Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

“Age is not just a number, and don’t you dare say that again.” My wife reminded me today, and not for the first time. And neither was it a statement of fact, which has  been more often the case. This time there was a hidden threat behind it. The hidden threat being “act your age, or else…”

Now this, I admit, I brought it upon myself. It was the after-effects of an event that transpired about a week ago, and which conspicuously decided to rear its ugly face rather late.

The hair-rising experience at an Air Force show at the beach was the real culprit. It wasn’t the event per se, but the post-event shenanigans that raised the shackles and now has my wife vexed with me.  

The forever-sixteen-year-old me could not have by any chance missed the opportunity to see the aerial manoeuvres of the Air Force which were on the cards at the beach last Sunday. Naturally, I was off to enjoy my day in the sun and the sand, little aware of what was in store on the way back.

The beach being just about three to four kilometres from my place, I decided to walk it down. A good decision at that.  I learned it  almost half-way through as I saw traffic snarls, what with most motorists struggling to navigate past the diversions. The roads, bearing the brunt of various works, the metro, the corporation, the stormwater etc, have been dug up almost everywhere.  So the diversions to the diversions, to the diversions had an ominous air about it. The  premotions was lost on the kid in me and instead  I  even allowed myself a little pat on the back for being  clever. 

Naturally given the high spirits I was in, I didn’t feel the heat as I, almost sprightly, marched  towards my destination. I had taken care to put on my goggles, but had forgotten the hat (a point to be noted). But on the way I picked up a bottle of water and felt completely prepared.

The beach by now was a beehive, but I could find myself a spot a little away from the madding crowd, but not far enough to miss out the enthusiastic cheers everytime a flight whizzed past and put up a daring display of acrobatics.  I just couldn’t have enough, so lost was I that I didn’t realise the sun beating down hard on me. The sea breeze had its own cooling effort.   

The real ordeal started on the way back. The crowds poured out onto the roads and instead of traffic snarls it was people snarls everywhere. Every nook and corner of the roads, the lanes and the bylanes were chock-a-block. The jostling, the pushing could only take you that far. It was now that kid in me buckled down as the body realised that a heavenly body called sun is a ball of fire. And was it beating down!  Added to it, given my almost baldness and just a few subtle growths of hair the whole force of the sun shone brightly on it. Realising the main roads were jampacked, I shot into a bylane, only to find even more people, all milling past trying to reach somewhere.  I did not have the heart to dart into a shop to pick up some water as all shops were jostling with unmanageable crowds. My only thought was to reach home as soon as possible. 

The  three-odd kilometre walk seemed like a marathon, with no semblance of an order. Providentially just about a half a kilometre I managed to hire a rickshaw that too after having  wriggled way past various hurdles, the dug-up roads, the stranded motorists, the ever-swelling crowd. By the time I reached home, almost two long-hours later, I was thoroughly tanned. Actually more deep-cooked than tanned.  I downed a couple of bottles of cold water down my throat and confined myself to the a/c room till some life resurfaced in me.  I was so cooked  that my wife  kept her anger in a cold storage.

And now a week later, all that tanned and overburnt skin, especially on the forehead, has started to deflake, almost akin to a snake shedding its skin. My wife, applying coconut oil to reverse the damage, let her cold-stored anger burst forth and issued  the warning. She is not one bit impressed with my sense of adventure. Am I regretting visiting the show? An emphatic no, says my 16-year-old heart, while the weather-beaten body has  its doubts. 

And that, dear friends,  has  made me think. Maybe my wife is not so wrong. Age, is it just a number?