Alone & Neglected: The Fate of Many Indian Elders

October 1 is the International Day of Older Persons. As we celebrate age and living it without any limitations, we must also be aware of harsh realities like abuse and neglect. Here is one such story. Watch this space as we also bring you stories of courage, care, and resilience throughout the month.

82 percent of India’s older people are often at the receiving end of physical and verbal abuse and, worse still, neglect, often from their own family, said a HelpAge India report this year. Neglect can often be much overlooked, yet is most common. Our reader Christopher Antony, 75, shares an instance of neglect watched from close quarters as a story.

There was this young girl in school uniform hand-holding a small boy, around ten years younger than her, to a school for girls which also took in boys then, in what was called Baby Class. During recess, she would take him to the urinal, and she would help him wash up and take care of him like a parent. Next year he moved to a school for boys. He grew up loving and admiring her for keeping the house spick and span and ensuring that all at home go for the Sunday Mass in their Sunday best, a term that has lost its meaning. He is not a deeply religious or a pious person but hates to see people in Church these times dressed very casually in jeans and tees as if they have come to a place for fun and not for prayers.

She was married off to a decent man in a respectable family in a far-off and then very under-developed, sleepy village. A convent-educated girl in a traditional zamindari village was sort of a mismatch. But she decked up her married home there and was probably the best-kept house in that village in those early days. Sadly, as she grew older, she had to painfully see that the residents of that home were the least interested in taking a further interest in the house's upkeep. 

To add to her woes, she had a fall sapping her of all her energy gradually and making her almost bedridden. This took a toll on her mental health as well as her consciousness. It started deteriorating, but what was there in the inner recesses of her mind was erupting when she got a chance to talk. She mentioned how she lost not only her fluency in conversing in English but was not even confident to speak in English. She got stuck in a village where she didn't get the opportunity to interact with many English-speaking people.

When he visited her after more than a couple of years, a delay due to the Covid pandemic, she was seen peering through the window in a closed room with no others in the house. That was a painful sight. She didn't recognize him but seemed to pretend that she remembered who she was when he told her. She was smiling in the way she did in her jovial days but didn't talk in the present tense. Mother had just gone out and would be back soon, she said. He acknowledged this with deep sadness inside. She was talking about her long-dead mother! Their mother. Yes, they are siblings. He was meeting his sister after years, the same one who would hold his hand and take him to school in that image he had from their childhood years. The same one who would take care of him as a parent.

And now? Who was caring for her, he thought. Forget the dead, even some of her own living didn't seem to care. Had there been deliberate abuse of her like many elders suffer in India? Neglect is also abuse, he thought. He returned home, crestfallen with memories from childhood and beyond flooding his mind. 

Does this story remind you of any elder you may know? 

If you think an elder may need to speak to someone or read more to understand what abuse and neglect are, read here:

What is elder abuse

How to report abuse

Images courtesy: Pixabay