An Experience to Cherish

Growing older gives you perspective and hindsight. You have a long trajectory to look back on and learn life lessons

- Urvashi Butalia

EARLIER this year, I turned 72. And so far, I am not doddering, although I expect that will come soon enough. But when I mention my age to people and at this age there's none of that reluctance about revealing your age that, as young people, we might have had-they react with surprise. They tell me I don't look 72. But what does 72 look like? Old? What does old look like? Grey? But grey (hair I mean) is fashionable these days and one often sees silver/grey/white highlights in what is otherwise black or brown hair.

Wrinkles? Even those are not unique to older people. And some don't have them at all. The other day I was talking to a friend who is two years short of 80. She's glamorous, spry, and beautiful; not a single wrinkle on her smooth face. Meanwhile, the woman who sweeps the street outside our office, young at 35, has a deeply-lined and creased face, also beautiful in a different way, but one which tells a story not of age, but of hardship and struggle.

So what does "old" have to do with it? I'm not sure. Although there's no doubt that once you cross the given thresholds of age-which have very likely been put in place for administrative reasons-you become more conscious of your age, and of ageing. Forty feels like excitement; fifty, like maturity and stability; sixty, like a line has been crossed, and at 70?

To me, most times it doesn't feel very different-in my head I am the same person I always was, older and wiser yes, but that comes with every year and every decade you put on. But all around you there are reminders that tell you something different.