Old Age Blues: With A Little Help

By Dipankar Gupta

The old need not be at the mercy of their families

Ageing Bollywood stars can be spotted from a mile. Their hair and shoes are always polished jet black. Their face is faintly recognisable, the feet shuffling, but the mop on top is luxuriantly dyed. Years of on-screen make-up have convinced them that what you get is what they see. We may ridicule this thought, but life often imitates artists, if not art.

After a bunch of grey hairs, and years of denial, the elderly in India have realised that it does not pay to sag with age. Nor should they will their sons their worldly possessions while they are still around. While till now they planned their retirement lives on their own, they have at last some state support. On February 28, 2008, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill was passed by the Parliament with ease. Now spoilt sons, fattened by inheritance, can go to jail for three months for neglecting their parents. The existing Code of Criminal Procedure (1973) took too long to implement, and where was all that time?

The myth of the joint family was kept alive for generations out of sheer wishful thinking. This was an ideal many of us aspired to, but most found it too demanding. It worked as long as the property was run by the patriarch and could not be alienated from the family. This was usually the case with land and commercial establishments. When the joint family held it was either for economic considerations, or because sons were more worthless than their fathers. It is surprising how many idle kids thrive under the family roof.

It is a locked-on certainty that nobody wants to die in the trenches. A nest’s egg, a rocking chair, and a long look at the sunset are what old age dreams are made of. But now times are changing. The unit of earning is no longer the family. Sons work in different occupations, get paid differently, and have different lifestyles and goals. Incidentally, this is not just an urban phenomenon. There are many poor cottages in rural India where old couples are left to their own devices. Their sons are in Mumbai, Surat, Panipat, or in some other distant address.

It might have looked gracious once to let your boys have their share while you were still around. But as boys will be boys, they might just as easily take you down in the name of taking over. But so many parents still insist on making the same mistake. Like film stars of yesteryear, they too keep wondering
where all that adulation has gone? Screaming fans and doting sons can be equally fickle, but neither stars nor parents are ever prepared to fully accept this fact. One minute it is roses, roses all the way, and in the next they are dreaming of flowers on your bier.

But actors don’t give up as easily as parents tend to do. Years of grease paint must have seeped into their blood. They put on a brave face, slick their hair and get on with the show as best as they can. The elderly too must learn not to switch off once prime time is over. Instead of brooding over how the brood went wrong; or searching the family album for childhood telltale signs, it is wise to think of the future. Who knows, perhaps the best is yet to come. And when it does, the greedy brat pack in the kitchen won’t find a crumb to pick off the floor.

Even parliamentarians, who can be notoriously insensitive, have recognised with near unanimity, that the joint family is more or less a thing of the past. The abovementioned Bill makes this rueful admission in the preamble itself. The law-makers have also taken into account that mothers are treated worst of all. They have no assets of any kind. At least, the father’s career may have given him some special advisory skills, but the mother was always in the kitchen. Once poetry was written on her fetching dependence; but today it is just an irritation. Neither the slogan of the joint family, nor avowals of mother love, has stood the test of time.

Smart parenting is when we see the writing on the wall before we do the writing on the will. It is just as well that the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Bill also takes note of providing old-age homes and better medical care for the aged. In India, 80 per cent of all medical expenditure is out of one’s pocket. We occupy the first place in the world with this shameful statistic. In every other country the state contributes a greater share in health-care costs. This is why this Bill must pay attention to medical support, else it will be as toothless as the people it hopes to protect.

For now it is a good beginning. The thought that greedy sons can be put away for three months must cheer old parents, and scare their brats. But true deliverance for the aged can only come with state support for old-age homes and medical care. Till then family tussles will continue, though this Bill will delay the knockout punch. But for long-term support the elderly need the state to be in their corner, and with more than just the towel to throw in.