I am no different from others. Any thought about ageing disturbs me; and yet I understand it is the price one pays for having lived a long life. The only alternative would have been an early death, the absolute negative that admits of no leeway. Then old age has its own advantages. You are able to see the impermanence of the make-believe permanent world around you – your friendship, your job, your likes and dislikes, even your personal attributes. You can talk as much as you want, even if there’s no one around to listen to you. Old folks talking to themselves make an absorbing sight. You can lose yourself in the lanes and bye-lanes of your memory, what if your varicose legs refuse to carry you across the service-lane of your house. And you can give to others what you have been laying up all along – money, things you don’t or won’t use anymore, and, of course, gigabytes of advice – to all and sundry. Senescence may have robbed me of the joys of youth, but I still want to partake of the sumptuous feast that is life. Is there a via media to relish the ripeness of age? Till Death cometh?
‘Yes, there is one. Be a son to your father!’ This came from Kaga Bhushundiji.
‘But Kagaji,’ said I, ‘my father passed away half a century ago. That is one thing. I am myself a father’s father, a grandfather. That’s another. Tell me what to make of your fantastic advice.’
‘You take my words too literally, son. Try to get at the spirit behind them. You are not clear in your head what bothers you the most about getting old.’
‘Fear. Fear of disease. Fear of helplessness. Most of them all, fear of being left alone.’
‘Tell me what you did as a child when you were afraid?’
‘I went seeking out my father who I thought was the toughest person in the world.’
‘And as you grew older?’
‘As I grew up, I gained confidence. It became a matter of self-esteem to face the world on my own terms. And Kagaji, who has the leisure in this busy world of ours to be afraid? Or the luxury of a child to seek comfort from someone else?’
‘Then why are you afraid now?’
‘Oh, I’m an old man now.’
‘I see. Time has worn out your body and robbed you of confidence. You are afraid like a child that has lost its father in a crowd.’
‘Where do I find him then, a father to my old age? Can it be my son?
‘It depends on how good a father you have been to your child. If you have reared him as a fellow human being to be with you in the thick and thin of life, he will be with you. If not, you will have to rue your lifetime’s failure.
‘My son loves and respects me; though there are times he does not pay heed to me. We argue a lot.’
‘It is only your fault, son. You cling to him. You try to impose on him. You behave as if you have done him a great favour bringing him up, educating him and getting him married.
You expect returns. If he does not meet your expectations, you thrash him with words as you used to thrash him with a stick when he was in your charge; forgetting that the position is now reversed and your son has become a father in his own right.’
‘Kagaji, I sought your advice and here you are scolding me for my wrongs.’
‘If you don’t see your wrongs, how will you right them, hain? Nature has fortified the parent-child bond with the glue of affection. The world imposes its own obligations on you to nurture your children, and on them to give you the necessary support in your old age.
Where does the question of doing and receiving favours come in? You have only to ward off the tendencies that weaken the sacred bond that exists between you and your child.’
‘You are an old crow, Kagaji, too old in fact to realize that grown up children seldom stay with their elderly parents and give them the necessary support. They go away to set up their own homesteads.’
”An immortal like me never grows too old, son. It’s only you who seem to be dazed with age. Your anxiety about your son leaving you shows that you are ignoring the one who has been always with you – your inner self.
Learn to enjoy your self’s company, for he is your ultimate father and will be you always.
Kaga Bhushundi SpeakEth
Suman K Sharma
With him being there, you neither need to have the fear of loneliness nor the compulsion to seek the companionship of anyone else.’
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