Mid-life crisis is a term that some of you might already understand.. and for those who don’t, I am an example in front of you. You know, ever since I was born, I was destined to get old. So, mid-life itself wasn’t a surprise. But I didn’t know there will be crisis written all over it!

For a long time, I happily lived in my 20s.. Even when I crossed over into the 30s, I was still doing okay, thinking I am still in my 20s.. Until I moved into the later half of the 30s, and now things really appeared to be moving in a direction that I did not want to go! This is like that feeling of standing on a beach.. Pretty soon the ocean starts pulling you in, along with the sand under your feet! Now with all your might, you are trying to hold your ground. It’s the same feeling..

Scientifically speaking, I don’t really think there is such a thing, disease, or medical condition as Mid-Life Crisis.. But there are some symptoms that you are bound to notice..

It hit me one day when someone took a picture of me in full daylight with my head tilted forward.. don’t remember who it was, otherwise I would’ve strangled him!! And there it was.. a barren spot on my head happily reflecting the sunlight! It was a cruel revelation! I hurried home and stared at myself in the mirror and to my horror, there was another shock.. not all hair on my head had the same color anymore! Some of them had started acquiring the much dreaded gray! From then on, it became a ritual for me – a ritual of uprooting these gray infidels who were happily disclosing my age without my permission!

I started thinking differently.. I thought cutting my hair short, made me look younger. On one hand, I was losing hair by the dozens, I was trying to hold onto every single one in the shower, pleading, begging in front of every falling hair, to not let go of me.. and on the other hand, I was pulling some out because they were ‘misfits’! Hardly helped the situation really..! But you gotta do what you gotta do..!

Then there were the TV commercials for hair restoration.. this is your head before, and this is your head after – after applying this hair growing cream, that is! For them, if it did not work, it was just a matter of refunding the money… but for me, it was a heartbreak! I simply did not have the time for trial and ERROR!

I started visiting all the stores that most of the teenage crowd buys clothes from – American Eagle, Hollister, Abercombie, Forever 21.. hoping to find something there that will rekindle that sense of being young! Whenever I bought something from there, I felt happy..! When I was roaming through the stores looking at all the young crowd, I started thinking about all the stories of young girls falling in love with married old men, and actually started believing them!! It was like my secret wish! Because I was realizing now that none of the girls were looking AT me anymore! They had started looking THROUGH me as if looking in thin air…! At home, my wife was now less suspicious of me! I don’t know if I should feel happy about it – because it wasn’t because I was getting more loyal or she was getting more lenient towards me.. But because she did not think of me as a risk anymore, that anybody would be willing to take anyway!!

I didn’t want to give up.. so I decided to fight back.. I started going to the gym, trying to stay in shape.. started playing Tennis. All the young kids who were waiting outside the tennis court, for me to get out of there, were probably thinking  – “What in the world is this uncle doing here.. why doesn’t he go buy some groceries, instead of occupying this court..?!”.. I just ignored them..

But in all this, I still couldn’t avoid one thing.. my birthdays! They kept coming year after year.. once they were celebrations, now they were a menace.. I really wish my birthday was on 29th February. If you do the calculations, I would still be in school by now! Being the only married kid! But it was not so. So I started lying, stealing a year here and there when asked about my age, or simply tried to avoid the question or just became ambiguous about it. I even removed the year from my Facebook profile..!

And I continued to fight… fight, with all my liar’s might, to stay below 40… because the crisis, had really and finally crept into my mid-life…!