By S. Jayasankaran
King Tut was famous for being the only royal burial found intact in modern times.
That was the extent of his fame unless you included PG Wodehouse’s conclusion that two Tuts were better than none. It explains why “Tut-Tut” is not unlike “Tsk-Tsk” in being understood as polite disapproval.
I digress, however. The singular Tut tried to stop ageing and thought he could retard the process through mummification.
He couldn’t.
Even so, the idea has persisted. Even great minds like Rodney Dangerfield have asked their doctors the eternal question: “How do I stop ageing, Doc?”
In Mr Dangerfield’s case, he was handed a gun.
Perspectives change over time. My nephews generally regard us with pity, wondering how we endured the period B.I. How on earth did we keep busy in those pre-Internet days?
We did pretty nicely, thank you. The only thing was that life was lived slowly. Certainly, compared to the present day, it seems that life, when I was a teenager, was pretty much in slow-mo.
I was in Lower Six when we got a phone line to the house and finally got a phone.
That was in 1973 when everything was easier. Your boss couldn’t reach you as easily as they can now with mobile phones and email.
I remember writing real letters to my girlfriend and using the post, now disparaged as snail mail.
Entertainment was analogue, and the television had very few channels. I mean, Sensurround was an event.
The lack of diversion made many readers in my generation. I mean, libraries were actually used, not just for studying before exams. My friends and I actually borrowed books for entertainment.
Does this happen now? There seems to be no need for it with the Internet and the digital age – Google, social media, streaming services and e-books – making it all but redundant. Still, books appear irreplaceable.
Will some “dinosaur” trends return? Bell-bottom trousers, maybe, but smoking indoors is unlikely to ever make a comeback.
I dare say Dr Mahathir is also unlikely to make a comeback: most people his age are dead at present. But there had been advantages to his great age, he reflected. When he was young, for example, history wasn’t taught at school.
Now he is frequently called upon to dispense advice. Which he does, counselling young people to maintain only a small circle of friends.
The ex-doctor’s advice is grounded in sound law: three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim.
As old age becomes the norm, things begin to change. More and more, we listen to people who don’t talk much.
And, sadly, an affair of the heart in old age is generally a bypass.
Woody Allen put it starkly: “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that made you want to live to be a hundred.”
I think he’s right. If one gives up booze, bacon and sex, life goes by so slowly that it feels like one’s living longer.
Is there sex in old age? Listen to George Burns, 90: “At my age, sex is trying to shoot pool with a rope.”
But at the end of the day, there is this: Old age isn’t that bad when you consider the alternative.
The views expressed here are entirely those of the author
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