LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (57)
They were there, surviving
somehow.
This would certainly not be the
life they would have thought of, ever, when they were raising their children,
giving them all, thinking of them only, from teaching them how to speak and
walk to guiding them on how to take on life, consuming, exhausting their life
energy to make future of their children better, to settle them comfortably, to
make them independent (and, in turn, to make them dependent on their children).
And they were there, surviving,
somehow, in their 70s, having given all to their children, keeping the bare minimum
for them (and in most cases, not even that).
In the emotionally cold and
tangibly insolent surroundings of the old-age home, they were waiting, if any
of their children would come to look for them.
Their natural right had become a
sort of miracle for them that had so far eluded them. They knew any hope was
hopeless. Yet, some of them kept their hopes alive.
It was story of every couple or
every man or woman, the defined inhabitants, living there. Yes, but the two of
them, who passed away on a single day, were incriminating reminder of the
growing animal in us, the humans.
Yes, the children, they were
raised by these two ladies and their husbands to become the civilized members
of the society they were living in. But they did not know they would be
excluded from that very society by their own children, forced to live in a fake
environment of socializing, to die in isolation, in an old-age home, a paid
one, where even a normal help would come after making repeated requests.
Both the ladies were in their
70s. One was ill and was in sub-conscious state for seven days before she
breathed her last. The people their said she had around eight children and
other relatives in the city and she waited for seven days for them. Though
informed, none of them, not even any of the children, turned up to see her, to
take her back for further, advanced treatment.
The other lady was living her
routine day there when she fell in the bathroom and couldn’t survive the fall.
She, too, had her children but no one was there to take care of her, to rush to
her when she fell. Probably, the apathy from her children and the subsequent
depression had taken its toll.
Both of these ladies had
families, had children, who were duty-bound to take care of them.
Yet, they died alone. In fact,
they died this way because of their children only.
Depending on how ‘animal’ or how
‘human’ one is, the shock value can be absolute. For me, it was just a regular,
like any other day trip there, when I came to know this and I felt inert for a
long time after it.
And it deeply, psychologically
negatively affected everyone else living there – the ‘defined’ inhabitants of
that old-age home. It was not just the problem of the two ladies only, in
varying degrees, almost of them were facing it – the pain of ‘rejection’ by
their own sons and daughters.
Shouldn’t such children be tried
for murder (even culpable homicide trial would be an unpardonable injustice)?
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
