Parvati's day starts early. She's up at the dawn chorus, out for a brisk walk with friends. After a quick shower and breakfast, she checks her e-mails and replies to the more urgent ones. At nine, she's on her way to the neighbourhood school, where she teaches high school physics part time. She returns home for lunch, and spends the afternoon in front of her laptop, checking out the posts in online groups. Parvati is extremely active on a number of forums, and her take on various problems is actively sought out. Evenings are strictly reserved for family. Every so often, her select group of friends and neighbours meet over coffee to compare notes about their children.
It's the typical lifestyle of many suburban women — but with a difference. Parvati is 65, and lives in a retirement home. Her husband is dead, and she regularly meets up online with her three sons and their families. All three live abroad.
Parvati belongs to the baby boomers generation of India — the first generation after the world wars and Independence. They were among the first set of women to get university education. Many of them were the first professionals in their families. They were the first to limit their family size; the first to see their children opt for nuclear families and the first to finance their own stay at retirement houses.
The technological boom has certainly changed the country. There are more jobs, more money and more opportunities to work abroad. And, consequently, there are many parents with most of, or perhaps all, their children living at a considerable distance away.
Things are not quite as difficult when the parents themselves are active. Of course, they miss their children, and are plagued by the empty nest syndrome faced by parents world over, but they still do have their own careers; their own interests, there are visits to and fro, and there's the comfort of familiar things.
But it becomes exponentially difficult as the parents get older. The big “R”, retirement, inevitably comes along for the working ones and their careers stall. In spite of their best efforts to keep themselves busy, quite a few parents fall into a rut of missing their loved ones around them. Travelling suddenly seems to be much more difficult at 65 than at 55; and even the thoughts of grandchildren do not always compensate for the cramped legs and mediocre food that have to be endured for hours. Staying abroad for good does not seem a viable option for many too for, though their children want them there, the parents are likely to be too old to transplant themselves into alien soil. Things get much more complicated when they happen to lose their spouse. Bereavement is difficult at the best of times, and is even more devastating when there aren't any children or grandchildren around.
There are many such folks around now — highly educated 70-somethings, feeling utterly blocked by a solid wall of loneliness brought on by the loss of the spouse, and compounded by the absence of children. They plough on resolutely for a while, keeping themselves active, pursuing interests they never have had time for earlier. But eventually the strain of maintaining a home and the stress of being alone get to them. Many face the same stifling loneliness as Parvati, who once told me, “I'm afraid I'll forget how to speak.” So they overcome their horror of “old-age homes,” and move to retirement communities.
But though they weaken physically, most of them retain their mental faculties remarkably. For instance, most of the residents in Parvati's retirement home are tech savvy. They chat with their children and grandchildren almost everyday. Skype, Facebook and instant messengers are bywords here. And just like the generations before them that shared expertise gained over long years, these folks dole out advice to younger generations too, albeit virtually.
They are all members of varied online groups or forums. They spend the time that suddenly seems so plenty to help the younger generation. It could be related to their field of specialisation. Parvati, for example, mentors other teachers in an online group. Another doctor friend offers advice to younger doctors on a medical forum. Many of them are active in social groups that are more or less agony aunt columns. They advise young brides on how to cement a marriage; they assist young mothers with ancient home remedies; they painstakingly type out varied prayers for the busy young matrons keen on maintaining their identity in an alien land. The baby boomers of India have become the first generation of grandparents to successfully wield a computer mouse, and they make use of the same technological boom that carried their children abroad to keep in touch with them.
It's easy to assume that these parents have been abandoned by their children. But reality is not quite as simple as that — it's never clean black and white; there are always shades of grey. The children, too, are quite often torn by decisions — do they move back to be with their aged parents who are reluctant to part with their familiar surroundings, or do they stay on in their chosen place with their own children, who refuse to move from their familiar ground? Many of them ultimately do move back, once their own kids are old enough to lead their own lives. But it is a tough choice, and situations vary with families.
Meanwhile, we'll probably see many more of Parvati and her ilk online — grandmothers who are out in the virtual world, beating loneliness by doing what grandmothers are best at — giving out advice.
( The writer's email id is: gayatripon@gmail.com )
