18th May 2026
Dear precious angel,
Do I look like a 70-year-old man? This is a question I never imagined would be asked of me—not at this age, not while I am still wandering through my late twenties. What does a 70-year-old man look like? Anyone with eyes and a little wisdom can tell. Not just from the face, but from the way words leave his mouth, from the weight of his silences. Surely, a person of sound mind—untouched by strange misfortunes—would never mistake a man in his twenties for someone who has lived seven decades. Imagine it. A young man, barely in his 20s, being believed seventy. It does not merely sound strange. It sounds like the beginning of a joke. Or the end of someone’s sanity. There must be something wrong with the one who sees such things. And yet, in ordinary life, hardly anyone makes such a mistake. The evidence is too clear. But then comes social media. Then comes AI. Now, anything is possible. A seventy-year-old can be made to look twenty-five. Faces lie. Ages blur. Reality becomes a suggestion. In such a world, even the most absurd doubt finds a place to rest.
In our restaurant, when I cough badly in front of someone, I often smile and say, “I have grown so old. I am nothing but a guest here for a few more years—I turned seventy, you see.” Do they believe me? No. Believing such a thing is impossible. They laugh instead. They see the truth with their own eyes. But doubt is a strange creature. Once it blinds a person, anything becomes believable. A man coughing in his twenties can become a man shuffling toward his grave.
Most recently, this happened to me. I do not wish to relive that incident, my angel. But I will tell you this much: I told someone I was 70 years old. Not out of deceit. Out of an attempt to make that person laugh. Because just moments before, we had exchanged sharp words. The air was hot. I wanted to cool it with a clumsy joke. But the joke was not received as a joke. The previous argument had already poisoned the well. And so, my absurd statement was taken seriously. The person believed me. He—or she—was shocked to discover that I was not in my early twenties but which I actually was. I was equally shocked to discover that anyone could believe such a thing. Why? I do not know. Perhaps it was AI. Perhaps it was lingering anger from the argument. Perhaps it was the human need to turn a small thing into a mountain. But my attempt to bring laughter became the seed of a mess I never expected. Life, my precious angel, has a cruel and beautiful habit: it always shows us what we least expect.
Your gem, Vivek Prasad
