Saturday, December 18, 2004

The one where they all turn 30

There’s the cliche about how, once you’ve reached a certain age, you find a member of your group missing each time you go for an annual class reunion or similar get-together; the circle keeps getting smaller and smaller. I’ve experienced something like that over the past year, and though it doesn’t entail a permanent passing into oblivion, it’s still disquieting. What’s happening is this: friends have been turning 30 with frightening rapidity.

This trend began in September last year when Amrita’s clock struck three times ten. But somehow it didn’t seem like cause for alarm at the time - I’d always thought of her as several years older, and besides we know better than to wish each other on birthdays, so the day passed without one having to think about it. But early this year Sudipta and then Raghu followed suit and I began to think, "whoa, hold on!"

Now, what once was an ignorable trickle threatens to turn into a flood. This week, Rumman travels to the Land of the Three-Oh whence one may never return, and I’m almost as upset about losing him to that dreaded number as I am about his more corporeal shift to another city next month. Worse is to follow; come February/March 2005, Ganatra, Ajitha and Soumik fall in quick succession.

It’s a comeuppance of sorts for me. I used to play this cruel joke on friends wherein I would call/message them the day after their 29th birthday to announce "Welcome to the first day of your 30th year." Some were thick enough, or in denial enough, not to get the maths: "No, no, I’m only 29!" they’d say cheerfully. Then the horrible truth would hit and I could practically feel the moroseness seeping in through the phone lines.

Now I’m faced with the likelihood that I too will turn 30 eventually. I feel much the same way as the evil rakshas Hiranyakashipu must have when he realised, seconds before Vishnu’s man-lion avatar ate his heart, that he was mortal after all. Or Macbeth, when he was asked the silly, completely rhetorical question "Knowest you not, Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped?" Mythology and literature are full of cruel tricks like these, but this is real life! Of course, I tell myself, I still have more than two-and-a-half years to go, but Time works in unknowable ways and before one can take stock of things the three-oh will have sneaked up on one. My aging friends all assure me that that’s what happened with them.

My one consolation is that I can now tell them "Congrats, you’re on the right side of 40." But how long will even that pleasure last?

(P.S. I've, uh, plagiarised the blog headline from a Friends episode)

10 comments:

  1. On the other hand, I'm willing to wager that anything past 21 is all down hill. I feel old.

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  2. Totally agree... yesterday i was 25...tomorrow am 26. yesterday i was single and mingling as if my life depended on it, today i am married, feeding goldfish and contemplating ze babeez. :(
    who the hell pressed the fast forward, ya?

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  3. How do we provide links to other blogs, the way you have done so on yours?

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  4. hey! and here i always thot only women were obsessd about turning the big 3-0. feels heartening to know that men too worry away!! :)

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  5. Two-and-a-half-years is a loooong time! Toss your clock out of the window and enjoy :-)

    - A Three-Oh Victim.

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  6. i turned 30 a few months back and spent the 6 months prior to it, totally obsessing over it and did some very strange and dramatic things, culminating in writing some very bad poetry, on a train back home with a high fever. well, happily enough -- i seem to have left all that drama in my 20's and now feel a lot calmer and more ...happy. yeah, happy. on the other hand, now i sometimes say things like, "jesus, i'm 30, you know?!"
    -shahpar

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  7. i turned 30 a few months back and spent the 6 months prior to it, totally obsessing over it and did some very strange and dramatic things, culminating in writing some very bad poetry, on a train back home with a high fever. well, happily enough -- i seem to have left all that drama in my 20's and now feel a lot calmer and more ...happy. yeah, happy. on the other hand, now i sometimes say things like, "jesus, i'm 30, you know?!"
    -shahpar

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  8. shut up, Neha, you're a kid yet :)

    (if it's the Neha I know who got recently betrothed..)

    on the other hand, I'm sliding towards my 29th bachelor birthday! So it seems I have a little more than one year to drown myself in alcohol, before I have to start going to the gym and eating nutreeeshiusfeudprodukts so that I look forever young.

    horrifying prospect, Jabberwock. Why do you bring up such things?

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  9. Jai and the other 30-year olds...I keep reading and re-reading this every time someone brings up this topic- Here have a dekko--> (Its just afwd- but with a lot of meaning...)

    I read this today and loved it, wanted to share...
    AND for guys who are scared of girls over 30!!!!...

    This was written by Andy Rooney from CBS 60 Minutes:
    As I grow in age, I value women who are over 30 most of all.
    Here are just a few reasons why:

    A woman over 30 will never wake you in the middle of the
    night to ask "What are you thinking?" She doesn't care
    what you think.

    If a woman over 30 doesn't want to watch the game, she
    doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something
    she wants to do. And, it's usually something more interesting.

    A woman over 30 knows herself well enough to be assured
    in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom.

    Few women past the age of 30 give a damn what you
    might think about her or what she's doing.

    Women over 30 are dignified. They seldom have a
    screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle
    of an expensive restaurant.

    Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to
    shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

    Older women are generous with praise, often
    undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated.

    A woman over 30 has the self-assurance to introduce
    you to her women friends.

    A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her
    best friend because she doesn't trust the guy with other women.

    Women over 30 couldn't care less if you're attracted
    to her friends because she knows her friends won't betray her.

    Women get psychic as they age. You never have to
    confess your sins to a woman over 30. They always know.

    A woman over 30 looks good wearing bright red
    lipstick. This is not true of younger women.

    Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 30 is
    far sexier than her younger counterpart.

    Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell
    you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one!

    You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

    Yes, we praise women over 30 for a multitude of reasons.

    Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every
    stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman of 30+, there
    is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool
    of himself with some 22-year-old waitress.

    Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, "Why
    buy the cow when you can get the milk for free".

    Here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are
    against marriage.

    Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an
    entire Pig, just to get a little sausage.

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  10. I read a lovely decription of passing age in a short story once: the protagonist compared age to an onion and with each passing year, you add on a skin but you are all those skins combined and that you can be a three year old or a six year old or a nine year at times, or even all those years upto your present age combined based on the circumstance, which pulls you back to a certain age and you respond accordingly.

    I still find myself in certain moments regress a lot to my teen years or at other times, even all the way back to my toddler years.

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