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Yoga Varta May-June 2007

OLD AGE PROVISIONS !
by Sadashiv Nimbalkar

If a human being lived long, aging is sure and certain and disability to old age is also certain. In Indian culture, joint families are favoured. In the olden days such joint families were seen everywhere. However, due to the Industrial Revolution, the whole social set up has changed. Big cities have come into existence and the people from the villages are flocking to the cities. Small families instead of joint families are seen in the cities. The old and disabled people in the joint families were honoured and served by the other young people. However, the scene was transformed. The old and disabled persons have become a burden in the small families. The young people are sometimes ashamed to introduce their fathers and mothers to their young friends. They try to avoid such occasions.

The old parents are treated as subordinates and they are kept away from the guests. Some wise young people send their old parents to the Homes for the Old such is the pitiable condition of the old people in the modern age. In a way, they are treated like animals and not like respected human beings. Very few and rare exceptions are seen in the present age.

In a district town one family was living happily. Vijay and Arundhati were the husband and wife living in their ancestral large house with a ten year old sonGautarn and seventy five year old father, Sitaram. Vijay was a brilliant I.A.S. Officer serving as Assistant Collector. Gautarn loved old Sitaram very much. Sitaram used to tell him stories from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Panchatantra, Badshah and Birbal, etc. at night. Sometimes, he used to play cards with Gautam. Gautam used to sleep with his grand father many times.

In the beginning, Vijay was respecting his father and introducing him to the respectable guests dining with him at the dinner parties at his house. He was proud of his father who was a well known professor. However, as Sitarambecame old, his hands started shaking. He was not able to hold anything steady in his hands. Many a times, the food material used to drop off at the dinner table and Vijay felt ashamed about this.

For solving this problem, Vijay and Arundhati made a separate living and dining arrangements for Sitaram at a room at the back side. One table, a chair and a cot were kept in that room. Separate eating arrangement was made in the room. Gautam was very much attached to his grand father. He felt sorry about such separate arrangement for his grand father. However, he was not able to talk about the same before his father and mother. One day Vijay saw Gautam making two tables and chairs at the back yard. He enquired Gautam, "What are you doing?" Calmly replied Gautam, "Two small dining tables and chairs. I learnt this in the school." "Why?", asked the father, "is there an examination of carpentry at the school?" "No, father, I have made one for you and one for mother." said Gautam. "We have already got good furniture", said his father.

"This is not for the present", said Gautam, "some day, you and mamma are going to be old and disabled, and so this is an old age provision for you and mom." Vijay understood the meaning and brought father Sitaram to his old arrangement.

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