It was his birthday. I called him up with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement to extend my wishes. But upon my wishing a long life full of love, happiness and success, the way I do most of the time, he replied in a disappointed voice, “What use is a long life, living till 80 years, when my eyesight would have fallen, joints gone weak, maybe no teeth? It’s better to live a short but healthy life.” And he was saying all this on the day when he had reached 42 years of age! In short, he poured buckets of cold water on all the warmth I was trying to convey. I wanted to ask his rationale behind associating old age with fragility, weakness, and maybe multiple illnesses. Why couldn’t old age remind him of the long experience which he would have acquired, several people he would have come across, several bitter and sweet memories, several events which he would have witnessed in his life and which will certainly go down in history books one day? I wanted to ask these and several other similar questions. But it was his birthday and I did not want to upset him, irrespective of the fact that he himself did not find any charm in that.