Life & Beyond : JEET KAUR KAPOOR – SHE TOLD HER NAME WAS

Tuesday 21 February 2012

JEET KAUR KAPOOR – SHE TOLD HER NAME WAS

Son, my name is Jeet Kaur Kapoor that is what she said emphatically, in her agitated voice. She was in flow of spontaneous memories, her body language of the moment told.

She has been confined to the front hall of this old-age-home for four years now, with occasional movement within the premises. It was my second meeting with her when I had my second visit to this old age home at Badarpur, Delhi.

A thin, bald silhouette, slightly curved hand and leg curvatures, a clean shawled attire, curious inviting eyes, active gestures to call you and sit beside her – you cannot ignore her. One needs to be attentive with her and she is clearly comprehensible then.

Her bed is in the front hall of the facility that proactively takes mentally unstable abandoned senior citizens. She is camera friendly and asks everyone to click her and yes, it has to be snapped twice in a row and she needs to okay every photograph.

I had clicked for her during the last visit but couldn’t speak to her. This time, while sitting with here, I started the thread of conversation with obvious pointers keeping in mind if we could trace roots of some of the members of this old age home.

I cannot say anything about authenticity of the information that this granny had to share with me, yes, but personally, I would go with what she said as she was telling her life-tale enwrapped in trauma in few simple lines.

Once she starts, she is lucid.

She told her house was in Lakshmi Nagar, Delhi. She even remembers the location, the house in Lane Number 1 of the School Block. She said things that tell us of her past in vague terms like the particulars of the locality during the days she was staying there. She talks of the shopkeepers, daily vendors and the local Galliwalas.

Suddenly she tells me that son, your Visa for US will be granted. You go there, earn a lot, 100 crore. My blessings are with you. One of the caretakers of the old-age home tells me that her husband probably worked for some Embassy as she keeps of repeating this Visa to US thing.

Or there could be this thing – extreme deterioration of everything that is human. Living in memories, probably she keeps on talking about her son. It might be she had been abandoned as her son had to leave for US and he did not want to carry the mother given the high expenditure involved as per the US laws for senior citizens with medical history. I have come across many such case studies in last one year.

I don’t know what is the truth, that has to be found out, a task that we will undertake, but, the second prospect looks nearer to her real past after she talks about her shaky legs that was full of lesions and worms when she was brought to the old-age-home. The granny says ‘she’ used to beat her and kick her in legs. And for the first, during the whole conversation, tears swept her persona. I don’t know who this ‘she’ is but her words tell me it was someone in her family.

I was lost in her tears. Certainly we are going to find out where she came from but would it serve any purpose given the fact that she was abandoned by her own. And this old-age-home has people coming in regularly.

Jeet Kaur Kapoor – how can we so mercilessly kill an identity?

Is there any of limit to insanity?