Budiya vs Gudiya

Young is a relative term. Modi thinks the Congress, at 125, is a budiya (an old woman). Priyanka thinks Modi, at 59, is old. It's possible you'll find college students who think Priyanka, at 37, is not young enough to understand their angst: she just might get angry if they told her what they'd been up to.

This old-versus-young debate is eternally old and eternally young, so don't expect politicians, born naturals at flinging mud, to come up with anything strikingly insightful when they discuss it. Thanks to India's demographics, where 60 to 70 per cent are now under 40, this debate has become an interesting highlight of the election drama. We used to hear of caste vote banks; since this time young voters will have a say in who will run the Delhi durbar, youth has become a vote bank.

Parties have decided it makes sense to say things that please the young. And they are saying incredibly daft things. Kumaraswamy (50), who lives by every word his 82-year-old dad utters, described fellow partymen defecting to the BJP as old bullocks walking to the slaughterhouse. He piped down after Deve Gowda reminded him that he was himself the son of a grand old man!

The Congress has always been led by experienced leaders (old faithfuls of the Nehru family, if you are cynical). Its prime ministerial nominee, Manmohan Singh, is 77, not exactly a dude age. And Sonia Gandhi, at 63, is no gudiya either. The BJP, whose item number continues to be 81-year-old L K Advani, is promoting a retirement-age Modi as its "young face"!

But then there are young old people and old young people. Looking at their energy, who would ever think an Advani or a Deve Gowda was less capable of running the country than that bleary-eyed 25-year-old call centre exec and neighbour you last bumped into a year ago?

So let's put all this confusion aside, and look at Raymond Kurzweil, famous for inventing a musical keyboard that sounds as true and expressive as the live instruments it approximates. In recent years, he has made a bigger name as a futurist who believes aging can be stopped.

At 35, when Kurweil was diagnosed with diabetes, he did independent research and arrived at a diet that he says has cured him of the condition. He is now 61, and convinced that science will find a way to make him immortal. He bases his optimism on the exponential progress he has been tracking in biotechnology and nanotechnology. If he's going to live for ever, what would you call Kurzweil at 61: young or old?

To come back to where we began, and to our mortal worldu2026 If you could see beyond the physical damage that old age inflicts on us, you would realise that quite a bit of this age problem is in the mind. You could have young airheads and old airheads, child prodigies and geriatric prodigies. You could have a forward-looking Manmohan at 77, and a disgusting Sri Rama Sene lout at 22.