Member-only story
Who Do You Call As Elderly?
I have no idea.
I must admit, I am a bit puzzled. I have been asked by a magazine to pen a story for the elderly. While that is fine, I am unable to define the word — ELDERLY.
Who do you call as an elder or older person? Someone who has crossed 60? Or 70? Or 50 or 40? There is a big generation gap every 10 years. My son, who is just reaching 25, thinks I am a fossil at 65. He even asked me, in all seriousness, when he was younger — “Dad, in your time, were there dinosaurs around?” He could not imagine a world devoid of television sets, mobile phones, computers and even ball point pens.
The world is advancing faster and faster day by day. Today’s I-Phone is consigned to the museum tomorrow. Laptops I bought a few years ago are almost obsolete now. We are on a treadmill of development — running faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
So that brings me back to the definition of elderly. If I knew which age group falls in the bracket of “Elderly” then I could focus on writing appropriate stories for them. However, to write for readers from the ages of 40+ till 90, or maybe even 100 or more, is a very tall ask. How in God’s name am I going to write something that will satisfy all these different generations?
