HAPLESS AND NEGLECTED

Old age, it is said, is like a second childhood. This is the time when the old people crave for companionship, a little affection and peaceful surroundings. It is sad and unfortunate that an increasingly large number of youth cut themselves off from the aged, as if they are sure they won’t see such a day. Bereft of their homes and neglected by their dear ones, the old people are forced to take shelter in the institution for the aged.

India was once known for its strong family ties. The elderly were seen with respect. Their experiences and stories of old were listened with interest. All this façade of strong family ties and respect for the elderly is crumbling under a rising number of cases of the old being seen as unwanted by their children.
JZ (using only the initials) is a bitter man. He spent all his days of earning providing high education to his children. The daughter was happily married by him in hope that he will play with grandchildren in a little while. All that is mere wishful thinking today! Ever since his son grew up to get a high salaried job, he has not cared for his ageing parents to the extent that JZ (now over 80 years of age and a severe patient of heart and arthritis) and his wife (also over 75, bent to an extent that she may touch her toe whenever she wants) have been banished to lead a life on their own.
IT too is another case. Living in an old-age home in Delhi, IT was the General Manager of a big PSU. Today, he is living in a 10x8 room, with no television set, no radio, not even a picture album. Except a pack of cards, with which he plays patience, arranging the numbers and colours for hours, he has noting else to do. Leaving behind the son, the daughter-in-law, grandson and wife was a bitter one for IT but he wanted to lead a life of dignity and hence has no grudges.
There are countless such cases in urban India of today where the “small family” of the post-Independence era is coming under unsuspected pressure, with the generations battling it out for living space, individuality and control of finances. Ageing fathers are often unable to put up with the loss of self-esteem after retirement, when income diminishes and demands are made on them to go to the market, pay electricity bills, stop objecting to the new lifestyles that are being seen as immoral by them, and to transfer assets they had built up.
In the West, this problem is not new. In fact, in several European countries, where the aged far outnumber the young, the maladjustment problem was solved several decades ago by making the grown up child’s separation a norm. It was possible to do so in West because of better social support network provided by the Government and insurance agencies. Same is not the case in India. The income here grows with the years and hence the children take years to be able to live independently. Nor can the old live safely alone in the absence of an elaborate network of public health, nursing and public-funded old-age care.
This is the reason why it is possible to see several such old people living their last days of life on footpaths and railway stations. There are several cases of suicides as well. Like the infamous case of Dalals who, when harassed by their son and daughter-in-law, jumped to death from their 8th storey apartment in Mumbai. There must be several other cases like them who live on, enduring the humiliation.
Unless the social care system improves in India, there is no hope. Even as the old age homes are burgeoning, there is no doubting the fact that the inmates of the homes are expectedly a traumatized lot, mostly living on the threshold of manic depression. The ailment does not disappear by living in the homes. It aggravates instead, with bleeding memories gnawing like fog at the windowpanes of loneliness.
If you say, return to the age-old social system is a solution, it too will be a wishful thinking to the modern material-pursuing youth devoid of spiritual roots and the knowledge that s/he will have to repay for the ‘karmas’, if not in this life then hereafter.
It is time to inculcate spiritual values and the knowledge of true religion, but without the presence of self-proclaimed spiritual gurus like Ramdev and Swami Nithyanand, who themselves are manifest examples of lust for materialism at its zenith.