Resolving the age-old dilemma over age

shown on the billboards and on social media, and whose real picture is photo-shopped, airbrushed, highlighted, contoured to look all-different.

Life nowadays has become all about filters and we just don’t want to show our real self anymore.

This trend has percolated to our villages also. The village shop boasts of an all-time high sale of green tea, and at every nook and corner, we have girls going in for facials to look fair and lovely and the hair is masked for as cheap as Rs 5, thanks to dyes being sold in sachets.

All women go on early morning walk and try new things just to lose weight and look better.

Beauty or vanity, for that matter, is just not for the rich. It’s for the masses and the trend is rightly being used by the multinationals which are bringing everything in sachets. Be it soap, cream, body soap, oil and facemask — everything has been economised and packaged attractively to lure the customer.

We are a nation in a hurry to look smart and western and this is influencing the next generation that thinks the way to arrive or be noticed is to look western and have hair that are cut, streaked and teased!

In fact, kids have started eating more junk food to escape eating wholesome food so that they don’t get fat. It took me a long time to convince a young girl I taught that eating roti is healthy too. She didn’t want to get fat, you see.

To resolve this weighty problem, we need to be confident and embrace ourselves as we are! Otherwise, you and I would also be shouting and saying “No, we aren’t 60-year-old”.

IT’S ONLY DURING OUR CHILDHOOD THAT WE ALL ARE IN A HURRY TO GROW UP. ONCE WE ARE GROWN UP, WE ALL WANT TO LOOK, FEEL YOUNGER THAN WHAT WE ARE. IT IS ALWAYS A RACE AGAINST TIME