Don't Call me Elderly!

 

Ever heard someone casually toss out “the elderly” in a convo? Yeah… cringe. Words aren’t neutral— they bruise, flatter, exclude, and empower. They’re tiny cultural bombs disguised as everyday speech. They decide who belongs, who matters, and who gets boxed into stereotypes. Case in point: “elder,” “elderly.” Sounds neutral? Spoiler: it’s not. These terms carry centuries of ageist baggage, turning vibrant lives into caricatures. The question is, are we ready to call out our own vocab slip-ups and rewrite the script?

If we do not rework our word choices, we will never be able to come out of our mindset that is reeked in misogyny and ageism. The Calcutta Times did not conduct sufficient research before publishing this piece. While I appreciate that they want to highlight how in recent times, Bangla cinema has undergone a massive change (I bet this existed in bits and pieces since Ray’s times, think about Indir Thakrun from Panther Panchali, 1955), they need to understand that word choices such as “elderly” are deeply ageist and embedded in disability, senescence, and death. Several scholarships in linguistics and embodied age/aging have highlighted this issue. CT really needs to keep up and can’t be so nonchalant.