Turning 40

I have never been big on marking birthdays, but this is a big one. So, I went back to previous posts about birthdays and it turns out that there are just two—for Nos 35 and 36. I turned 35 during the first year of Covid, and my post was mostly about how that year had been nothing like what I had thought or hoped for. I was surprisingly compassionate to myself, marvelling at how well I had coped with the pandemic and the various tribulations it had brought. It also expressed relief at having something to say when people would ask how I was celebrating. I am happy to report that having nothing to say to that question is no more a cause of embarrassment. Maybe its because I am older, maybe the pandemic has made social introversion more acceptable. But, a friend of mine who turned 40 last year told me to mark the occasion, else I might regret it. I bought a car a few months ago, and wrote about how it felt like something I needed to do before I turned 40.

Turning 40 is a time to reflect not just on the previous year but on the previous decade. My 30s were stormier than my 20s, which included the two best years of my life—journalism school in Chenna and the masters in Holland. It was also the decade that I discovered journalism, worked as a journalist for more than half a decade and eventually tired of it. My 30s were off to a turbulent start, being stricken with dengue in my 31^st year and the sleeping demons that it roused in me. But, I managed to life myself out of that morass and put my life back on track, which is, and may always be, my biggest achievement. And, then pandemic struck bang in the middle of my 30s. It make years to understand and reckon with the impact of the pandemic, even though neither I or my lived ones suffered grave misfortune. And, any scorecard must consider the fact that the world has become a far angrier place over the last decade or so. And, surviving in it and trying to thrive in it is no mean feat. And, while my 30s had some turbulent times, they were also a period of tremendous self-growth and accumulation of self-knowledge.

Planning for futures

The other day, I came cross a tweet that said "People are still planning for futures that are connected to a world that doesn't exist anymore". My first reaction was "My feelings exactly!" and my next reaction was "What are they supposed to do instead?". The Gramsci quote about the monster-filled interregnum between the dying old world and not-yet-born new world rings true, but until the new world is born one can only plan keeping the old world in mind. It is easy to slip into despair at the state of the world, and it is also easy to romanticize despair. One can continually come up more creative ways to express despair and feel very smart for doing it. I know because I have done quite a bit of it in the past. My favourite line, that I would trot out to anyone who would listen was “I am smart enough to realise that most social science research is bull-shit, but not smart enough to make original contributions. It has features in my blog here and here in the past. I felt smart saying it, and I felt that it conveyed humility, wit and self-awareness. On this blog, I have talked about it here and here. Now, I think it is time to retire that line. It serves no purpose now, if it ever did in the past. It is also a cop-out because it justifies inaction. If the world is uncertain, if you are not too smart or too dumb, maybe the best thing is to do nothing? I don’t mean to sound self-righteous. Expressing despair can be cathartic and sometimes one needs to take a brake from action. But those should be explicitly stated choices