The outcasts

The hilly road just diverged into the midst of concerte compound walls. It is quite amazing to believe that more than 60 elderly people are housed behind this wall in the so called old age home at Thavannur near Kuttippuram, Kerala. It has been their home ever since they set their foot on this soil. And of course they love it here, they say. After all they had to undergo what felt like hell in their life and for them now it is heaven on earth. And they look forward to spending their rest of the days here.

Unfortunately most of the people we met were either driven away from their own homes or left their home on their own account because they never felt it to be a ‘home’ anymore . When asked about their journey to the old age home, they have tales to tell. Their struggle in reaching here was the most difficult part and definitely it seems to be so rewarding now. In here most of them are happy to be alive and to be in a place to call it as their own. They say now we have a roof over head ,meals four times of a day, a cot to sleep on, and weekly health check ups and definitely it is free of charge. And if at all they need something else, they were provided with it at the earliest. But whatever the people who take care of them do, I bet they are so damn under strain and sorrowful because they are in some strange land away from the places they had spent a major part of their life.

‘Everyone will have to pass through this age, whether they like it or not. An elderly man who could barely walk with a stick said this. But he is healthier when compared to some others around him. There were people who have lost their rights over their legs and struggles to move from one room to another. And they have to depend on either a stand or stick to support their weight.

When one of us asked whether their children used to come for visiting them, they say ‘Yes, they do come. But they don’t come here for us. All they want is my hard earned money and my pension. That is why they come here. It seems that her children were so brutal that they used to torture her so much to the extent that now she has some trouble with her backbone and cannot walk properly. What is even more amazing is that this place has got people who have raised 5-7 children but none of them show the slightest concern for their parent who is abandoned somewhere in some land in someone else’s care. Do these people have any idea how their children will treat them when their time has come? what makes them so confident that their children wouldn’t treat them the way they are treating their own parents now?

When they speak about their children it reminds me of a story someone told me long before. It is about an old man and his son, when both of them were sitting in their porch, the old man asked what was that noise they were hearing so closely. The son replied it was the sparrows, and after sometime the old man asked again and again, and the third time the son lost his patience and shouted at his father. Hearing this the old man went inside and came back carrying an old diary and gave it to the son. The son opened it to find out that about 30 years ago when he was 3 years of old, sitting in the same porch he had asked them the same question about 23 times and each time the father replied patiently it was the sparrows. Such is the story of an old dad and his son.

But they say they feel happy when visited by children or strangers… be it a passer-by who stops on his way when seeing the ‘old age home’ sign hung up near the gate or students who come for study purposes or curriculum based projects…they are just happier when they know some one out there want to visit them and they are especially happier when they see programmes are conducted for them in their vicinity by children from neighbouring schools. But whatever they do, their heart will never be filled to the brim of happiness…after all they are torn away from their real world and real life, and their real identity is no longer an issue because they just make one among the many old people around there, and they are left with no choice to make on how to end the last days of their long life journey , so weak and so miserable that they just have to live by crossing the dates on the calendar…

By the niece