Subir Roy: When the sun goes down

OFFBEAT

An old woman lives on the pavement before our house. Her clothes are shabby, just short of rags. She wears thick glasses, always sits quietly and never asks for money. I pass her at least twice a day when I go to the nursing home to see my mother.

My mother is there for a long list of ailments, all traceable to old age. Consultant visits, cardiology and pathology tests, medicine lists that get longer "" this makes up her day as well as ours. Our one hope is she will recover enough for us to take her home for the pujas, but that is not to be.

I keep asking myself how the woman on the pavement will end her days. She is not as old as my mother, I tell myself. But the truth is she only does not look as old as my mother. The real age of her semi-starved body could be anybody's guess. My mother is, of course, nowhere near as badly off as another old relation. We all keep praying that her suffering will end soon. It does, right when the pujas are about to begin.

In between the nursing home visits, I call on an acerbic old academic whom I have known and respected for long. He and his aging wife are delighted to see me. Who remembers us old people these days, he says with a laugh. His mind is still as sharp as his writing but the hallmark arrogance is gone.

What comes across is their loneliness. Whichever way you hold your views you manage to displease somebody, so there are so few with whom you can have an honest-to-goodness argument, he says. That's odd, I say. My friends and I have violent arguments all the time but we remain friends. That's the point, he replies, most of my friends are gone. I don't know what to say.

As my holiday is about to end, I make it a point to catch up with another powerful intellect whom I have equally respected over the years. He cancels an appointment so that I can meet him in the time I can squeeze between the nursing home visiting hours. He is thrilled that I have managed to locate his latest book which I ask him to inscribe.

He talks of another book he is working on, we share notes about how good different publishers are. I bounce off him a book idea I have been nurturing for long. True to himself, he adds a valuable historical facet from his knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome and asks me to explore that angle too. We agree that we have had a great adda as I get to leave.

Then he quietly drops a bombshell. We have to sell this, he says, pointing to his beautifully done up house, and move to an apartment. Why? Negotiating the stairs is already difficult. Then what will one of us (he and his wife) do in this big house when the other is gone? I leave thoroughly depressed on a puja day when the whole world seems to be happy.

Is the world full of only old people, I ask myself and almost desperately turn to our children. Our college-going daughter, who will shortly be returning to her hostel, demands a pizza when I offer her a treat. So much cheese is not good for anybody, I am about to say but check myself.

Later on our grownup son declines the drink I offer him at the club and asks for a coke and then another. This is pure junk food, I almost blurt out, but let him go ahead.

Both of them seem to have unbounded confidence in life, lifestyle and food habit concerns be blown. The world has not suddenly grown old, I realise. Old people and the need to cheer them up are becoming more and more a part of my world.

subir.roy@bsmail.in