Sixty is the New 35

There are product ranges to suit every pocket. No part of the ageing universe is neglected; no woman is meant to remain content with how she looks

- Sathya Saran

IN her newly-acquired status as great-grandmother, my mother decides to let her hair show its true grey. Until now, my mother has refused to grow old. At 85, when she arrives at this momentous decision, her hair is coloured jet black, a practice she had started in her twenties on discerning the first silver whispers of premature greying. Her secret weapon came packaged in a flimsy paper box the size of a packet of cigarettes, branded as 'Moon and Star hair dye,' and succeeding generations found space in her bathroom closet till the advent of a more glamorous-looking foreign brand sent the moon and its star beyond the horizon.

Like many women of her time, my mother's face is almost unlined through eight decades, and though she has stopped using lipstick, the only makeup she has ever used, she continues colouring her hair more out of habit rather than vanity; even inculcating my father into the ceremony, when a frozen shoulder prevented her from doing it herself. It gives her the dubious privilege of being the only one, among all her many siblings and relatives, who is not sporting a halo of grey.

The grey that has now settled on her 86-year-old head ages her in our eyes. And in her own, too, when she looks into the mirror; for her entire demeanour seems older by years in just a few months.

Perhaps that is why women fight the signs of ageing that time and gravity relentlessly draw on their faces and bodies. They want to be perceived as still being able enough to stay in the thick of things. And perception starts with that first look in the mirror every morning.

The perspective has changed. Earlier, women tried keeping signs of ageing at bay because looking progressively older reminded them of the ticking clock of their mortality. Today, they try to look young for a host of other reasons.