Today a classmate from school and good friend turned 80. I rang him up to convey my greetings and best wishes for many more birthdays and he was quite nostalgic about our last meeting in 1965. Yes, I left Madras as it was then known and, now as Chennai that year but, he has continued to live there since.
Among other things that we talked about, we did discuss our current health and well being issues and wished each other well.
After a while, another friend also about my age sent this message to me in WhatsApp.
There were some more messages, all in one day, talking about and dare I say, belittling, trivialising and or giving excuses for old age. And then there was this very heart warming story in Jean’s blog which brought a smile on my life.
This got me thinking about ageing and how today’s social media is trying to talk about it in a manner totally different from what it used to be in the ‘good old days’.
Elders were admired for their longevity and hopefully, wisdom and were expected to behave like elders. Their maturity was taken for granted. They were not recycled teenagers. And, they had and continued to live and died, like I do now and will eventually.