I have always maintained that walking has its myriad benefits. As strong as the sun shone, and the rigors of summer continued, I kept trudging on in my efforts to get some semblance of discipline in my mornings. The blue skies encouraged the waves of heat, but the birds still flittered from branch to branch oblivious, welcoming the humans as their own. Mother nature is like that. God has made it possible.

Calming yet contemplative, the palpable silence encouraged me to explore the innards of my mind, giving me that much more fodder for thought. The endless circles of the walking path increased my brain activity, as if in a churning. Lost in the chatter with myself, a fellow walker gingerly tried to step into my world, bringing with her, a battery of emotion. Animated but sane.

A complete stranger can sometimes make more sense than a known friend. I was open to discussion, being one of my more approachable days. Beyond the face, I realized women in their fifties have a wealth of wisdom, having a life that has either battered them or given them so much happiness that they are willing to share.

Pleasantries later, she embarked on how we have grown into our nuclear families, our children flown far and wide, and how we were the last generation to really look after our old. Obviously she was troubled about her father-in- law, who she loved dearly, suffering from Alzheimer’s. I understood her plight. I was dealing with an older person with as well. (Parkinson’s).  Two women with the same heartache. We have had to look after our old, and we do it voluntarily and with more emotion than most we know of.

I was glad our conversation did not border around Brands, Kitties, errant maids, infidel husbands, and expensive holidays/ cars/baubles and stayed in the same vein. I have increasingly begun to enjoy real conversation with real women, who are unafraid to speak their minds. In our fifties, we women turn more forgiving, more compassionate, and more humane.

Is it because we have been through the grind of motherhood, in-laws, joint families and the like? Anyway the stream was our old. We realized that we might just be the last generation actually caring and nurturing for them. I had already witnessed my own mother’s cancerous end, when my older sister, selflessly, physically tended her body.

My mother as I remember her, was a beautiful, thinking woman, who never wanted to get old. I applied her make up and filled her with stories till the end. Sometimes when I shut my eyes I still get a whiff of her perfume. Memories do that. But while they live, is it really that simple. Do we do right by them?

Is this country ready for our old? Do we have provisions and laws that enable a happy old age, where we are not at the mercy of our own, who are struggling in any case with putting their lives together? Then there is the case of the rich. Of course we can afford to look after our own, is the common retort. They are at most times bound, more by morality than common sense. But ask anybody that is old-the truth. And if loneliness hasn’t attacked them as yet, illness has at some point.

With smallish homes, that have scant preparations for extra household help, to actually people living in the fast lane getting their acts together, the only answer is -old homes. Yes I do believe that they should exist, there should be a serious provision. Let the people who claim to love you so much, help you help yourself. I would prefer post fifty to actually put monies where my mouth is, to not depend on others, however dear, however near, to look after my old age and me. It’s a job like any other. It has to be done.

Partners that lose each other to death, people that live with progressive diseases, helpless, hapless souls that need to be happy, have all joined the ranks of the needy. They don’t need to be subjected to this empty space -called old age. Feeling used, unneeded, unloved, their sadness etched into the creases of their faces, longing for affection and bits of our time that we may just throw them, its no way to be.

Provision in the form of money and buying space should be encouraged. Why is that we have to leave all the money that we have toiled to make, to our children. They should be encouraged to make their own. Can we not put some aside for our upkeep for later, like we are encouraged these days to make earlier wills? Laws should be made by the state and the country to make life easier for the aged.

More builders should think of creating old homes that are happy and constructive with amenities to suit the age groups that matter. And of course families should make it happen. And of course then there are people who will make everybody guilty around them by remembering some form of morality. Those are the ones that are abhorable.

Forget the duties that are expected of us, to do the right thing and live life under the sham of making another desolate, just so that we can realize our twisted reasoning. Life has to be practical. The Old have to be given their due at the end of time. Expectations have to be reasonable.

When sons and daughters have to follow their dreams and take their immediate kin along with them to foreign lands, is it fair to leave their old vanquishing and ailing, in family homes that are waiting to be robbed and them to be murdered (the newspapers feed us enough stories of those). Is it fair when they need their children tended and their homes looked after, they use their elders giving it a name of housing them? All of it smacks of nothing less than avarice.

The answer remains the same. Let them have their dignity and a home where they are among their own age group doing the things that they might love, and maybe discover new friendships and comfort in their twilight years. In most tribal cultures, the elderly play an important role. They not only keep memories alive, but also hold the wisdom that we don’t see held back in today’s generations.

A sad commentary of modernization in my book. The old can actually have vocations of their own, even while living in their retirement homes. They can become storytellers and share their real life experiences of the times gone by. Children should be sent to them to learn, and by doing so the old would feel wanted, and not necessarily by their own, but by society as a whole.

Previously published in the Sindhian