Growing old gracefully, surreptitiously and very slowly

I have a simple objective: to grow old gracefully, surreptitiously and, most important, very slowly. And I might achieve it if I did not have to fill out application forms or talk to people.

Unfortunately I have to do both, regularly. I fill an application form of some form every week. It’s needed for everything nowadays: to buy air tickets; to open bank accounts; to close bank accounts; to purchase insurance; to rent cars; to join loyalty programs and even to ask questions on some snooty websites. The forms may differ in size, colour and font size, but they are identical in one respect: they want to know my age.

Before the internet era, revealing one’s age on a form was less demeaning. Printed forms had age brackets so one could hide within a comfortable range like “35-49 years” without getting into intimate details. But today’s electronic forms want you to select your exact year of birth from a drop-down menu that starts with the current year (to ensure infants can enrol) and goes down one painful year at a time. I find I have to scroll down several pages before finding my birth-year and often there isn’t much room to scroll downwards after that. Such drop-down menus are patently biased towards youth. A friend of mine suggests that they should reverse the list by starting with 1880 and going downwards till the current year so that maturity is respected, while youth does the scrolling. However, while this will mean we scroll down less, it will make us stand out because we have to scroll down less. Like transferring a heavy burden from your left hand to your right, it will merely reposition the problem without solving it.

A Filmy Rescue of Cricket

I belong to a group of middle-aged, slightly-spherical Indian men that plays an enthusiastic and clumsy game of tennis every weekend. We were relaxing at the court-side after an energetic session a few weeks ago, when a fellow player announced in a voice reeking with smugness: “Sorry, Folks, I can’t play next week. I’m off to Australia to watch the game.”

“Wow!” I said, “When are you going to Melbourne?”

“The Melbourne game is over, ass. I’m going to Perth tomorrow for the third test in the four-test series.”

“There’s another game going on in Melbourne,” I said, “It’s called tennis. It’s the game we just finished playing. But of course it’s only a Grand Slam event, one of the four biggest tennis tournaments of the year. That’s nothing compared to an India-Australia cricket test.”

Sarcasm about the magnificence of cricket slides past a die-hard cricket enthusiast like ice cubes on a marble floor.

“Exactly!” he said, “Unfortunately I’ll only catch the last two days of the test.”

Overcoming the birthday overload

I don’t mind wishing the odd fellow Happy Birthday occasionally, but the wretched day arrives every year for everyone, including Eskimos, coastal Maharashtrians and my extended family. Every member of this group – in typical disregard for my convenience – was born on a different day and expects to receive a thoughtful greeting card from me every year. The list is long and requires careful prioritization. First, of course, is my wife; she is followed by my son and daughter; then my mother and mother-in-law. Next are my sister, brother-in-law, nephew and sister’s brother-in-law. After this my sense of order collapses because, creeping out of the woodwork, come a bevy of uncles and aunts and, due to the power of reproduction, countless cousins who, thanks to the power of modern-day transportation, are spread across the globe. The result is a staggering pile-up of birthdays every year.

Handling this annual workload requires a management system. Luckily I’ve studied management. So, by explaining the principles of strategic planning, workflow optimization and cognitive dissonance to my wife, I suggested to her the following method of dividing the work between the two of us: I would take care of her birthday card and she would handle the others’. To my surprise, she refused. Having encountered this problem before, I dealt with it in my usual way: I abandoned the scientific approach and resorted to abject begging. It worked.

Flying faster than time

Time flies. We’ve heard that cliché at least 562 times. But nowadays we fly faster than time and end up with jet lag, another peculiar disease created by man.

My first experience with jet lag was a few years ago on a business trip to the United States from Singapore. I was bright and chirpy on the morning of day one and actually made two meaningful observations during the meeting. But after lunch, I felt relaxed; the speaker’s voice – droning on about budget planning – was soothing. I tilted my head back…

The next moment everyone was pushing their chairs back for the tea-break.

Realizing I had nodded off briefly, I cunningly approached the speaker.

“Hey, Phil, amazing presentation – you brought a fresh perspective to budget planning.”

He looked at me oddly. “But I finished that long ago. This session was about training.”

“I know,” I said, recovering quickly from the shock, “The training speaker was also impressive. What’s his name, by the way? I missed it.”

“Her name is Sarah.”

“That’s right – Sarah,” I said, recovering quickly again, “I’m going to speak to her.”