Double-edged wishes

Double-edged wishes
Bhai Mahavir

This is an occasion organised to dedicate an ambulance to the service of this old age home. Another wing is proposed to be added to the Ashram and the convener has desired me to give my blessings to the same. To this my response is: May your organisation wind up soon!''

No satirical aside from Bernard Shaw, this benediction came from a political personage at a function of social activists running a centre for the hapless aged. If the organisers stared wide eyed and could not believe their ears, they had ample reason. Even a detached observer might have wondered how anyone could flout the accepted civic code of not displeasing any group -- much less ``out of the present company'' and at a large gathering and in a pilgrimage centre like Nasik. What explanation did she give?

Old age homes are a fire-fighting contrivance to meet the damage caused by families disrupted by the modern lifestyle we are slowly but surely slipping into. Working couples breaking up, grown-up children leaving parents to carve out their own lives, marriage deteriorating into individualism and materialism becoming man's sole philosophy leave no room for old people. Unwanted and unlooked after, they yearn for someone to care for them, for children they can care for. They certainly have their physical needs of food, shelter and medical attention too which can be looked after through institutional arrangements. But happiness is more than their aggregate.

The birth of Babloo had grandly raised the status of Dadaji from a paternal level to a grandfatherly one. Overjoyed, he had loaded him with toys. He planned for the tiny mirth bundle's birthday months in advance and started looking forward to the next one even before the balloons and banners had spent themselves up. Soon after he was three, however, his mummy's apprehension of Dada-Dadi spoiling Babloo grew too glaring to be glossed over. With the delivery of the young couple's flat, the desire for some `autonomy' asserted itself and, much to the chagrin of Babloo, they shifted, leaving the ageing couple in the old house. It was later that Nina was born pushing Dadaji into a fit of blues and Dadiji into muffled sobs -- comparing this arrival with the first.

Today Dadaji yearns for Babloo who would have taken endless piggy-rides on his back and insisted on sleeping with granny and pestered her for a bedtime tale every night. Grandpa feels his back itching for a rider and granny's memory slumbering for want of a prodder. He must have become mischievous. Dadaji imagines him having run away with his glasses and himself chasing the little rascal around the house!

Babloo can be any child in a disrupted family and Dadaji his grandpa.

The Japanese are known to have evolved a commercial remedy: firms hiring out children or elders to parties needing such comfort. And why not? If sex has a bazaar anyway, why do filial relations need to be shut out? Were our Dadaji in Japan, he could have easily got a grandson of six and a younger girl for a couple of days. An ailing child of another estranged family may thirst for the elderly pat and caress for which our old couples could offer their services with benefit.

The family is under a growing strain in India also. One does come across ungrateful sons who have pushed out or made life hell for their parents forcing them to seek refuge in some ashram. But sociologists would be dismayed if we throw up our hands and start thinking in terms of old age homes. Wishing the dissolution of a deserted children's orphanage or any old age home is not necessarily an outrageous wish. Its fault, if any, is that it does not recognise the number of medicine bottles on the table as a gauge of man's health.