Old age, said noted poet Nazir Akbarabadi, is the deadly foe of every charm. From morning to night, and somehow from night to morn, life is a sad song. Not quite, preaches life. In Delhi where everybody has a deadline to meet, real or imagined, some day take some moments out to see how our senior citizens are filling in the vacant spaces of our city, the blanks of our life.
Some upwardly mobile men might be caught up in the corporate snakes and ladders, others reduced to couch potatoes post-office hours. Most little boys think of nothing but cricket at the sight of a park. But it is the grandpas and grandmas who are making the best use of the free spaces the city still offers.
It is not unusual to find men, in the sunset of life, stealing a few sunny moments in our parks, in our public spaces. And women, too old to be match-making for their kids, too young to be left sitting by the window at home, come down to the parks as well. Some come alone, most in groups, one or two in trendy sports wear, most in salwar-kameez with nothing like an exercise to jog their mind. Yet the camaraderie is to be seen to believed. Some men water the plants in parks, others bring their little ones out for a stroll. Still others jog along, aching back, wobbly knees and all. Of course, there are those who use the park for a little siesta, a narrow stretch of shade just about enough to keep the scorching afternoon sun at bay.
Come evening, some of these men play cards. Earlier in the day, they had used the same bench to talk of what’s ailing our nation over folded reams of the day’s newspapers!
All that is fine, but didn’t we grow up with sights of love birds in the parks, at least in places like Purana Quila, Lodi Garden or Buddha Jayanti Park? Well, some of them are still there, most have shifted to the lap of history, and inside the Safdarjung tomb, Humayun’s tomb, Tughlakabad and Mehrauli ruins… All this leaves the parks and open spaces, well, open, for our senior citizens. It is their turn to make hay, sun shine or moon gleam.
