Short Story: Nicht So Bald (Not so Fast) by R Srinivasan

R. Srinivasan shares a fun take on how we perceive the small changes that come along in life with age.

Death is an eventuality that we are all prepared for. But nothing prepares you for the age-bomb. For those who believe that Age is just a number let’s get numerical, shall we? An age-bomb explosion is the precise moment when you realise that you are well past your prime. Mathematically speaking if peak performance was plotted against time, with performance as the abscissa and time (as always) as the ordinate, the age-bomb moment happens when the tangent to the performance curve becomes parallel to the timeline, thereby implying a maxima. It’s all downhill after that and I shall indulge your maths brains one more time by pointing out that there exists only one other moment when this tangent exhibits a similar behaviour and that’s when you become parallel to the ground itself, implying an absolute minima. It’s debatable when the age-bomb moment happens or if at all it happens as there are no universal rules to that effect since the underlying curve itself is a personal one. Mine happened last week and I shall let you know how.