Old Man and See!

WHEN YOU ARE old and retired you have time to kill, 24 slow-moving hours each day. Hopefully, eight of them will pass in restless sleep with three excursions to the bathroom to pee. Peeing is not easy for oldies like me. Sometimes I just stand there patiently, shaking it a bit, trying to coax it out. Other times I find myself drowsily talking to my little guy, reminding him that it was his idea coming to the bathroom, not mine.

Assuming you slept reasonably well and not just tossed and turned, once you wake up you still have 16 hours in the day to go through. With your first sip of coffee, you read the morning newspaper that seems to have fired all its sub-editors. You try not to get worked up reading about the latest shenanigans of the politicians.

Getting agitated is not good for you if your blood pressure is hovering somewhere beyond 140. Now, you wait for the first promising signs of bowel movement. My advice: eat your vegetables. Bhindis and cabbages are really good for you.

After you have shaven and taken the shower, you are ready to take on the rest of the day. The trick is to stagger your activities. If you have to go to the bank and the post office, don’t go to both on the same day. Leave one of the outings for the next day. That will kill some more time.

The guy at the post office will be too busy to chat with you, there is always a queue behind you even on the senior citizen line. But the woman at the bank will be obliged to talk to you, more so if it is not government-owned. The lady at HDFC or Axis will humour her customers to keep their business. Ask her some useless questions about your account. That way 15 more minutes of your day has been taken care of.

Public libraries are good places to spend time. They stock newspapers dumped there at no cost by their owners eager to inflate their circulation figures. My library has also a good collection of magazines, Indian as well as some from abroad. You are allowed to snooze in libraries as long as you don’t snore. The best part is that libraries are airconditioned. You can take your computer and work there; it will cut down your electricity bill at home.

I will be 88 next October. Life sucks in old age. Some decades back, people died around the age of 60, soon after retirement. Some died through natural causes, others were not aware of their ailments. My father died before he was 60. He never checked his blood pressure, like most people at that time.

These days, senior citizens like me take a cocktail of pills and we live well past our expiry date. When you think about it, we are unproductive, a drain on society. Our lives are subsidised by younger generations through their taxes. We should have departed a long time ago. Our bodies as well as our minds deteriorate as we grow older but we stay alive through medication. Modern medicine has a lot to answer for. A long life can be a curse, never wish it on anyone on their birthday.

In joint families, the elders eat at the same table with their middle-aged children and grandchildren. They watch television together. We deprive the young of their privacy. The children cannot go on vacations because the parents need to be looked after, fed, clothed, and sometimes even bathed. What will the neighbours and relatives say if a parent dies while the son or daughter is on a cruise?

The young wait for us to go but it is something that is never uttered, except perhaps by the harassed daughter-in-law in the house who is on her feet from dawn to dusk. The old and infirm are put in her care. In many households, even the young males are incapable of helping themselves to a glass of water from the fridge. That’s a woman’s job!

I thank my lucky stars that both my children live thousands of miles away. They are now both middle-aged and live contented lives. I try and visit them and the grandchildren once a year. As much as they love me, I ensure that I do not overstay my welcome. On these visits, there is always the thought in my mind that I might not see them again. The tyranny of distance.

I do not travel for pleasure any more. Now, I need a wheelchair to get on a plane. In my younger days, I went to all sorts of historic and exotic destinations—the Pantheon in Greece, the Great Wall of China, the nightclubs of Ibiza and Mykonos. On one of my trips, I even ventured out to a nudist beach and let it all hang out! I had a great life, don’t get me wrong.

At home in Delhi, I have a small army of employees looking after me. They are kind and loyal. One of them has been with me for 26 years. He is now part of my family.

I enjoy writing. It keeps my mind active and, hopefully, pushes back dementia. I write slowly, about two to three hundred words on a good day. It stretches time. Completing the manuscript of a novel or work of non-fiction can take more than a year. When it is accepted for publication, it gives me a high unlike any other. I think I am a reasonably good writer. I get decent reviews but no major prizes. Writers get invited to book festivals where pretty, young women fawn on you.

After lunch I take a nap, I highly recommend it to people of all ages. Even if you are employed, it is a good idea to doze off for 20 minutes or so on your office chair. The rest of my afternoon begins with the reading of the day’s New York Times.

I visit my health club most days. I do some leg exercises in the futile hope of improving my walk and then spend 10 minutes on the treadmill at the speed of three kilometres an hour. Don’t laugh. I am not there to lose weight but to keep my heart pumping and, hopefully, prevent blockage. One day, I am likely to slip and fall off the machine and my treadmill days will be over.

A team of doctors at Apollo take care of me. They check my blood pressure, the level of uric acid in my blood and the fat in my liver. I religiously have an annual health check-up. I am a certified hypochondriac. The Indian hospitals in our bigger cities are now as good as any in the world. I would rather be sick in Delhi than London. Unfortunately, not all of us can afford these hospitals. You wouldn’t want to step into a hospital where the poor receive treatment. Filthy facilities, incompetent, underpaid staff.

Most evenings, after a shower, I head for my bar, a short distance away. There I have just a single peg of Scotch. Doctors’ orders. After dinner at home, I might watch Netflix or Prime if there is something interesting on, like Made in Heaven or Succession. I used to enjoy watching porn, but these days I am of the opinion that sex is overrated.

Otherwise, I will open a book. Anyone who enjoys reading will never be lonely. Presently, I am in the middle of Amitava Kumar’s novel My Beloved Life. Salman Rushdie has called it “extraordinary”. For once, the blurb is not an exaggeration.

I switch off the lights at midnight.

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