Anand Prakash

Old one doesn’t respect present. Old live in past and they forever try to go back. They paint their face with a skin-glowing creams, bleach it to perfection, irradiate it to get the right tone, inject themselves with botulinum toxin injections, all in hope to be forever stuck in the young phase. They flaunt their assets (physical and monetary)which have lost the tone and tenacity. What can you expect when collagen in their muscles takes over in the muscle mass? How can they hide the creased skin of their hands, skin underneath that gold necklace, and skin right below the neck and little up from their silica implanted breast?

They have the money to change themselves completely but their doctor’s warning comes in between their wish and staying alive. They resist the temptation when their doctors inform: too much of toxin can paralyze your respiratory muscles. You don’t want to die of suffocation, do you? They trust their doctors. How can a young dead flaunt their assets? In their loneliness, sometimes they wonder why they suffer: why they didn’t die young.

Their struggle, if it’s with themselves then it’s not the worry, is with their daughters and someone else’s daughters. What hurts them when they look at someone intently and they hear, “Mom! He’s my boyfriend.”  They have to reply, “Honey! I’m sorry.” Every day they try to go back to the past, in search of nectar of youth and remaining forever unquenched. Bright, yet empty; flawless, yet yearning; unblemished, yet unloved: they have become a live tombstones in a dead cemetery.

              Young doesn’t respect present, either. Young ones are filled with indecision, over-thinking and guilt. Brimming with revenge-love, pity-love, and replacement-love, they are too preoccupied to even enjoy pleasurable sensations. They get hurt easily. To top that, they scratch those wounds which are about to heal: irritation of healing is too hard to handle for them. When you ask them: what are you doing? They take it to heart and reply. “How am I supposed to learn if I don’t make mistakes?”

              Someone must have told them that it’s no use wasting the youth on girls/boys, rather you should become something and viola they become psychopaths, sociopaths, sometimes with a seven-figure salary. But the loneliness that lurks in the shadows grows into a full-fledged infection by the time they become something as per social standards.

              “Buying company of someone” is a costly affair but at least it’s hassle free and unemotional. It won’t take long to find out that “buying” can’t cure their loneliness. Peace still eludes them like an elusive yet tasty candy. To these souls, old age approaches faster.