We are practically infants on the planet, right? But, because we are in the Meghalayan Age, and I was in Meghalaya, the voice on the phone decided I was about as ancient as the planet.
It was nothing but polite. “The cave is extremely wet and slippery, and you might have to crawl. You did mention you were—“
“Sixty plus. Yes.”
“How plus?”
Nonplussed would have been the truth, but I let it go.
I was in Cherrapunji in conversation with a spelunker who might have permitted me into a cave on the southern edge of the Meghalaya Plateau—were I but 20 years younger.
Twenty years ago, I could have crawled on my stomach like an infant, but now my spine was battle-scarred. The conversation ended with me assuring him grimly that I would return.
A pandemic intervened, and five years later, my knees rebel at the very mention of that cave.
“Nothing wrong in here,” snap my knees. “Don’t you—er—have enough to do upright?’” Inarguably, yes.
My knees aren’t the only ones on the picket line. Honestly, these conversations are beginning to spook me. Invisible bits call me out in way my parents never did. I feel an entire Invisible Me lurks within my skin. The mirror doesn’t acknowledge Invisible Me, not to me, it doesn’t. But others notice it all the time.
“OMG! This can’t be you!” cried a friend I hadn’t seen in 30 years. “No, not you! What happened?”
Life happened.
Not, apparently, to her.
“You don’t look a day older,’” I lied.
It is sinking in now. I am ageing. I am beginning what is uncharitably defined, no doubt by a bright white male pushing 40, as “the physiological slide towards death.’”
Really? And I thought life was a physiological slide towards death. Ageing begins at birth. The morning’s at seven, God’s in his heaven—dying, who, me?
Nonetheless, asserts Invisible Me, it is happening, get used to it. I confront the mirror and let my pet poet rant:
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off these most mournful messengers,
still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none—
Sure, Mr Hopkins, but who gives a damn?
“Forget the mirror: all it shows is skin. What about the trillion cells that make up Invisible Me? What about the anarchy in here?”
Frankly, I’ve never felt so peaceful, but every bit of anarchy is balm for the soul, so I sat up and took notice. They were clamouring to be heard, all trillion of them. That was a surprise. I never realised Invisible Me was a democracy. I was raised to believe the brain barked out orders, and the rest slavishly obeyed.
But when the brain makes common cause with a toenail, it is war.
A young woman posing with an ageing woman. What looks like wrinkles in the mirror is, at another scale, DNA damage and telomere attrition. (Image for representative purposes)
| Photo Credit:
Unsplash
“Not yet,” the spokesman—sorry, spokecell—said. “It needn’t be war, not if you listen. We just need you to understand we are all twelvers.”
“Twelvers?”
“Just a catch-all term for the twelve hallmarks you prefer to ignore. We’ve all got them.”
And they chanted a breathless mantra in that lowest form of gobbledegook, scientific jargon: DNAinstabilitytelomereattrition epigeneticalterationslossofproteostasisderegulatednutrient-sensing mitochondrialdysfunctioncellularsenescencestemcellexhaustion alteredintercellularcommunication.
I had no clue what that meant.
The brain elbowed in, mansplaining as usual. “Try to understand just one thing.”
I could have throttled it if it hadn’t been such a snug fit in my skull.
“Try to understand just one thing. It is happening everywhere. Even to Me.”
That capital M brought on a beat of silence.
Humbled, I asked, “What does it mean?”
They explained patiently, and I began to visualise the mess. Each cell looked exactly like my living room on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
DNA as furniture
The nucleus first, the sofa. The sofa is sagging, upholstery cracked, stuffing showing. What’s that supposed to mean? It is an heirloom! Can’t argue with genes, surely? Circumstances. Wear and tear. Epigenetics supersedes diktat.
Those indented and frayed cushions that sustain my head while napping, thinking, daydreaming? They are damaged chromosomes with DNA errors, not coffee stains. Can’t I plump them up again? Launder them with a good detergent, perhaps? DNA repair?
Maybe. But those aren’t frayed tassels I can snip off. They are telomeres worn thin, ticking away the seconds left to me.
The bolster has rolled off the couch; I could use that. Mitochondrial DNA, no mutations there. No? It is lumpy already with mutations.
The drift of Sunday papers pooling on the floor, and the pile on the chair folded inside out—what? Misfolded. Misfolded proteins. My favourite T-shirt tells the world Irony is the opposite of wrinkly. See if I care.
Ironic, that, they snigger. Misfolded protein is misread. As what? As toxins, they explain.
Yuck.
Oh, it’s not all bad news.
So, I can pick them off the floor and fold them as neatly as before?
Something like that. Maybe. Still, do try.
Encouraged, I decide to treat myself to a chocolate.
A trillion coughs at the fridge door. “A piece of chocolate, not a chocolate,” the brain begs. “Please. It is only grammar, really, but the nutrient axis tends to wobble a bit. Two squares? One?”
Enough. I confront a trillion messy living rooms and slump in defeat. That’s a helluva cleaning job for a lazy weekend.
“Am I going to die?” I wail.
That’s a big hit. Gets me a trillion laughs.
“Eventually,” says Invisible Me, “yes.”
“But—“
“Oh, we clean up good,” a trillion voices giggle. “But it is a lovely life, and today is Sunday.”
And we exchange a laugh in the mirror, I, and Invisible Me.
Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed are surgeons who write together as Kalpish Ratna. Their book Bahadur was published in 2023.
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