THE BIG F

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The Big F  

Recently, around two months back, I turned the big F. Yup, I am an April baby, you know hot like a toast but not burnt like May. 

So now I am fifty (I am gonna avoid writing ‘years old ‘ next to it like a weasel that I am).  However, my 50^th birthday coincided with a huge increase in work load and some domestic and health matters that kept me so busy that neither I got any time to have the proverbial big celebration to mark the ‘occasion’ nor got any chance to reflect upon the shit load of years gone by in what today feels like a blink of an eye. I mean I still remember how I was howling like a hungry dog, the moment I was born. Yeah I have memory super powers. Anyway, the point is it seems like yesterday.

Today is the first day after many days that I finally have some time to myself and without the good God fearing people biting my head off as if I am the Devil incarnate with horns on my head. So I thought I will reflect upon the years gone by and what does it really mean to turn into the big F, to be old and have all these years of experiences that range from the good, the bad and the ugly. And those are just the good times. 

I also decided that I will share these reflections with the wonderful people of this planet, who, much like me, are probably tired of being super angry, argumentative, happy, sad, overexcited and melancholic all at the same time and want something to infuse a little brevity in their lives. Yes, all of my bad ideas start like this but let me not be so cynical just yet.

First thing I observed about being old is that man can we talk. I mean look at me, we are three paragraphs into this blog and I am yet to start with the topic this blog is actually about. So where does that come from? Reflections on days past, lead us to some immediate honest conclusions about ourselves but if we do not investigate these conclusions, it is difficult to get to the reasons that made us such assholes, make peace with it and finally accept who we really are.

So on further investigation, I realised some or most of us who are old, talk a lot because we have so much to talk about. Like what the big F is going on with this Tik Tok or some such mobile app craze gripping geniuses living on this planet. When did religion become more important than finding dates?

I mean for the big F’s sake, we have Tinder now and people are still busy debating whose God did what millions of years ago. When I was part of the ‘dating pool’ many moons ago, we had no time to eat or breathe, least of all waste time on historical or religious matters, which had such little relevance to finding ourselves a hot date for the upcoming weekend party. The demand and supply in the dating game has always been so skewed and the hustle so intense because no one had any clue or help in scoring a date who wouldn't turn out to be a serial killer or Bobbitt’s fan.

Today, we have all kinds of ‘support services’ like dating apps and websites with flawlessly verified wonderful profiles and brilliantly morphed and filtered gorgeous photos to smoothly guide us through the billions vying for our attention, dying to date us and show us why love is a many splendour thing.

And yet, we concern ourselves daily to no end with what the big F did the Chief of the Gaul Village in the middle of the Roman empire do when the world was going through economic meltdown of 2008. I mean WTF people!? That Gaul village is not even real. It is part of a legendary comic series known as Asterix the Gaul.

Actually no one really debates or fights over this but I didn’t want to give a real example of fake news that people do debate and fight over endlessly, in order to sidestep triggers that may spark off another debate and suck all of you reading this back into the peaceful universe I am trying to get all of us out of.         

So the just concluded paragraphs of this blog brings up another conclusion I reached while reflecting upon the years gone. Why do we old people rant so much? I mean ranting is more futile than me getting a haircut because I am anyway losing all my hair free of cost. And yet, here we are, ranting away till kingdom come. I was so tempted to use an alternative spelling of come but I held myself back because now I am so old and mature that silly school boy jokes don’t tickle me anymore.

Maybe that’s why we rant so much. We have stopped taking ourselves with a pinch of salt, never-mind dollops of it. I mean, as we grow old, we start taking ourselves and our experiences so seriously as if we will live forever and our experiences will never change, so we must give ourselves and our issues truckloads of self importance and try to control everything that is going wrong with the world because it will affect us till 4019.

Reality check – We all die. And then new people are born and they take over the world and then they get to be assholes that we are being right now. So do your bit and move on. You are not here forever, and so there is no need to spend remaining of your say next 30 years ranting about price of tea in China or the obnoxious dress the over achiever Bollywood Hollywood actress Priyanka Chopra wore to some party. Give her a break and yourself one too. And the time you save from that ranting, probably years, spend it loving and giving that attention to people that matter in your life. Remember, we all die, so hurry the big F up. You are already old and probably alive because the Grim Reaper missed the last tube from Hell.

So like these, I have many other reflections on becoming the big F but most of them are porn related, so I will keep them out of this pious piece and the remaining ones you can read in my autobiography if I ever make it back to Mars on that rocket that wretched Elon Musk is taking his own sweet time to develop.