Ranjona Banerji | A 60-yr-old’s adventures and snarling aunties

Age is just a number they say. And the older you get, what they mean, I think, is that it is an unjust number. Like now is the time to wind down, give up, hobble about and start praying to make up for the fun you had when you were younger, in case anyone’s listening. Bribery if you like, redemption insurance for when you kick the bucket.

Or, it’s just a load of tosh.

All right, all right. I concede. You cannot beat the creeping and then galloping onset of physical deterioration. Eyes, teeth, knees. My eyes signalled the number when I turned 40. Like the day after, I needed reading glasses. Haha madam, such is life said the optician.

The teeth have held on. For now.

The knees creak and protest every now and then.

But enough with the medical details you don’t want to know about. Like menopause, although that has a few advantages which I shan’t horrify you with either.

Time for the other cliché: six is the new 12 and whatever else they make up.

What I’m looking forward to are the discounts and interest rates. I cannot lie. Given that I went grey years ago, I often get unearned respect. Auntie, auntie, please sit, jump the queue and so on. One must graciously accept. I do not behave like my Father and another 70 year old man he met, neither willing to accept that the other was younger, as they both offered to sacrifice seats on airline buses.

(Aside: it is however deeply embarrassing the way almost all wheelchair users on international flights are Indians.)

Basically, as I reach the big 60 – which I will have crossed by the time you read this – have decided it’s time to drop the senior behaviour, kick up my heels and have a little fun. I did try to wear heels the other day – boots no less – and my knees protested for a week after. Ah well, I tried.

So, even without new heels, I relooked at my wardrobe and for the first time in my life regretted that I owned no sparkly splangly stuff. Best friend promptly jumped in with red lipstick and silver sparkly nail polish. She skirted the safety line since I find that I invariably opt for grey.

So I tossed all that to the past and have searched for bright red, electric blue and raspberry pink since.

I changed my phone’s ring tone and notification sound to some approximation of disco music. And have forced my family to celebrate Abba with me, in another country. Don’t get me wrong. I listened to a lot of Abba in the 1970s. But it was also de rigueur to denigrate Abba and yourselves for listening to Abba. After all, we were the horror movie not made yet: The Superior Children of Rock. It was Deep Purple and Dire Straits and the Rolling Stones and the Who who were our heroes. Not, um, Dancing queens. But I cannot lie. When we were in school, my friends and I did watch the Abba fan movies several times. I do know all the songs. And recently Mamma Mia even more. I’m just no longer, um, embarrassed.

Abba though, with its pop base, was on the edge of not being embarrassing enough so that you could fully embrace it. That band was Boney M. It was all out pop-disco crazy. We even sang Ra Ra Rasputin for our history teacher in Class XI because she wanted to know what this sensation was. Our excuse was we were studying the Russian revolution at the time. This was work.

But enough justifications and reminiscences.

Age is just a number and I’m going to make the most of it!

I’m not going to be that kind auntie who wears that particular sneakers and salwar combination and calls you “beta” and feeds you homemade mithai. (All power to them, if that’s what they want to be.)

I’m going to be the deeply embarrassing one in the sparkly clothes who snarls at you when she calls you beta.

I shall not roll the bottoms of my trousers.

I shall dare to eat a peach.

I know there are no mermaids.

I shall skip this favourite poet for that, and rage rage against the dying of the light.

O no! I hear the mounting cliches and the chatter about how death is a scam and so on.

I hear you and I raise you 60.

The crunching, munching sounds maybe faint, but they are there behind me as they are behind us all. They’ve just got a bit louder is all.

I’m not fighting that.

I’m just upending explanations. My Mother used to say you can never get enough red lipstick, which is why my bestie provided more. Everyone else I know is giggling about the sequins. How tragic that I walked for years past all the designer knock-offs on Colaba Causeway and sneered at that shiny stuff. Could have got it for cheap then if I hadn’t been such a snob.

Ah well.

Anyway, I’ve got the haircut, the spangles, the pink accessories, the embarrassing clothes. I’ve got the music and dance lined up. I will eventually demand the pink sparkling wine. And set off on this new adventure.

Here’s to my turning 60!

Here’s to all of you who got there before me and those who’re dreading it. There’s no point in that you know.

Age is just a number but numbers pile up. In four-and-a-half billion years, the sun will become a red giant and the solar system will be over. This includes billionaires on Mars, smirk smirk.

I’m doing it my way.

O heavens, that’s a cliché too far! I’ll stop now.

See you on the other side.