La Vie en Rose (Life in Pink)

Time of India

05-05-2025

Rahul Phondke has been a prolific writer of humour columns since his childhood days which ended sometime last year. People are still wondering how this happened. He turned to writing humour at an early age in an effort to find some meaning to the angst of life, which he found almost immediately after his first two cans of beer. Based in Singapore, he is extremely sought after by the locals ...unfortunately most of whom happen to be the police. He is an active member on Facebook and can be easily reached...unless he happens to owe you money. LESS ... MORE
As one progresses through one's 50s, a few things start blurring away slowly from your life's rear-view mirror. e.g. The ability to read at length. Books, which you once stopped reading only to shift position if alerted of an imminent meteor strike, now tease your concentration after a few pages.
The ability to recall names. You often meet people. Perfectly normal people with whom you have gone out for drinks, met at networking sessions and suddenly you find yourself introducing them as,
'Hi Bob, this is ..(blank)….( desperate internal scratching but followed by an even denser blank)'
(Note: If you realise you don't recall the name midway through the introduction, just start coughing so that the subject completes the introduction himself.)
But the one thing you don't expect is the dreaded mail from HR with the subject just stating 'Meeting', where you and your manager are the only invitees. It feels like a wedding invitation from an ex-girlfriend who dumped you on Diwali.
Layoffs or pink slips, we believed, were reserved for the young — those sprightly twenty-somethings who posted pictures of their 'funemployment' coffee dates and backpacking trips and somehow stomached a layoff casually just like a heavy night with Johnny Walker. Surely, the company wouldn't dare sack a fifty-something veteran, whose experience was 'valued very much' by the company in the last appraisal.
In the meeting, you are shampooed, bathed and blow dried with euphemisms like 'being let go', 'transition', 'right sizing', 'outplacement' etc. You put on a brave face, saying, 'of course these things happen', because in your 50s, you are basically expected to be like the Buddha. Unfazed and unmoved by worldly events before you walk back home with the look of a Zombie who's just looked right into the centre of a solar eclipse
The shock and the aww
The news of the layoff usually hits you in two stages. After the initial shock, the second stage, as the news starts going under your skin, it dawns on you — you have nowhere to go today. No office. No traffic jam .. No gossip… no work lunches …all of that replaced by a gnawing uncertainty which last troubled you when you saw 2 blue ticks on your WhatsApp apology sent to your fiancée but which elicited no response. You feel like the world owes you an 'Aww ..you poor thing,' but the world's not talking.
After a brief panic thaw, you dust off your CV. Surely, employers will leap at your thirty years of experience, right? They will value your premier business school background, right? Also, your Mensa membership? The venture which you launched and sold? Your great network? Your multilingual fluency?
Here is where we observe a 2-minute silence to naiveté. Employers do not hire at your age for intellect or integrity or intent. They hire only for 'relevant' experience. But at the same time, the experience you have was exactly what was relevant ten years back.
Now, they want 'dynamic self-starters.' 'Agile innovators.' People 'comfortable with TikTok' and 'not afraid to pivot on a dime.' You, on the other hand, need a cane and a calendar to pivot even mildly. But like an abused spouse, despite the cruelty, you continue to look for solace in LinkedIn. A place where everyone's 'thrilled' or 'humbled' but nobody is actually hiring. You update your profile. You attend webinars titled 'Reinventing yourself at 50+' where cheerful speakers (aged roughly 32 and with all essential tools like a tattoo and a ponytail) urge you to 'find your passion' as though it was a misplaced sock.
You dive into updating your 'personal brand.' You write a humblebrag post about 'new beginnings' that carefully avoids mentioning the word 'laid off.'
Within minutes, your inbox is flooded by two types of messages:
Recruiters offering you jobs that pay half your last salary.
Motivational quotes from people you haven't spoken to since 1998:
'Every end is a new beginning'
trending currently.
You entertain increasingly implausible career options. Life coach? Professional 'silver influencer'? Mentor?
Small consolations
Strangely, amidst the turbulence, you begin to find small mercies.
You notice the neighbourhood, the coffee shop with the singlet-clad uncle who despite his granite scowl, makes a great Kopi-C. You find that 'Zooby', your dog's girlfriend, finds your shins acceptable as a food group. You slowly and unknowingly find yourself — by accident experiencing everyday miracles you never had the time to witness before. You start your humour writing, the one thing that kept your heart warm and find that it still does.
You reconnect with friends, many of whom are quietly sailing the same stormy sea. You might meet strangers as well, who too are silently fighting their unemployment demons within, while stoically saying, 'Oh, I just decided to take a break'.
And somewhere deep inside you realise life has given you, quite unwillingly, a sabbatical and it's best that you take it in rather than keep it out.
Reinventing. Or maybe not.
Everyone insists you must 'reinvent' yourself. And perhaps you will. Maybe you'll finally take that course in AI. Maybe you'll consult for younger companies. Or maybe you'll find — horror of horrors — that you're happier not being chained to a device 24 x 7 under the mirage of career growth. Because for the simple reason, for your career to grow, you need to grow and for you to grow, you need to be happy.
Or maybe you won't reinvent anything. Maybe you can't become an AI or an AGILE Yoda after doing a 2-week retraining course. Maybe you'll just be. And that's okay too. Because reinvention isn't merely in your skills, it's also in your approach and attitude. You meet others who also wear reading glasses, also cannot explain what NFTs are, and also nurse a quiet rage at having been replaced by 26-year-olds whose vocabulary is limited to emojis.
Being laid off at 50 feels like being kicked out of a party you helped organise. It stings, but best to accept it than fight it, for life was meant to be lived not just for career growth but in search of beauty, truth, joy etc, all of which are still possible. It will do well to remember Edith Piaf, Paris's little sparrow's moving rendition of 'La Vie en Rose', a lasting torch for the beauty of life. The music at the party may have stopped, but that is no reason for you to stop singing.
Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author's own.