Kya aapko progeria hua?

Amitabh Bachchan is 67 years old. But in his latest, he is a 12-year-old trapped in an 80-year-old body. His Auro act left me behaving like a 12-year-old and excitedly texting him about being "awerostruck" by his performance. His prompt reply — though not the first time — had my age drop even further as I showed off his thank you text just the way Auro brags in the film to his friends about his political connections after getting a phone call from a member of parliament...

Auro's condition in the film is known as progeria, a rare disease whereby his body ages rapidly while he continues to remain a child at heart. The film says it's a rare disease. I don't think so. I see different forms of progeria all around us - people who look elderly but display the immaturity of small children.

Some of them we've even voted into the parliament, where they shout, scream, walk out and create the kind of pandemonium associated with school kids in a classroom during a free period or in the absence of a teacher. And those outside the parliament often make public statements that show a shocking lack of sensitivity or elegance and then display childlike stubbornness in refusing to see their fault or apologise for the same.

But it's not just in politics that we find progeria patients — it's rampant even in showbiz.  They are out there in the form of costly middle-aged actors, who've to be coaxed to come on the sets of their movies because they display the same kind of disinterest a kid shows in attending school and refusing to do homework on their roles.

Symptoms of progeria are also visible in some desperate contestants of television reality shows. And many Page 3 celebrities, whose behaviour at parties might tempt you to check their passport for proof of age. And there are those grown-ups whose progeria acts up in the anonymity of the cyber world where they get rude, crude and silly.

They say age is all in the mind and that you're only as old as you think. That's a nice attitude so long as you don't think you're 12 years old and embarrass someone who actually is!