The Pain of Looking Young

The ‘Fountain of Youth’ is a search one will find in mythology and passed on to stories and films.  It is an eternal search among human kind.  However, one just has to ask the affected how it feels to be treated like someone younger than themselves.

The 'Pain of Looking Young' is a curse, felt by people who have no way of expressing it in words.  I have faced it in my twenties, and told myself that it will get better when I turn thirty, which was moved to forties, and now, I am irritated as ever.  I understand that there is no end to it and it is not a matter of looks.  The first strands of grey is something I have heard people fret about, feel bad about and trying to hide under dyes and henna.  I welcomed it, and have always looked forward to looking my age. 

Every time someone in a bus, office or public space has called me ‘paapa’, I have cringed inside.  When men cut into a queue in front of me (not the lady in front of me) and start behaving funny when I object and tell them to stand in line, I have felt fury inside.  The times I have been treated like someone who needs to be protected from the world, I have felt like revolting and picking up a sword.    It was something that affected both my personal and professional life.  Both areas, there are people who told me that I didn’t look my age, that I didn’t look the part.  That I didn’t look old enough to be in the position I was in, that I didn’t look mature enough, aged enough.  That many thought I was way younger than who I am and hence treated me so.  The reason didn’t help as it made me angry for being judged by my looks.

I always have had to work double hard to get to where I got.  Forget the big ones, I go to a bank and they tell me to wait and serve a customer who has come after me, many a time a man, or someone my age or thereabouts.  Yes, I have watched if it happens to others who have been ahead of me in the queue and no it did not.  I count to 100 before I start giving them a piece of mind.  Places where they have made me walk up and down counters, unlike others for similar transactions, my going to the bank repeatedly to get a simple TDS certificate, someone who has come after me being served before and then it doesn’t happen to another, family that treats me as though they are elder to me and more wise and capable, groups – personal and official, where my suggestion would be turned outright as impossible, naïve and not workable to be later proposed by people as their own, facts told unbelievable and later becomes conveniently believable when shown by another.  Name the place – supermarket, bank, shops, it is the same.  I have walked away from places that treat me badly.  I know the difference because if my husband is around, then things work differently.  The word ‘madam’ absent till then appears and the tone changes. Me thought of as my husband’s daughter, everything except his wife. More importantly, I have seen women my age or younger who look their age getting treated better.  The time I was alone, searching for something in the supermarket happily, only to be approached by a pair, a boy and girl, around 21-24, who asked about UNICEF assuming that I might not know or have heard about UNICEF.  No, the question can be passed, but not the tone and body language.  As though they were speaking to a twenty something instead of someone nearly hitting fifty, I gave them a strong piece of advise, asking them to start with assuming I had heard about it as I was easily twice their age.   Sometimes, people have come back, telling they assumed I was younger as I didn't look my age, as though it was some kind of compliment.  You can't imagine what it felt inside.

I have asked myself and my husband many a time if it is me.  Something with the way I behave ? My husband says, when it happens don't put up with it, walk-talk-behave authoritatively, put your foot down which both of us agree is not right or the way to do it, but if there is no go, do it anyways than feel bad.  It has turned my husband over protective of me especially as he sees it in close quarters nowadays.  I argue with my husband and ask him to stay away, let me handle things, just let me be and not try to protect me.  He stands far away, and when he sees something amiss, he steps in and the scenario changes.  Which infuriates me even more.  I have stopped wearing T-shirts, kurtis and jeans to many places, no kurta, and I wear salwars(with that stupid dupatta) and do everything to look normal, that is, my age. Today, after being treated twice as though someone not my age, the second one was an innocent lady(I told her my age and smiled, trying to keep my cool), I felt rage.  No, it is not me generalizing and assuming it is because of my looks.  When people call me 'paapa', olunga vandi otta padi(when I drive normally), get asked what degree I am studying, ....  I just know.  It throws patience, tolerance, everything similar steam out of my burning ears.  I can see that cartoon of myself afterwards.  And feel all the more horrible afterwards.

Don’t judge a book by its cover they say.  But, that is what we all do, everywhere.  So, to those that look their age, please consider it as a blessing, for you know not what it is to be treated and made to feel like an idiot/moron/stupid for that is what I feel at the end of such an experience always.  Only to wake up to battle another day.