Life reloaded at 60-plus

If it’s travel for some senior citizens, it’s novel activities that lend colour to life after 60 to quite a few

December 23, 2017 11:12 pm | Updated December 24, 2017 07:22 am IST - KOZHIKODE

Dance studios are bustling with activity with eldrely women choosing to join zumba and other modern dance forms for a relaxing experience

Dance studios are bustling with activity with eldrely women choosing to join zumba and other modern dance forms for a relaxing experience

For the majority, desolation marks the landscape of ageing. For them, it is a retreat from the front yard to the backyard of life, literally and figuratively, a phase of painful transition from a state of power to powerlessness, from being the provider to the provided, from the world to the self. In a State that is all set to have roughly 20% of its population above 60 years of age, the demographic transition brings with it many challenges, at the level of policy, provision and personal choices. But it is not a bleak world for everyone. There are some who have decided to keep their lives in their personal control and use the break from the fetters of employment and home building to pursue their passions and add new meanings to life.

Sixty-one-year-old Jayasree Sanker, who retired from the Agriculture Department a few years ago, is effectively juggling her passion for travel, fitness and learning along with her domestic commitments. At one moment, she is in her Sanskrit class fulfilling her long-cherished dream of reading the scriptures in the original. The next moment, she is planning a new adventure with her friends. After the Himalayas, Kashmir and Lakshadweep, she and her friends are about to set off to Ujjain very soon. “Now I have to budget my time well in advance to have time for my darlings,” a beaming Ms. Sanker says.

Saraswathy Venugopalan, at 79, is another bitten by the travel bug. With her friends in the ‘Sthreesamajam’, she had been to Bali, Singapore and Thailand. The experience of having got stranded in Kashmir a few years ago in the floods and being rescued by the Army have not dampened her spirit for exploration. “I have a few more places in my bucket list,” Ms. Venugopalan says, clearly telling her peers that you have to chart your own path in a world that increasingly moves away from you.

Shake a leg

If it is travel that some have chosen to give a fresh turn to their lives, some others have decided to try out novel things to lend some more colour to their life’s palette. Like shaking their legs, as they do at newly sprung up dance studios in Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Some, especially women, have chosen traditional dance forms, picking up the threads that they left behind as they turned homemakers. Others, though a few, have taken courage to join Zumba and other modern dance forms. At one of the dance studios in the State capital, one can catch the sight of a former Central public sector company employee try out the steps and intricate gyrations with instructors and other dancers still in their teens.

In Kozhikode, Giridhar’s Dance Studio is bustling with activity and the legend on the door says it all: ‘Keep your footwear outside, your age too’. “The first words that come from senior citizens who come to me are about their age. They think they are too old for the movements that we make them perform. I would invariably ask them to forget it,” says Giridhar Krishna, who has been running the studio for the past one decade.

There are at least half-dozen senior citizens learning Kathak at Giridhar’s Dance Studio. A few others are into dances that one normally gets to see in Bollywood movies and contemporary dances. Mary Krishnan, who started learning Zumba along with Bollywood dance and Kathak six months ago, is 55. Mary dropped her yoga lessons when she started learning dance. “I never imagined it to be such a relaxing experience,” Mary confesses, as Rupa and Ashadevi, both in their early 60s, chime in with their endorsement.

Some of the elderly in Kozhikode are rediscovering the children in them at Kalasala, a music school run by sisters Sheeba and Sheeja Kalasala in Kozhikode. When 35-year-old Sheeba calls ‘makkale’ (children), 175 aged voices answer. It has barely been a couple of years since the sisters started free music classes for the elderly. “There were 145 registrations on the first day,” Sheeba said. The students here eventually formed the Kalasala Senior Citizens’ Cultural Forum, which celebrated its first anniversary recently. “I feel I have dressed up for an action song at kindergarten,” says 62-year old Lissy, one of the students, just before stepping on to the stage to perform ‘Varaveena Mridupani’ with her new classmates.

Fancy for gadgets

Unlike what many think, technology has too has come in handy for many of the elderly to turn around their lives. Some of them are very active in social media and have up-to-date information about the latest gadgets available in the market. C. Balan, a retired schoolteacher in Kozhikode, purchased a new smartphone just two months ago because the phone he was using for two years was inadequate to support the gaming app he fancied. The new phone is faster, more efficient and makes his endeavours in the social media easier.

Mr. Balan is an active member of the senior citizens’ forum in the city and the latest gadgets are one of the main topics of discussion for him and his friends in the forum. He purchased his first laptop at the age of 65 and is now well connected with his old classmates and fellow members of the senior citizens’ forum through various Facebook and Whatsapp groups. Some have tried to master the new gadgets, very much like the new generation. Mr. Raghavan, a retired bank employee in Ernakulam, is the technology consultant for all his friends. He is the one whom they turn to for everything from booking railway tickets to hailing a Uber cab. He is the unofficial tour organiser for the Bank Retirees’ Club, booking hotel rooms online for the best available prices.

Mr. Balan and Mr. Raghavan might seem like islands in an ocean. But they tell the world that given enough disposable income post-retirement from active employment or business, one can make life meaningful in many ways.

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