Where are our children gone?
A few evenings back, as I exited the Nehru Place station, I noticed a senior lady passenger walking ahead of me, with a great deal of struggle. She was finding it difficult to keep her balance amid the people rushing around her, most of them breezing past with their heads bent on their mobile phones, totally unmindful of where or what they were walking into. I slowed down to see if she needed any help. She did. As I approached her, she smiled, aware of my intent and completely willing to be helped.
Just at that moment, I felt I was looking at a child's face. A face that lights up with relief when someone tries to help. A moment when the child spontaneously raises its arm towards the adult who has come to its rescue.
This lady, whose name I subsequently asked but would rather skip mentioning, instinctively said, 'Beta!'
I took her bags, held her arm and we started walking slowly towards the exit. She was embarrassed at being helped. I assured her that I did the same with my mother and she shouldn't feel bad about it. She smiled, pressed my arm firmly and eased up a bit. And she started talking, giving me explanations even when I had not asked for any. That's when I realised that she was not embarrassed at being helped, but at what she thought I must be thinking — that her family didn't really care about her. I had said or done nothing to elicit that train of explanations but she was clearly embarrassed at 'being caught' walking alone and with a great deal of struggle.
Her attire told me that she had children living in the U.S. and her speech indicated that she had been to the U.S. multiple times visiting them. And it turned out to be right. She continued: "I'm not generally in this position. I had gone visiting my sister in Karol Bagh and today, surprisingly, I didn't manage to get an Uber or an Ola for way back home. Otherwise, I don't have to struggle like this. If my daughter learns of this, she is going to be very mad." The daughter lives in some town of California, whose name I now forget. By the time we reached the road outside the station, she had a tinge of pathos in her voice. "My husband passed away six years ago. Since then, I'm alone. I have only one child — my daughter — and she is so far away. She keeps a check on me and gets very angry if I don't take care of myself. "
I was beginning to be seriously affected by this lady's talk as my relation with her had by now progressed from being a total stranger lending a hand for a moment to someone invited into the private life of a senior citizen who was at pains to hide her daily struggle and yet was in denial that her life could have been better had her child done something about it.
I don't know what her daughter should have done and I'm no judge on how people want to live their lives. May be, the lady didn't want to go and live with her daughter in the U.S.; may be the daughter had pleaded with the mother to be with her but the mother didn't want for various plausible reasons; may be, may be...
She continued, "If you live nearby will you come and have dinner with me some time? I know you must have a life with family, etc., but do think of spending some time with me. I'm alone and almost always eat my food alone. It will be nice to have your company."
The rest of her conversation went on in the same vein. She was a pleasant person with a sweet voice but her story affected me. My first reaction to any situation got the better of me and I felt the chills — I wouldn't want to be in that situation ever. Of being so alone, so completely alone that just one smile, one helping hand can trigger an emotional response. I felt sorry for this lady, who was being so valiant in her loneliness, so upright and living it up with pride.
But what it made me wonder about was the question about children. They will grow up and go away and build their lives, which they must, but why is old age so fragile that it must be lived alone with pangs of not having one's own nearby to share daily doses of happiness and tribulations? What can children do? Should they give up their lives? Most certainly not. But then, what about parents? Must they publicly feel proud of their children having made it big in the U.S., and yet silently suffer inside?
I have been thinking of all this since the encounter and now I'm feeling alarmed that I have come across so many such lonely elders in the recent past, in whichever city I have visited lately. Where are our children gone? Why should the elderly be so helpless, physically and emotionally? May be, there are no final answers to resolve this situation. Is there something that the society needs to do, may be some course correction? Or that's the way civilisation is meant to progress? Too many questions, too few answers...
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