Let's go halfsies on this

As Indian Millennials go through midlife, there are no Ferraris, no meltdowns, no torrid affairs. They're not breaking free, they're taking breaks. There's less panicking, more pivoting. And at every step, there's a meme that makes sense of it all

- Tanisha Saxena [e-mail]

First, let’s get the numbers out of the way. Indians are living longer, 72 years on average. So, midlife, the halfway point between cradle and crematorium, should technically hit at 36. A midlife crisis, on the other hand, doesn’t quite arrive with such mathematical precision. That point at which we look back, take stock and give ourselves a one-star rating — it can creep up as early as 35 and as late as 50, or not at all.

Hollywood has a pretty defined idea of what this looks like. The American midlife crisis roars in with a sports car, a divorce, a relationship with a younger woman (Only White men seem to be affected). “Remember that scene in Friends? Ross is driving a red Porsche, and an older dude in the same car drives by and says, ‘How cool are we!’ Yeah, cringe,” says 39-year-old tech mentor Shaista Akbar. “It’s the stereotype we knew we had to avoid when we grew up.”

But as Millennials grow older - the oldest are in their early 40s – they're realising that the signs are different. This is the generation that was in school when the country’s economy opened up. They snuck into the first discos with college friends, shopped at brand-new malls, and were probably the first in their families to study abroad. They've lived through dial-up internet, 9/11, the rise of social media, the Kargil war, the global recession, #MeToo, Covid-19 and job threats from AI. They're so OG, their Gmail address is probably their actual name – and it’s not even a flex anymore.

They're tired. It’s also hit them that they're mortal and not that special, after all. They've realised that some of their dreams may never come true. But Millennials are adjusting to midlife the way they adjusted to everything thrown at them so far. Middle-age, middle-class, stuck in middle-management, they're making memes and making do. Psychiatrist Deeksha Kalra, who consults at Artemis Hospitals, Gurugram, says that what we're seeing is not a crisis but “reinvention in motion”.