One day they’ll turn you into a cow

The 44yearold stoner from Atlanta told me that he followed fire and hoped to retire soon He was a digital nomad passing through Bangkok and believed that he might be a Renaissance man with unsuspected skills Mainly he told me he was into cryptoI asked him the question on my mind ldquoWhat did you mean you follow firerdquoldquoYou donrsquot knowrdquo he said ldquoFinancial Independence Retire Early is FIRE Life is all about FIRE Everybody knows about FIRErdquoldquoSo itrsquos about getting rich and retiringrdquoldquoItrsquos what everybody wants duderdquo he saidHuman life today can be divided into two phases yoursquore either retired or yoursquore heading toward retirement It is simply assumed that after a certain age just around 60 you turn into an old cow and should be released to spend your remaining days in the pasture chewing the cudLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsRetirement implies that yoursquove stopped doing something yoursquove done for a long timemdashin this case a job of work It hints that you never really liked doing it anyway It suggests that the real reason you did it all your life was to find a way to stop doing it as soon as possible You swatted flies all day so that one day yoursquod not have to swat any fliesNearly all my coevals from school and college are now joyously retired Some have won lifetime achievement awards with its depressing connotation that their lifetimes are over I who still offer seats to senior citizens listen to them carefullyldquoNow I can do what I really want to dordquo says one On probing that turns out to be eating a lot playing golf and sleeping earlyldquoNow I finally have time for myselfrdquo says another What does he do with that time He reorganises sepiacoloured family photographs and harasses his married sons and daughters with long weekly Zoom calls In between he goes to his cottage in the hills and breathesldquoAt last I have time for my familyrdquo says a third not mentioning that the only family he has now is his ailing wife His children are citizens of other countries and have nonIndian wives and chestnuthaired childrenldquoI can sleep all dayrdquo says one more He does sleep all day the sleep of the deadRetirement it turns out is neither new nor original In 13 BCE the Roman emperor Augustus offered Roman legionnaires a retirement package of about 13 times their annual salary mainly as an incentive to stay loyal and avoid assassinating him But some studies early in the 20th century indicated that peoplersquos mental capacities start declining after 60 and they become less productive thanks to arthritis debility and general wear and tearWilliam Ostler who taught medicine at Johns Hopkins proposed in 1905 that all people should retire at 60 because by then they had lost their mental elasticity A century later we still think of those over 60 as people who should be ldquolet gordquo because their productive days are over Theyrsquore over the hillWhat I wondered was Indiarsquos retirement age in the years after Independence when a male could not expect to live beyond age 37 and a female a year earlier Shouldnrsquot the retirement age evolve as the life expectancy changes In 2024 an Indian life span was 7062 years and thatrsquos an average But the deaths I have counted in the last decade have mostly been people in their 80sIf such a person is retired at 60 would they spend their remaining 1520 years doingmdashnothingTherersquos no denying that ageing is a thing Like cars we too run down and eventually must be sent to the junkyard We must make room for young blood to take over But none of this makes a case for retirement based on age or even mandating retirement for an entire demographic in a world where people can work from home learn new skills continuously online and be productive in unimaginable ways long after age 60 Clint Eastwood is 94 and is still making waves with his latest movie Juror 2The most gamechanging reason for taking a second look at retirement is the growing body of research that shows a direct link between retirement and dementia However cognitive decline is no longer a viable rationale for retirement It turns out to be a possible consequence of retirementA 2016 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggests that retiring early may increase your risk of dying early Even retirees with health problems lived longer when they postponed retirement A French study linked later retirement to a reduced risk of Alzheimerrsquos disease and other forms of dementiaThe young American I met the one with FIRE in his blood might become a billionaire and retire by 50 but science has bad news for him Those who retire early are also more likely to die early because they stopped working their bodies and mindsIf you donrsquot use it you will surely lose itYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper