A long pending blog..

The miseries of old age affect me a lot. It is not that old age is synonymous with gloom, but it is undeniably very commonplace to find old people burdened by darkness on all sides.
A gradual deterioration of life is what all 60+ people have to face- death of their spouse, infliction by some crippling disease, staying alone away from their family, sour relations with their children and an abysmal generation gap between their grandchildren, all this and more in any order by combination and permutation.
The end result is that most of them, being relegated to the darkest corners of the house and the lives of their immediate family members, eagerly wait for their impending death. Some who have it lucky set off for the heavenly abode without having to live through the pathetic state of extreme debilitation, while others remain bed-ridden- their bodies shriveling up, cheeks shrinking and their eyesockets getting hollower, and mental faculties gradually degenerating.
All this is a compilation of what I have observed in my family as well as amongst my relatives.
I wonder why the end of the journey has to be such a bumpy and rough ride. May be it is like what I have heard most elderly people say- shaara jeeboner paaper phol- the fruit of all the bad deeds during ones lifetime and this I often believe is true.

There is a lot that one has to take in his/her stride when one grows old, there’s a lot that one has to learn to let go. Often it is the inability or unwillingness to do this, that makes growing old such a painful process for some people. And well, the faults of their kin just cannot be ignored. I donot want to get into the rhetorics here. It is not that I feel scared of my old age because honestly, I find it difficult to imagine myself as an old woman- there’s still a long way to go. What draws me to old people is their loneliness, their helplessness which unfailingly become their companions in the last leg of their lives.

What made me write this blog?
My sick grandma called me to her room today and put 200 rs in my hand and said ‘I couldnot give anything to you on your birthday.’ She was seriously ill due to a herpes infection on my birthday. Although she had been in the hospital on that day, she had not forgotten to wish me. 4 months had passed since my birthday and she had not yet recovered completely.
‘Let me show you some photographs’, she said. She brought out an envelope from under her pillow. It contained around 9- 10 old photographs of different family members. I was there too, in two of those photographs, one when I was in class 4th and the other when I was in class 9th. Tears welled up in my eyes., not because of the photographs, but because of this sudden picture I formed of my grandma in my head. I saw my grandma, too sick to get up from the bed and walk around, and who is not able to sleep properly due to pain at night, looking through those photos in her lonely moments, reminiscing all those years that had gone by, remembering all those people she had known, thinking of all changed times and ties- the weight of innumerable memories gathered over 85 long years suddenly seemed inhumanly wearisome to me.