Bringing spring in the autumn of life

Never mind the crow's foot and wrinkles on your face. There is always a second spring in the autumn of the lives of elderly men feeling lonely without their wives, or bored, or neglected by their near and dear ones.

With this message, a voluntary organisation in Ahmedabad is engaged in getting senior citizens find a suitable life-partner and escape the pangs of loneliness, boredom and neglect.

Age factor is no bar here. They can be in their fifties or eighties. All that is needed is the will to marry or remarry. The motto is to bring back spring in the autumn of their lives.

This match-making is being done by Natubhai Patel and Subadraben Shah "free-of-cost to give a new meaning of the life to the senior citizens who have lost their partners and want to remarry", said Patel.

There are also people who have remained unmarried in their youth but want to get into wedlock to escape loneliness, he said.

"We have so far arranged the marriage for 12 senior citizens and there are others in the waiting list," said Patel, the match-maker who is working as a senior officer in a government office of the National Sample Survey.

"While many in the society may scoff at these people who have the urge to remarry even after they have become grandparents, very few empathise with their feelings," said Patel.

"How to cope with loneliness? how to spend their time and how to fill the void created by the death of their partner? These are the main problems with the senior citizens seeking to remarry," he added.

Hence, most of the senior citizens, who come forward for marriage, prefer a quite wedding fearing barbs from neighbours and relatives.

But there are instances when close relatives have brought the senior citizens to the marriage bureau asking them to find a suitable partner.

In one such instance, a young married girl from Vadodara brought her 70-year-old father to the bureau after she lost her mother. The death of his wife had made him highly depressed and lonely. Understanding that only a woman can fill the void in his life, the girl brought her father, who was an advocate, to the bureau requesting them to find a match, according to Patel.

In another instance, a girl, who lost her father, brought her 61-year-old mother to the marriage bureau to find her a suitable match, said Patel.

Another example was that of a youth who brought the bio-data of his father-in-law to find a match for him (father-in-law) as he had become melancholic following the death of his spouse.

Senior citizen men are more forthcoming to approach the marriage bureau seeking remarriage than the women, says Patel.

"We have so far received about 500 applications from men but only 58 applications from women, which explains the mindset of senior citizen men and women," Patel said.

The main reason why senior citizens opt for marriage is not to satisfy the physical urge but to seek emotional support and companionship, Patel added.

"What they seek is emotional solace in their sunset years when the children are grown up and have their own family and priorities. This is the time when they feel neglected, sidelined and suffer from low esteem, boredom and depression," he added.

"Loss of spouse at this point of life can by paralysing for the senior citizens who only wallow in self-pity and go into acute depression," Patel said adding remarriage helps them to cushion the blow.

There is also a difference between men and women in what they seek in remarriage. For most men, companionship is the primary motive while for women financial security is the prime motive, Patel said.

This is because most men, who come to the marriage bureau, have some source of income while the women do not.

They are dependent on their sons and daughter-in-laws. Hence, to escape frequent domestic quarrels and being considered a "burden" by their children, they opt for remarriage, Patel added.