drink. On the day I turned eighteen, I, queen of procrastination, enrolled in driving school. Eighteen is the legal age to drive in India, lest you think I waited two years. 

To want to be older was a cry to be taken seriously, which I would later find out is not a privilege dispensed in accordance with age.

My brother, who’s younger than I, perhaps mimicked my desire to be older. Every time someone enquired about the difference in our age, I would say, “four years”, and he would quickly assert in correction, almost as if he had been slighted, that it was actually “three years, eight and a half months”. 

When I was younger, I was waiting to be older. Now that I’m old enough, I worry that I may be too old. My age is the very shadow I would routinely attempt to outrun as a child.

Was there ever a time I was happy with how old I was? Maybe there was. Maybe it was when I was in my early twenties. Is it a coincidence that I was the happiest at what’s considered the prime of a woman’s life?

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Last week, I spent nearly three hours preparing a kind of udon noodle stir fry. It shouldn’t have taken that long (I’d sourced the recipe from the quick-and-easy section of a beloved food blog), but I’m an inexperienced cook with an experimental palate and a compelling need for nutritional diversity. As I painstakingly washed and rewashed and peeled and chopped, I was reminded of this time exactly two years ago—June 2021—when I’d find myself similarly bent over the dimly lit kitchen counter, struggling to put together a decent meal. It was when India was in the throes of its worst phase of the pandemic. The Delta wave was upon us, and the virus was unrelenting in its fury. Seemingly healthy, young people were succumbing to the disease. The cries for oxygen cylinders and hospital beds were hauntingly loud. Many citizens were still waiting upon their turn to be vaccinated. We each knew at least someone who had been hospitalised, and we lay awake at night not knowing whose turn it would be next. It was a dark, dark time. 

It was also the time when the home became our world. This time around, I was locked down in a different home than the last time. The home of Lockdown 2020 (Delhi) and that of Lockdown 2021 (Bangalore) are both places of my residence. In my Delhi home, I am the youngest resident. Even our eight-year-old dog is now older than me. Every moment spent in that home is a painful reminder of life passing us by. Every month that I spend away feels like a sizeable chunk of lost time that we could have spent together. Here or there?, I’m forever suspended in the state of having to make a choice. Think of it as ‘opportunity cost’. Having a home in two places is like ripping your heart apart. You can never be whole anywhere. 

Let’s return to the kitchen, the heart of the home. 

Our society thrives on the division of domestic labour. Men outsource it to the women, and the women, when they can, outsource it to other underpaid men and women. For anyone who can afford it (and many can, for labour is despairingly cheap), cooking and cleaning are tasks reserved for others. You hire someone to clean your mess. This is the shameful context for why I don’t cook very often. If you pay attention to the design of modern Indian homes, you will notice how the kitchen is almost never designed for comfort and convenience. Miserably hot, dark and tiny, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the medieval torture chamber.

In the midst of my recent culinary undertaking (that now feels easier, thanks to the upgraded equipment and the reward of repetition), I was reminded of June 2021. In the time that has passed since, we have stopped being afraid of Covid. I’m two years older, but I don’t have much to show for it except that my skin sags a little more and my hair is greyer than it used to be.

In the time since, friends and peers have gotten married, birthed infants who are now toddlers, changed jobs and accepted promotions, started and packed up businesses, written books and intrepidly embarked on crusades of self-promotion.

Two and a half years ago, I had promised that I would write on a bunch of burning topics. This post is partly in fulfilment of that promise, which, of course, I swear to keep. But should it have taken this long? As a writer, I struggle with the guilt of not having written fast enough, often enough, well enough, just enough. In the absence of enough, I watch my life pass me by.

I am now thirty-four years old. There was a time when everywhere I went, I would be the youngest in the lot. I used to believe that age is just a number; what does it matter whether you’re 24 or 34. Except I used to believe that when I was 24. 

(This post turned out to be longer than I had expected, so I’m breaking it up into two parts. The second part talks about my relationship with physical beauty as I grow older. Make sure to come back for that!)