CITY NOTES
I don’t think the USA should worry too much about Joe Biden’s age. After all, if the Democrats were to change horses in midstream, they would lose. And lose to Donald Trump, who would get the youth vote. When you’re 82, as Biden is, whether or not you’ve got clinical dementia, you’re out of touch. If Biden was to imagine that the Cold War is still on, Putin would probably agree. Putin is subject to dementia, as he’s 71, and it could be setting in.
There’s something new to watch out for now. Monarchs didn’t seem to have that problem, because they usually never lived to great ages, either dying in battle (some military disaster or the other), or of a heart attack brought on by too rich a diet. As they don’t have a personal trainer, they usually keeled over from a heart attack.
Another favourite was an apoplectic stroke. Henry VIII of England, whose waist had reached 54 inches, is most famous for his many marriages, but when he died, his body was covered with boils (diabetes?), and he also had gout. Then there was Edward VII, who died at 69 after suffering both several heart attacks and bronchitis, after smoking 20 cigarettes and 12 cigars a day.
So monarchs tended not to live to ages where you would suffer from dementia. Gulliver’s Travels has an account of struldbruggs, who are immortal, but keep ageing. Amid suffering all the woes of old age. The oldest struldbruggs are more or less mental vegetables. Senile dementia does not afflict the young. Even if it did, how far back could it go? Imagine a teenager who thinks himself back in childhood. Now imagine Biden imagining himself as a vigorous young adult. It would probably make him think the Iranian hostage crisis is still on.
The newly elected Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, is 69, the oldest person to be elected Iranian President. Now if Biden tries to persuade him to let the hostages go, he might well make an effort. Let’s hope he won’t try to operate on anybody, because one of the manifestations of Parkinsonism is a tremor in the hands. I don’t know of any ordinary surgeons with Parkinsonism, let alone cardiac ones.
We in Pakistan don’t really have that problem. I know Imran, who’s back after getting back reserved seats and overturning of his sentence in the Iddat case, is 71, but he still gets the youth vote. And anyway, who voted for him for his brains?
One person who has been really remiss in this regard has been Mohsin Naqvi, who has four hats at present. PCB Chairman, Interior Minister, PML(N) Senator, and media mogul. With his PCB hat, he invited a number of former Test cricketers recently for a general chat. It seems that all the players basically trashed Babar Azam as captain.
Naqvi should have been big enough to go to Adiala Jail, so that he could have talked with Imran Khan and gotten his ideas. Imran might have tried to give him his ideas on how to run his ministry.
Of course, Imran is also facing the ageing problem, which by the way is not dementia, but irrelevance. In his playing days, there wouldn’t have been the quarrel which presently has Pakistan cricket all agog. I mean the quarrel of Shaheen Afridi with Muhammad Yusuf, the batting coach. I wish I knew the details. Does Shaheen insist on lofting the ball where Yusuf wants it played down? Or does Shaheen want to open, and Yousuf leads the opposition to this idea?
There’s something going on in the national team’s coaching. The new national coach, the great Aussie pacer, Jason Gillespie, announced that there would be no compromise on fitness. That sounds like a declaration of war, or at least a well-planned conspiracy, against Azam Khan, Pakistan’s answer to Anant Ambani.
Speaking of cricket, I wonder if the West Indian tourists are going to break the record of the 1933 West Indians, who lost two of the three three-day Tests by innings. They’ve already lost the First Test by zan innings, just vinside three days. How have the mighty fallen! Azam Khan should learn from their example, that fitness never lasts for ever.
