A different autumn

He's there at the park bench everyday even before the first of the morning walkers arrive. And will be there till the last leaves. Most of us who come for our morning walk in the park know that he lives in the palatial bungalow across the park. Three children settled abroad and apparently doing very well, a retinue of servants at his beck and call, a huge house at his disposal! What else would a man need in his old age, I've often mused. It was months before I gave a smile in his direction, and a few more weeks before I stopped to talk. He said I reminded him of his daughter he had not seen for the past so many years. It has been years since his children and family came down for a visit though they telephone regularly. The longing in his eyes and the sadness in his voice as he spoke of his children and grandchildren settled so far away from him _ for the first time _ made me realise what elderly persons really need at the autumn of their life.


Their wants are not just about material comforts or communication. It is more about companionship and compassion. They are given the space but not our time, they are provided the blankets but not the warmth, and the love on offer is the occasional high rather than the steady loving care that they require.

Somewhere along the fast paced life, memories of those stable fingers which offered the steadying effect as one took the first tentative steps, of those unfaltering hands that held one's bicycle steady on the seemingly endless rounds before one was confident of cycling alone, has faded. The aroma of those lovingly prepared dishes has waned and that lap into which tears were shed the first time one was ditched by the best friend doesn't look so inviting now that newer and more fascinating pleasures beckon one. If there is one relationship which we take for granted it is the one we share with our elderly parents.


And even when elderly parents are staying with the children, things may not necessarily be perfect. Though extreme cases of old parents being turned out of the houses are rare, in the urban double income families it is quite common to come across mothers who are relegated to the status of unpaid maids and baby-sitters. I've been unfortunate enough to witness instances where old parents were so evidently unwelcome in the drawing rooms whenever there were guests. Their opinions are perceived to be out of sync, their counsel taken to be dated, the stories of the past they spell out have nothing to offer except rings of boredom.

But then, can even those of us who cannot be slotted into the above categories claim a clean chit? I guess not, for how many of us consider our parents when we talk about quality time with family? We take into consideration the emotional needs of our spouses and children, but the emotional needs of our parents are easily overlooked. It is not that we don't care; we love them, but then we also take them so much for granted that it hardly occurs to us that our parents too have such needs. Francis Bacon may have had a point when he said, "The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grief and fears." I think it is this silence, this lack of voluble protestations that probably make us easily overlook their anxieties and needs.


They may not have been the super parents we wished they were. But they were always there stoically beside us whenever we needed them no matter what. Now, when they are old and crippled, slow and lonely, it is the time for giving back and it is our time that we can give back.

May be it is best to remember that a few years down the line we'll be where they stand now, craving for the company of the ever-busy children and grandchildren, waiting for a loving hug and a few loving words. The time we give back to our parents now can set the tone for the time we can get back then.

The Album

It was one of those days that happen in every one’s life once in a while. First the maid did not turn up. Then, just as I had packed off my daughter and husband to school and office, and settled down to do my washing and cooking, power supply failed. The clothes were stuck in the washing machine, and the food processor useless without electricity. Feeling lazy I decided to make just dal and rice.

My daughter, back from school, was at her irritable best when she saw the fare on table. When I refused to make the aloo parathas that she wanted, she had the audacity to call me lazy. Finally, I buckled and ordered a pizza to be home delivered as a compromise package. By then, she had kicked off her school shoes to one corner of the living room and school bag and water bottle were unceremoniously dumped in another corner. Quite aware of the futility of any effort to get her to keep them in their proper places under the given circumstances, I proceeded to do the chore. Later on, not only that she refused to sleep, but also would not let me take a nap.


By then I was seething with anger and all I wanted was to slap her tight and ask her to behave herself. But alas, that was not to be! Dr. Benjamin Spock and the likes have told us young parents that physical punishment make a psychologically disturbed child and that we as parents will be responsible for inflicting irreparable mental scars that the child will be carrying to his/ her adulthood.

Once again, I gave up all hopes of having my siesta and settled down to finish a book. She took her colouring book and pencils and settled down next to me. Suddenly, as I looked up from my book, I saw her licking her colour pencils to brighten the picture. As I gritted my teeth to control my temper and explained the hazards of licking the colours to my daughter without losing my cool, (outwardly of course, I was boiling inside), I envied my mother. Twenty four years back, faced with a similar situation, she would have just slapped me and warned not to repeat this.


Though I can vouch that I am not a psycho despite getting an occasional whack or two from my parents, I do not want to take any chance, now that I have read about the possible repercussions of physical punishment. Lucky for them, they had not been taken on these child psychology trips. Neither did I have the super moms of the TV ads to compare her with. Mine was as good or bad as my friends’ and cousins’.

By evening, my husband called up saying that he was held up in the office and would be late. This made my daughter, who liked to spend the evenings with her father, crankier. By the time I put her to bed I was exhausted and was feeling rancorous. A kind of bitterness engulfed me and I cursed myself for leaving a promising career for the thankless job of a mother.


In no mood to read or listen to music, I started cleaning up and rearranging one of the cupboards. That’s when I saw it, tucked away in a corner of my cupboard. It was the bulky family album, long unopened. I opened it, and there on the very first page, was my daughter as a puny little two-week old, then as a chubby three-month old, and then with her toothless grin at six months. Those were the days when I had felt that she was god’s gift to the world. I had promised myself, looking at her cherubic face, that I will never say even an angry word to her. There were photographs of her perched on my husband’s shoulders as a three-year-old while we were trekking in Himachal, making faces at the camera. I found myself smiling and my heart grew warm as the bitterness I had felt such a short while ago had vanished.

As I put away the album, I realised that in the difficult years to come when she becomes an adolescent I may need to take out this old photo album more frequently to cool my frayed nerves, and also to remind me the promise I made myself so many years ago.

I kissed my daughter good night.