B y most standards, Prof Velandai Srikanth is at the peak of his career. He is the director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing; his decades of highly regarded research has led to work being published in leading scientific journals; and he has been awarded funding from some of the world’s biggest scientific funding bodies.

He has also turned 60, and says that as soon as he did, “Somebody said: ‘So when are you going to retire?’” The comment shocked him – he realised this was the stigma of ageing , and it was coming for him.

As a geriatrician, Srikanth sees the full spectrum of attitudes towards ageing; from those who gloomily view it as an inevitable trajectory of decline and decrepitude, to those who see the joys and opportunities and approach the so-called “third age” with excitement.

According to a US study , those attitudes can meaningfully change someone’s ageing trajectory.…