GETTING OLD

kawcaw

Getting Old

When I was a young stripling, my birthday was celebrated with great éclat. The family was still in Srinagar. The Maharaja was on the throne. Shevur Bayu was our family priest and he used to come to our house in Mallapora, Bana Mohalla.

The Janamdin Pooja was a long drawn out affair. The climax came when Shevur Bayu took out a new Janeyu from his bag and put it around my neck while reciting the Gayatri Mantra. At the end he blessed me with long life. The words were “Jeevo tvam sharadam shatam” (May you live for a hundred years!)

At that time I was innocent and hundred years seemed to be a reasonable span of life. One did not see many centenarians around and a century appeared to be just the right age for exiting from this life.

Now that I am seventy three, and victim of the multitudinous maladies that the metropolitan flesh is prey to, a span of 100 years appears to be too long. Even the smallest task has become burdensome.

Can there be anything simpler than making water? An enlarged prostrate renders even this puny chore irksome and fraught with dangers.

The other day I was returning home from a public meeting. I should have reached home in twenty minutes. Unfortunately we were caught in a traffic jam. One hour and   we had just reached Niti Bagh. Meanwhile, the bladder had started pressing the panic button.

What to do? The Prime Minister may exhort this nation of 125 crores to bring about a Swachch Bharat. The youthful Aamir Khan might berate the persons pissing by the roadside. But if the municipality does not build urinals at 15 minute intervals by the roadside, what is the old man with his swollen bladder to do?

The problem becomes even more acute if you are travelling in a posh colony like Greater Kailash. There are uniformed guards outside each bungalow, whose main occupation seems to be to protect their owners’ property from urinary attacks. You hope and pray for a house under construction with lot of building material strewn around and no bright flood-lights.

The matter does not end there. I recently participated in a half-an-hour discussion on this crucial subject in the pensioners’ corner of our Ornamental Park. Speaker after speaker described the great travails they are subjected to even when they have secured access to a toilet.

In old age, and especially in winter, the chief instrument of action is shrivelled and shrunk to a pale shadow of his youthful self. Your hand searches and seeks but all in vain. Even when this non-performing asset  is located, he refuses to open up. He has to be persuaded and cajoled into assuming his active form.

When  at long   last the stream trickles out in a thin yellow streak, it does not make a positive forthright statement, but comes out in multiple sprinkles and droplets, some curving inside to wet your trousers, others besmirching the toilet floor. There is lot of humming and hawing . At the end, when the lad has ostensibly finished his oration, there are some last minute addenda.

 As the poet has said,

“Howsoever you may shiver, jiggle and shake,

 Some drops are bound to wet your innerwear make.”

That is the tragedy of old age.

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