Why turning 60 is special in many ways

The year I was born, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space; John F Kennedy made his famous Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner) speech, and India’s department of post and telegraph launched a national telex service.

Turning 60 is not like turning 50, when old age still seems a long way off. It’s not like turning 70, where the clock ticking to where we’re all headed must only get louder. It’s that muddled place of no longer middle age, but not quite old age.

It’s a place where your doctor nods approvingly: “Pretty good for your age.” And your kindest friends greet you with the blatant lie: “You don’t look 60.” But I am. And why is that a bad thing?

Sixty is knowing you live in a youthobsessed society, but you don’t want to end up like Madonna, the object of either pity or contempt, both galling to bear. Sixty is the recognition that the hard work isn’t over, and if you don’t keep up with ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the gap will become too wide to breach. It’s knowing that listening to younger voices keeps you in touch with the world. It reminds you how much you still have to unlearn.

At 60, you know you’ve lived longer than the years left in the tank. So much still to do in the time when you can do it. That road trip. Dance classes. A marathon — well, maybe, an easy hike. Sinking the patriarchy.

Sixty is the beauty of watching your daughters, now adult women, find their voice. It is resisting the temptation to butt in with unsolicited advice (easier said) and fearing that they will stumble (as you did) and make mistakes (as you did) but emerge stronger for it.

Sixty can also be a time of regret. For wishing you had done things differently, been a different parent, a different woman. A woman who had said “no” more often; who had realised far earlier than I did that it was not my job to keep everyone happy.

And yet, this is also a time to be thankful for the privilege, for medical advances, for the way society is changing, though sadly not fast enough. My 60 is not my mother’s 60, or even her 50. And for this, my salaams to the women who launched their own mutinies to create the spaces for us.

My aunt, Krishna Chandra, a sprightly 100, tells me the amazing thing about her age is having the time to think of new ideas. The older she gets, the more compassionate and empathetic she feels, and, as the family matriarch, shares thoughtful messages of love and humanity — a counter to the divisive voices that have grown louder, she notes.

Every morning when she wakes up, she says, she remembers all the things to be grateful for. Family, health — and life itself.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender The views expressed are personal

HT’s editors offer a book recommendation every Saturday, which provides history, context, and helps understand recent news events

The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India by academic Ajantha Subramanian, who uses ethnography and research to reveal how caste privilege and bias have survived inside modern institutions. In using invisible markers around reservation, merit and background, the book shows how inequality is perpetuated and carried forward.

Caste of Merit – Engineering Education in India Year: 2019

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