Forty-six does not arrive with ceremony. It slips in quietly, like a meeting that could have been an email. But let me be honest: on the day itself, there was nothing quiet about it.
This piece is being written two days later in Goa, with the kind of mature reflection that only distance and lager can provide. On that day, however, it did not feel like a reflection. It felt very much like a spiral.
Burnt poha and the downward spiral
It began with burnt poha. Not mildly overdone, not heroically crisp. Burnt. The sort that announces itself before you enter the room. Our helpers, who have a particular instinct for making special days unforgettable, had delivered breakfast as provocation. I saw it, paused, and then reacted with the kind of disproportion that suggests all philosophical growth is conditional.
At forty-six, one does not transcend irritation; one merely narrates it better, later.
If the poha opened proceedings, the air fryer ensured escalation. I had bought it for myself—a small, controlled indulgence—and had issued one simple instruction: do not unbox it until I know what to do with it. There is a certain dignity in unboxing one’s own gift.
Naturally, it had been unboxed. Installed. Displayed. Non-operational. The instructions and catalogue were missing.
In that moment, I experienced what can only be described as being air-fried. There is something about losing control over the one object you had intended to control that sharpens the morning considerably.
By 10 am, the narrative was complete. This was not an isolated incident. This was the beginning of a pattern. The day, clearly, had plans—and none of them involved me. In hindsight, this is fiction. On the day, it felt like data.
At the office, there were two cakes. I asked why.
“You’ll see,” I was told, with the serenity of people who already knew how this would end.
I cut them with appropriate solemnity. There were smiles, photographs, and the faint sense that the system would, as always, behave like a system.
A noticeable number of people on the news floor did not receive cake. How this happens remains one of modern management’s more enduring mysteries.
Then came the candles. Trick candles. The entrepreneurial sort: extinguish them, and they return—optimistic, persistent, mildly annoying.
I engaged with them energetically. I huffed and I puffed. They outlasted me. At some point, one recognises that not every flame requires victory.
At home, the cake was a cheesecake. A Biscoff cheesecake. One does not wish to resist progress, but questions do arise. At what point did dessert become a thesis? And why is a biscuit now a personality? I ate it with quiet confusion.
I do not like late dinners. And yet, dinner was late.
My brother had flown in from the United States a week ago and, in an act of admirable defiance, arrived by 9:30 pm, having bullied either jet lag into submission or recovered from his India travels. (I don’t know which, but by his own admission, he had dozed off.)
My in-laws joined from two floors down. They moved in a couple of years ago, and the geography has changed in ways that maps do not quite capture. Lucknow once felt more than the 600 kilometres it was—perhaps for them, perhaps for me. Over time, something quieter has done its work: acceptance, indulgence, and that slow negotiation of habits. Now, two floors down is not proximity. It is continuity.
They have, in that sense, become part of the firmament. We do not speak excessively, which may well be the secret to long-term stability.
My mother-in-law, with her ritualistic precision, sent me money. UPI has made this elegantly efficient. It has also introduced a secondary emotion: gratitude, immediately followed by a faint administrative dread about how one explains this to one’s accountant.
Kebabs and the return of sanity
And then, almost reluctantly, the day corrected itself.
The same air fryer that had caused existential distress in the morning produced kebabs in the evening with quiet competence—this is, I should clarify, a completely unpaid endorsement—no drama or resistance, just function. It is remarkable how often equilibrium is restored not by insight but by appliances behaving as advertised.
But two days later, in Goa, with lager performing its modest but reliable service, the day rearranges itself. The irritations shrink, the absurdities acquire humour, and the narrative softens.
Forty-six, it appears, is not experienced in real time. It is understood in retrospect.
Somewhere between burnt poha and well-cooked kebabs, between indignation and amusement, the day becomes what it was always going to be — not a landmark, just interesting. And with the benefit of hindsight, that feels like a rather good outcome.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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