The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Saturday 5 November 2011

GEETA - IN HER 20'S - IN AN OLD-AGE HOME!


She wants to make friends. She wants to hangout. She wants to move. She wants to be loved. She loves her mother. But she doesn’t want to go back to her home.



Geeta is in her 20’s. Abandoned by her family, she is youngest of six brothers and sisters. Her father is no more and mother is ill and cannot move. All other sisters and brothers are married. Busy in their lives, they found her a burden and decided to abandon her.

Her bones are deformed and she cannot use her legs and hands. She had an attack of high fever at an early age and probably the subsequent lack of treatment and care led to more deformities in her body. She cannot walk and literally drags her body to move from one place to other. Her mental status is more like of an innocent child.

Yes innocent she is. She is so welcoming and jovial. She has studied till 5th standard and loves to read ‘bhajans’ and devotional songs. She has memorized some like this ‘Durga Chalisa’.

She has been given shelter by ‘Guru Vishram Vriddha Ashram at Badarpur, Delhi. She says she cannot make friends at the old-age home as most of them are behaving abnormally most of the time. (Most of the residents of this old-age home are mentally-ill.) And that is the major problem. Geeta has to be moved from this place to some place where she can find people like her, in her age-group, in the care of specially trained and sensitive staff who can respond positively to the mental and physical conditions of such people. She needs to be in a place where she can find extension to her thoughts; where she can learn basics of life; where she can find friends to share her routine life.

I have been trying to locate a place for her but have not come across even one. I had started thinking about it when Michelle Kumar (from Anurakti-an initiative by FICCI employees) had first talked to me about Geeta’s case. When I met her I realized the urgency in prioritizing the need to find a suitable place for her. If there isn’t any such place, it is gross folly of the system and the society. People like Geeta are well into the category of people who can be trained to be self dependent in their day-to-day lives as well can be given some vocational training to earn something. A campaign should be worked out to raise this demand. We will work that out.

Geeta has all the rights to have a dignified life like you and me. And while working on Geeta’s case we need to keep in mind that Geeta is not the standalone case.