Loneliness of the old... and young

SOCIETY

Now that my husband and I are faced with the prospect of losing all our grandparents ""save one "" in the space of three years, our thoughts have increasingly turned to life in the older years, and its problems. Nothing, it seems, is a bigger issue here than loneliness.

While our parents' generation in India is the first to have a choice by way of luxury "retreats" "" versus old-age "homes" "" where they can lead a life of independence in the company of people their age, the preceding generation has neither the same mindset nor choice.

The fortunate among them, or so they believe, are still taken care of by children when they are no longer able to run independent establishments. But usually, even if all material comforts are provided for, this involves huge emotional adjustments; at the least, a shift from comforting routine to the facelessness of a life spent watching others.

My grandmother, for instance, who has had to relocate from a smaller town to our busy metro now spends all her time in a tiny room watching religious channels on the telly. She doesn't go out: Our choice of entertainment "" movies or restaurants "" obviously bore her. And she's afraid to even walk by herself in the apartment complex because, well, lifts are not her thing.

She also finds our social behaviour puzzling: People don't drop in on one another frequently enough, neighbours don't know each other, the servants have airs (!), and if there is a wedding in the neighbourhood, we choose to shut out the noise rather than to participate. You may think of this as being provincial but it is easy to empathise with her isolated and bored life today that is quite contrary to the socially-integrated existence she led most of her life.

Loneliness, of course, is seen not only as being an older person's problem but also a product of the "West" and its way of living. Vedic lifestyle, as we know, advocates Vanyaprastha, or retreat, literally into a forest, for those in the last stage of life.

This would be an ideal solution (in the absence of joint-family set-ups, no longer feasible) since journeys through forests, after all, can cure many modern maladies "" except that forests are scarcer and sparser than in the days of the rishi munis, and the modern-elderly would, no doubt, prefer civilised hospitals to looking for wild leaves and berries to cure themselves!

Levity aside, we must recognise loneliness as also not being limited to the elderly. A survey, reported by the Washington Post last year, revealed that a quarter of Americans had no one to discuss personal troubles with. We know there are similar pitfalls in India too.

The role of technology in this regard is interesting. While it has undisputedly bridged spatial disconnects, emotional ones are not quite aided by the likes of Orkut, Facebook and other social networking sites, as many would imagine. A random survey among my own colleagues showed that most only logged on to check for new postings and a majority didn't actively scout for "friends".

This is somewhat contrary to recent reports in the media that suggest that, indeed, there are people desperate enough to send themselves "invites" from fake i-ds, only to augment their friends' lists. Isn't this a measure of our urban loneliness?

Japan and Korea (with high percentages of ageing populations and societies that have transited from being traditional to Westernised) have the highest measures of lonely populations.

But here, it is not just the old but also the young who are isolated. An increased access to technology is often blamed for that. Is that going to be the case in India?

When I think of all the times that I have bought virtual pets and beer for people online (instead of having a party at home) and joined communities like "Justice for Nitish Katara" and "Freedom for Burma" that I have never gone back to (instead of participating in, say, real vigils or whateverelse), I realise the worth of real engagement with other people. It may help, for one, if I logged off and started talking to granny instead!