"Time and Tide wait for none"
The virtuous innocence of this sweet little verse makes it a tender classroom maxim repeated over and again before and after noon in schools all across the globe. I realized that this apparently "like"able quote languishing in the many trivial corners of most sixth-graders' essays can unleash a crazy feeling of godforsaken desertion only today, when I'm on the hem of turning Thirty.
Thirty. I find the number strange and confusing. This confusion is a result of the shock value that the number packs. More than shock value, "Thirty" also packs with it, snooze value. Thirty, to me, represented baldness, back pain and bladder problems. Not because I had examples of thirty-something convalescents in my family, it was because 30 was an age that was too distant and too dystopian for me to believe in. Thirty years was always like a pocket of sand at the oblivious Horizon, in the middle of the ocean, too far and too unlikely to turn up. I was comfortable with the thought of thirty, tossed, pitched and mummified in the hindmost stratum of my brain.
So, I did.
I had forgotten about this thought until I started to feel "thirtyish". It's a feeling worth describing. You wake up with a slight sensation of discomfort in your right shoulder/knee/back/elbow. This sensation serves two purposes. One, it wakes you up. Two, it smacks into your head the realistic thought that "Son, you are approaching thirty, so don't try funny things like Rappelling or Mattress-WWF even if your childhood chum challenges you today". You get out of bed and look at yourself in the mirror to see that a few more strands of protein have gone extinct on your head. You pretend that it's not balding but only a problem with the barber who tends to be excessively desirous to own those particularly rickety filaments of hair that grow out of the balding zone. Understandable. You use the comb to conceal the scandalous revelation. You fill your mug of coffee and the mug reminds you of your distinctive eminence and place of prominence, [read: incessant obligations and relentless complaints] "World's best Husband/ Universe's most hard working employee/ Most struck-dumb listener to a wife, Ever!/ Most efficient Nappy changer ever to have lived on earth/ etc." Filled with pride, you plan to wake your wife to share your thoughts, when you realize that there's still a few micro seconds to go and if you still plan to wake her up, a cannonade of scorching slander follows. Filled to the brim with content, having received the daily dosage, you walk to the balcony only to see human beings younger by decades, stronger by miles and smarter by ages whiz past your unenergetic, insensitive and bear-like body towards schools, playgrounds and colleges. You feel low. So you look at yourself again. You can't find your feet. You rub your eyes and focus and re-focus. No outcome. Your feet are just not there. You might be imagining that your jasmine-light body is floating thin air. False. Use your hands to squish the inflated bloat in the centre of your chassis and then your feet come into sight. Fat. Unregulated and shameless. This is thirty! You have arrived.
So, I did.
I had forgotten about this thought until I started to feel "thirtyish". It's a feeling worth describing. You wake up with a slight sensation of discomfort in your right shoulder/knee/back/elbow. This sensation serves two purposes. One, it wakes you up. Two, it smacks into your head the realistic thought that "Son, you are approaching thirty, so don't try funny things like Rappelling or Mattress-WWF even if your childhood chum challenges you today". You get out of bed and look at yourself in the mirror to see that a few more strands of protein have gone extinct on your head. You pretend that it's not balding but only a problem with the barber who tends to be excessively desirous to own those particularly rickety filaments of hair that grow out of the balding zone. Understandable. You use the comb to conceal the scandalous revelation. You fill your mug of coffee and the mug reminds you of your distinctive eminence and place of prominence, [read: incessant obligations and relentless complaints] "World's best Husband/ Universe's most hard working employee/ Most struck-dumb listener to a wife, Ever!/ Most efficient Nappy changer ever to have lived on earth/ etc." Filled with pride, you plan to wake your wife to share your thoughts, when you realize that there's still a few micro seconds to go and if you still plan to wake her up, a cannonade of scorching slander follows. Filled to the brim with content, having received the daily dosage, you walk to the balcony only to see human beings younger by decades, stronger by miles and smarter by ages whiz past your unenergetic, insensitive and bear-like body towards schools, playgrounds and colleges. You feel low. So you look at yourself again. You can't find your feet. You rub your eyes and focus and re-focus. No outcome. Your feet are just not there. You might be imagining that your jasmine-light body is floating thin air. False. Use your hands to squish the inflated bloat in the centre of your chassis and then your feet come into sight. Fat. Unregulated and shameless. This is thirty! You have arrived.
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