Adult role: India’s Millennial midlife crisis is here. Can you spot the signs?
As Indian Millennials hit midlife, there are no Ferraris or torrid affairs. Just breaks, soft resets, and memes to make sense of it all
First, let’s get the numbers out of the way. Indians are living longer, 72 years on average. So, midlife, the halfway point between cradle and crematorium, should technically hit at 36. A midlife crisis, on the other hand, doesn’t quite arrive with such mathematical precision. That point at which we look back, take stock and give ourselves a one-star rating – it can creep up as early as 35 and as late as 50, or not at all.
Hollywood has a pretty defined idea of what this looks like. The American midlife crisis roars in with a sports car, a divorce, a relationship with a younger woman (Only White men seem to be affected). “Remember that scene in Friends? Ross is driving a red Porsche, and an older dude in the same car drives by and says, ‘How cool are we!’ Yeah, cringe,” says 39-year-old tech mentor Shaista Akbar. “It’s the stereotype we knew we had to avoid when we grew up.”
But as Millennials grow older – the oldest are in their early 40s – they’re realising that the signs are different. This is the generation that was in school when the country’s economy opened up. They snuck into the first discos with college friends, spent weekends at brand-new malls, and were probably the first in their families to study abroad. They’ve lived through dial-up internet, 9/11, the rise of social media, the Kargil war, the global recession, #MeToo, Covid-19 and job threats from AI. They’re so OG, their Gmail address is probably their actual name – and it’s not even a flex anymore.
They’re tired. It’s also hit them that they’re mortal and not that special, after all. They’ve realised that some of their dreams may never come true. But Millennials are adjusting to midlife they way they adjusted to everything thrown at them so far. Middle-age, middle-class, stuck in middle-management, they’re making memes and making do. Psychiatrist Deeksha Kalra, who consults at Artemis Hospitals, Gurugram, says that what we’re seeing is not a crisis but “reinvention in motion”.
Is this it?
Akbar was 18 in 2004, when posters for the government’s India Shining campaign were all over Delhi. Her college friends were headed abroad to study and work, NRIs were returning to India to start businesses. There were lucrative jobs in IT, retail, even at call centres. “There was this sense that we were a chosen generation, inheriting a globalised world, full of opportunity and hope. I wasn’t thinking of midlife then. But it felt like my tomorrows were going to be awesome.”
She went down the expected path. Akbar earned her degree in programming, got hooked on The Big Bang Theory, got married, got laid off, got rehired, invested in mutual funds, had a child, jumped back into work, paid off a car loan, went on weekend trips. Then, at 37, it struck her that she’d done everything right, but it still didn’t feel complete. And that she only had as many tomorrows as she had yesterdays. “I saw this meme that said ‘You weren’t put on Earth to pay bills and die’ but I had no clue what I was actually supposed to be doing.”
There was no flash of realisation, no workplace meltdown, no torrid affair. Akbar simply signed up for therapy. There, she learnt to acknowledge the weight of her family’s expectations. She started on the Urdu lessons that were a “maybe one day” dream. “And I stopped pretending to like long drives,” she says, laughing. “I guess my midlife is about separating what I ought to enjoy from what I actually do.”
For many in Akbar’s generation, working out that distinction is taking a while. It’s possibly because the idea of the midlife crisis itself isn’t very old. Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques coined the term only in 1965. But we’re coming around. A 2017 report by Vijayalakshmi S, assistant professor of Perspective in Education at Chennai’s Loyola College of Education, looks specifically at Indians aged 30 to 50. This Sandwich Generation, she says, is caring both for their children and parents and are the most prone to questioning where they are in life. A 2023 study, Midlife Crisis in Indian Men and Women, examined 60 men and 60 women who’d passed their life’s halfway point. The results, published in the International Journal of Indian Psychology, suggested that in both men and women, midlife can bring on depression, worry and affect quality of life.
This time around
Midlifers today have it easier than their predecessors. They’ve watched older colleagues shine early and burn out. Medical screenings make it easier to detect and delay illness. A career switch or divorce raises fewer eyebrows than before. And there are memes to help take the sting out of everything, from peri-menopause and polyamory to pivoting and pre-paying a home loan.
It’s OK to have a hobby, come out of the closet, set a boundary late in life these days. It’s OK to grow old in the public eye. So, midlifers are not breaking free, they’re fixing the breaks. Men are walking into therapy, and opening up haltingly about loneliness, pressure, and unexpressed grief. Women arrive with a different concern: They’ve done everything they were “supposed” to do, and yet feel invisible.
Deepika Prabhu, a 42-year-old communications consultant in Mumbai, was off-roading life from the start: “I never bought into the checklist: Marriage, milestones, mortgage,” she says. “I decided I would only marry if I genuinely felt the need for companionship.” It was a relatively new privilege. But by her early 30s, being a career woman stopped feeling glamorous. Prabhu was diagnosed with anxiety.
She was 40 by the time she let go of the baggage that even freedom can bring. She now works as a freelancer. “Success now means being my own boss — in work, in love, in time,” she says. “Stability is community.” She also recently discovered that she is on the autism spectrum. It’s helped her understand why she’d been overwhelmed by social and sensory triggers all her life. She’s in therapy “not to change, but to reconcile with who I already am”.
It echoes what American demographer Sara Srygley has found in her research at the non-profit Population Reference Bureau. In an unstable time, the great midlife fantasy is really normalcy. Sportscars? Millennials would rather have a sturdy hybrid to drive through the apocalypse. Spicy affair? A coffee obsession delivers a more reliable high. Drinking habit? Gardening is cheaper and easier on the liver.
Back where we started
For many, endurance sports are the new sports cars. Amit Gokhale, 42, a Mumbai-based father of twins, started training for the marathon in the 2000s, began trekking in 2013, and took up cycling after the pandemic. The activities keep him “happy in the head,” he says. “There will come a day when I can’t do this — but not today.”
At Mumbai’s Kokilaben Hospital, psychologist Reshma D’Souza says she often sees clients who “speak of burnout, comparison, the exhaustion of playing by the rules only to realise the finish line was a mirage”. One client, a tech professional in his 40s, complained of panic attacks, fatigue and insomnia. “He wasn’t failing. He was burned out,” she says. He’d literally grown tired of achievement. “Therapy helped him set boundaries, slow down, and eventually take on a less demanding role. His energy returned not from doing more, but from finally stopping.”
Meanwhile, there’s competition. Economist David G Blanchflower’s study of people across 44 countries, from 2020 to 2025, disputes the long-held belief that older folks are the unhappiest generation. He found that Gen Z – the ones aged 12 to 28, are the most dissatisfied of us all. They may be the ones buying those red Porsches after all.
QUIZ: Are you in the middle of a midlife crisis? Here’s how to tell.
1. Kids? You have heirloom tomatoes and one dramatic ficus. You post updates like, “She sprouted today *teary eyed emoji*” and mean it.
a) Yes b) No
2. You know where your coffee beans come from, and whether they’re anaerobic fermented or gurram handwashed. You own at least one: Aeropress, French press, moka pot, coffee-pod machine.
a) Yes b) No
3. Rummage through the back of the cupboard. Will you find one of the following: A kombucha scoby, sourdough starter, crochet hooks, a DSLR camera, birdwatching binoculars, a slightly lopsided mug you made at a pottery class?
a) Yes b) No
4. You either trained for a marathon, or got roped into Pickleball/Padel/Frisbee because someone told you “it’s the new yoga”.
a) Yes b) No
5. You get excited each time Dyson drops a new vacuum. Or you’ve researched Roombas. Or you know how an air-fryer works and are hoping someone asks.
a) Yes b) No
6. You know what Cold Plunging is. Or you’ve subscribed to at least one paid meditation app. Or you’ve tried a melatonin melt.
a) Yes b) No
7. You have paid too much for special-edition sneakers.
a) Yes b) No
8. You’ve considered: Starting a podcast/ Writing a book/Launching a Substack about your “life’s learnings”?
a) Yes b) No
9. You still believe that Gen Z are saying skibidi, fanum tax and delulu is the solulu.
a) Yes b) No
10. You don’t know if Charli xcx is a man or a woman. Or if xcx is a Roman numeral, a typo or an acronym.
a) Yes b) No
****
0–3 Yeses: You’re fine. Just a regular adult, maybe slightly weird.
4–6 Yeses: Midlife crisis confirmed. Go easy on the retinol and minoxidil.
7–10 Yeses: You ARE the crisis. And no, your Roomba won’t solve your emotional problems.
From HT Brunch, September 20, 2025
Follow us on www.instagram.com/htbrunch
