Stopping the Clock

Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. Abigail Van Buren (1918 – 1978)


As I could not find a decent girl to strike up a conversation on transit at Dubai Airport, I decided to browse in Dubai Duty Free Bookshop. After watching HBO’s ROME I had developed interest in Roman history. I picked up three historical novels by Conn Iggulden. The first two were page turners but very gory. The last one ’The Field of Swords’ I could not finish because there was a paragraph that has left me in conundrum. The young Julius Caesar talks about Alexander the Great who at his age had conquered half the world and what has he (Caesar) achieved. This made me wonder what I have to show for my thirty years of life - a faaren (foreign) degree , a huge student debt, a car (leased), a pot belly (my own) and a tens of thousands of frequent flyer miles?

To change my line of thought, I delved into other books. Popular Science or Math books are worse I realized. Though the history is fascinating but there is always a prodigy in such books who has solved some great mathematical mystery or made a scientific discovery in his early twenties. What was I doing in my early twenties? Fumbling to knot the tie throughout the first year of my job. When that was mastered finally, it was always a dilemma whether to use single knot or double knot due to differing length of various ties. Thank God they make lace less shoes otherwise I would still be grappling with laces. My only claim to fame during that period was that I was the best in double entry accounting system amongst the new recruits.

Today, during an office meeting, someone’s mobile started ringing. It was playing the tune of ’Pehla Nasha’. One of attendees asked which tune is it. I told them that it was from ’Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander’. He said, ’That is like five year ago.’ I said ’are you joking?’ and based on some mental calculations I said ’It was released at least 14 years ago’ (Nobody jumped in saying that it was not 14 but 13.5 years or 14.5 years to be exact). It again struck me how much time has passed. Each day passes at a normal pace, even sometimes I find the week too long for comfort. However, when I am with my university friends, we reminisce about the early days. It seems like just yesterday that we were playing pranks with teachers, then searching for the first job, switched a few jobs and here we are; couple of years short of 30. Surprisingly, during this time some of my friends managed to get married, been blessed with fatherhood a few times over, have gone bald and look like ’do bachchon kay baap’ (father of two kids).

In early days of university in Pakistan, students would ask each others age and percentage in intermediate just to get the feeling of informal rank of each other. Later on when we joined professional organizations, we would be working besides experienced people so it was common courtesy to ask each other’s age because somebody older was always a ’bhai’ or ’sahab’ though he may be your peer or even your subordinate. However, when I headed for the West, people of various ages at different points in their professional career had left their jobs to attend the university. Nobody asked my age so I didn’t ask anyone else’s. Having read about affirmative action, racism concerns, privacy etc. over the internet I didn’t want to offend any redneck by asking him an innocent question like "Hey nigger, how old are you?" Knowing someone’s age won’t change anything unless she is a ’loose character’ blonde...but then why would you start off the relationship on a lie if it’s only going to last one night.

As it happens with desis going west, very soon I forgot my culture. When I came back after a few years, people would warm up to me by asking ’How old are you?’ At first I was shocked that how dare they ask such a personal question. But it always was an innocent question. Upon getting the answer they would always comment "Wow! You don’t look so old from your face!" What do they mean by my face? Do I look that old from other areas of my body? Fine I don’t have a six-pack (who am I kidding? it looks like a two-liter bottle) or a washboard belly (more like a tire around my waist) but I have long and strong hairs (which cover bald spots on my head) but Come On!! I don’t look at all like I have fathered two kids (no allusion to family planning).

What’s with fat anyway? As you age, it’s just looking for an excuse to build. It develops so quickly and no matter how much I exercise; it keeps clinging at the wrong places _ double chin, love handles, etc. How do people manage to keep running on the treadmill, the most boring exercise of them all? Pushing myself to go through the regimen hardened only my calf muscles. I liked my round fatty calf. Surprisingly the exercise had absolutely no effect on the desired areas: the double chin etc? Reading on the web, it says that fat may go to the undesired places first based on your genetic makeup but it will be the last place where it will disappear from by exercising. And in some cases, also due to your DNA, you might live forever with a double chin etc. The best alternative is to go for liposuction. I would be an ass if I heed to these dieticians’, trainers’ and plastic surgeons’ advice after I burnt my calve fat running on the treadmill on their advice. I would have gone for Atkins as it produced the desired effect in my acquaintances but I don’t like the side effects. I will settle for getting wiser with age if not looking thinner or younger.

I appreciate the wisdom when I interact with new employees. They have the same naïveté and foolish enthusiasm that I had when I started my first job. They believe that they can make a difference in the world, change the culture, be able to multitask and become general managers in a couple of years just by putting in sheer hard work. Most of them will become disheartened, get lost in the bureaucratic system of organization. However, few of them would realize the problem and with age master the skills that will lead them higher on the corporate ladder: backbiting, passing the buck, number juggling, schmoozing, kissing hands etc.

Tailpiece: Despite the rant, ageing does not bother me as much as the question "Why aren’t you getting married? When will you get married?" I mean what it is with people. It’s the girls who need to worry about it because of their trimesters, ovulations, PMS (these are the only things I could recall from TV sitcoms), a man always remains young.