A Prose Ode to Old Age

                                                   

                                                    A  Prose Ode to Old Age

All the world is a stage

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts

His acts being seven ages.

These are lines from Shakespeare where he goes on to describe the seven stages of Man (used in the generic sense)starting as an infant and growing through different phases of life  as a boy, a lover, a soldier, a  grown up wise man, an old man with weak eyes and voice and finally ending his life history and  going into oblivion  “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste ,sans everything”.

As a young student, I used to doodle these seven stages without ever thinking about the day when I would arrive at the penultimate stage or the last phase of my life. Today at 75+, I know I am almost in the last phase, though by modern standards and modern medicine, I can pull on to the nervous 90s even if I fail to score a century.

Though I still do not feel I am 75+ in years (on the contrary feel as young as I was in my 40s and 50s) nor acknowledge that age is creeping on me despite the odd signals I get of aches and pains here and there, many of my well wishers and other sexa -and septua -genarian friends look at me as an elderly person and confirm it by offering me gratuitous advice about the wisdom of moving into old age home, euphemistically known as Senior Citizens home. It is during such moments that I begin to think I am in the last rung of the ladder and no longer belong to the rom.com age. But I do not know ( and for that matter no one knows) where I will be heading soon - towards heaven or hell. Life is a macro snake and ladder board and when we reach the last horizontal row at the top and roll  the dice, we cannot foresee if we will  hurtle down from the top to the bottom, sliding down a snake towards the lowest row on the gridded square board . It is in one’s best interest to keep hoping to climb up the ladder than roll down a snake.

When I go for my morning walks (to prove to myself that at 75+ I am fit and energetic) I often compare myself with many of the walkers of  my age - some with stick, some with wobbly legs and some supporting themselves on  spouses or servants - and wonder when I will become three-legged or weak kneed or need  support  to go on  my rounds.  There are weeks on stretch  when I do not see one or two of the regular walkers I get a disturbing thought that their names must have been stuck off the life register . But on the day the missing walker surfaces, my heart beats rapidly that all is well that does not end.

Contrary to the general perception that our progression in years marks the gradual regression of our physical, mental and intellectual abilities, the golden years bring with them the wisdom of experience. Age like the leaf mellows before it withers and falls. It is often noticed that a grandpa is less dictatorial to his grandchild than what he was towards his own offspring.  Based on our experience and accumulated wisdom, this last phase of life should  mark a graceful acceptance and tolerance of the new age trends and manners even when they are at odds with the old traditional mores.   Wisdom lies in recognizing and accepting change that is an inevitable part of life. As a teacher who had taught for more than four decades, I can affirm say that a teacher remains young because s/he has had the good fortune to be connected with the younger generation for a major part of his/her life. The laughing, joking, talking, of young people  with a happy-go-lucky attitude, unconcerned and unworried about ‘the fretful fever and stir of the world’, is a sight that reminds us of the glory and freshness of our yesteryears. It will be a pity if we feel that those days have passed and despair about the loss of  our youth.  Instead the nostalgia on seeing the young should help us to say (to quote Wordsworth)

   All the earth is gay

       Land and sea

  give themselves up to jollity

  And with the heart of May

  Doth every beast keep its holiday

   Thou, Child of Joy,

   Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts,thou happy

    Shepherd-  boy!

    Ye blessed  creatures,I have heard the call

    Ye to each other make; I see

    The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee

     My heart is at your festival

     My head hath its coronal

    The fullness of your bliss, I feel -I feel it all

Wordsworth’s rapturous ecstasy is undercut by thoughts of grief that things he had seen, he could see no more. However towards the end of the poem, he recognizes the immortality of the glory and freshness of the past that would sustain him in the years past his youth.

Born in a Hindu family, I have been taught to renounce the world as a practical way of coping with old age. The concept of Vanaprastha ingrained in us from our early years exhorts old people to  retreat from worldly life to facilitate the transition from worldly (material)to spiritual life. The concept of old age homes probably is a spin- off of this concept with a difference- instead of a retreat to a forest, these homes promise a retreat to a 5 star splendour.

I think that involvement in daily activities with detachment( that is no expectation of any personal gain) is a better way of coping with age rather than retreating from the world. With the store of experience and knowledge that one has garnered over many years, this is the time to reflect on them, modify them factoring the new generation’s views, values and attitudes and communicate the same to the younger generation orally or through writing. This is the time to pursue activities that we like in a leisurely manner. Attending to one’s needs without dependence on others is indeed a blessing. If such a blessing is not conferred on us, it is better to use one’s limited capacity in a cheerful way so as not to be a wearisome burden on others. Keeping oneself physically and mentally occupied is a possible means of coping with old age problems. I have a neighbor who is 80+ and had fractured her hip a year back. She now moves with the aid of a walker, but remains cheerful, receives visitors, keeps busy with reading books of her interest and everyday writes one hundred and eight times “SriRamajayam” known as Likitha Jap or Writing Meditation. This gives her  a complete sense of surrender to an inner conscience and peace while writing the golden words. She thus exercises her fingers while engaging all her senses in the service of the Lord. Detachment is not renunciation but not seeking  personal glory or gain while performing one’s duties to one’s limited potential in old age.

In the West, old age and death have proved the subject of many writers. The Christian poet, John Donne  in the 17^th C mocked at death both in his love sonnets and religious sonnets.  He speaks of the power of love – both secular and divine- that will defy death and live eternally.

All other things, to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,

Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

The triumph the lovers proclaim here defies the state of flux it affirms.  It is death that shall die as for love there shall be no death.  This is what is known as Hesed, in Kabbalah, the Jewish school of thought- God’s covenant of love for men and women. But the West ‘s approach to old age  in the modern era is a mix of nostalgia and despair.

 T.S.Eliot’s Gerontion is an old man who deplores  aging, aridity, physical and sensual and sexual  decay and despairs of a life of emotional sterility, devoid of faith  and spiritual vitality.  The poem ends  with the couplet “Tenants of the house/Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”

The Irish poet, W.B. Yeats’ Among School Children is a poem on the worth and value  of life in the context of time’s toll on our physical being and the inevitability of death. Looking at the gaunt image of his past lover, the once pretty young woman, he wonders whether his mother would have imagined her son when he was a baby on her lap that he would  fall in love with this old woman before him , withered, shrunk and who has seen sixty odd winters. The disturbing question of how to reconcile with the ravages of time makes him agonize the most basic of all questions about the worth and value of life. He understands that just as a tree cannot be separately viewed as  “the leaf, the blossom or the bole,”  or “the dancer from the dance”,  life must be viewed with a “brightening glance,” seeing the beauty in its entirety.  

Yet another Irish writer Samuel Beckett looks at life as one of repetition: “When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (He jerks the rope.) On!” To move ON is Beckett’s answer to the vicissitudes of life as a TINA factor.

There are many ways to approach old age with dignity and courage. The wisdom of great literature is “something of the strong light of the canonical, of that perfection which destroys” all our fears, worries and despair as we move on in years before the last post is sounded. Let us recognize the power of authority that one finds in the great classics and seek a transfer of power from the writers to ourselves. As I finished writing this piece more by way of  instilling  courage to walk the last few steps, I received this line from a friend on my mail: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Well that seems to be the right clue to the problems of gerontology.

Broom Vrooms: Reflection on Brooms day

The visit of the Prime Minister to USA turned more to be a media event with “who is who” of the Indian media in full attendance in New York. New phrases came into Hinglish circulation such as Namoste, Namomerica,  Namobama  to  complement the Namostuti  of the frenzied NRIs gathered in the M(o)dison  Square Gardens to meet the new Rockstar. The coverage was not without drama as the media revelled in the slapgate episode involving the rockstar of Indian media, Rajdeep Sardesai.  For one whole week, the desi Indians back home had practically no home news(even the IPL faded into oblivion) as the entire newshour was devoted to Namodiji in USA.  It seemed as though his visit to USA( and certainly not a maiden visit) was like a visit to the mars or the moon or any other planet. One newspaper had eight pictures of the Prime Minister’s different sartorial get-ups for different occasions. Every word that he uttered, every gesture he made, every step he took , every handshake  and every embrace he made were vividly captured by all channels to demonstrate that Modi wave has crossed the pond and that too so well as to eclipse the Obama wave of yesteryears. In fact the Indian media felt that this vast contingent of NRIs would outvote Obama in favour of Modi in popularity. The media’s raptures can best be reflected in these lines adapted from Shakespeare’s Richard II when the reigning monarch felt uneasy about the way his rival, the future Henry IV courted the people:

Observe his courtship of the NRIs;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on his admirers,
Wooing them  with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune

of his rise from a lowly chaiwala to esteemed Prime Minister,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his hands in Namaste to the gasping crowd
men,women and children  bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his chappan-inch chest ,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;

Join me to make your motherland Swaccha Bharat”
The NRIs in ecstasy wished their adopted country was in reversion his,
And Modi their hope if ever they contemplated

 a return to the native land.

Modi did not wield his broom in USA. His voice vroomed and mesmerized the NRIs living thousands of miles away from unswachha Bharat and who admired and worshipped him as he spoke of cleanliness is next to godliness. Nothing was expected of the NRIs to lift a single finger(leave aside the broom)  to cleanse Modi’s Bharat( not theirs) and everything was offered to them- a hassle free welcome for their yearly jaunt to Bharat for the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas(Non-resident Indian Day).

Back home, Modi took over the broom and made the broom do the talking on the dirty roads and lanes of Delhi. Nine stars were requested to join his campaign that included the Bharat Ratna Tendulkar and two of the celebrated Bollywood Khans.  Brooms vroomed on Gandhi Jayanthi putting to shame the whole battalion of Municipal workers whose undone work affirmed Gandhiji’s famous quip that India is one big latrine. The media squad that had accompanied Modi to US was still sleeping off the jetlag and those at the helm of the TV studios highlighted the new photo-op of many leaders along  with Modi with broom in their hands , much to the consternation of the AAP Party whose symbol had been usurped by Modi  for the day. Gandhiji on his birth anniversary was not remembered or eulogized for peace, nonviolence, harmony, tolerance, forgiveness and pluralism. As Radhakrishnan’s birthday is observed as Teachers Day, Pandit Nehru’s as Childrens day,Indira Gandhi’s as National Integration Day, Gandhiji’s was tobe known as the Cleansing(Brooms) day. The silent Modi with broom exemplified that the broom is mightier than the word.

Post Gandhi Jayanthi, the brooms have fallen silent. The roads that had been twice cleaned the previous day -first by municipal workers  and later by celebrities  are back to their original state. The silence of the brooms is shattered by the vrooming of the bikes and cars, the honking of buses and scooters. The broom wielding celebrities have gone away and Swachha Bharat has been left to the Municipal workers till the next Gandhi Jayanthi or the next Cleansing(Brooms) Day.

"Embracing the Other" in Gandhiji's Teachings

                                      “Embracing the Other” in Gandhi’s teachings

                                                                                                                                

What do we mean by ‘the other’? ‘The other’ is a utility word that can be used as an adjective, as a noun, as a pronoun and as an adverb.The core meaning of ‘the other’  running through all these usages is “not the same one or ones already mentioned or implied”. All through life at different times, in different situations, we engage with the other both internally and externally. When the self struggles with conflicting ideas, the engagement with the other becomes a part of the self. On other occasions, when the self is challenged externally with regard to ideas, ideologies, perspectives and decisions, the other is seen as apart from the self-as being different from or alien to the self. Thus the other is either a part of the self or is apart from the self.

This means that as human beings we are genetically wired to ‘the other’ where ‘the other’ is the opposite of ‘the same’. Where there is an ‘I’, there is a ‘you’ and where there is an ‘I’ and a ‘You’ there is a conflict. The ‘I’ is always in conflict with the ‘You’ as no two human beings are alike. When the ‘I’ gets extended to form groups that band together on different lines such as class, caste, religion, nation, ideology etc, the ’You’ is present as the  opposing ‘other’ resulting in conflicts among people with their  allegiance to different faiths and beliefs. All major conflicts arise out of the clash with ‘the other’ and ‘embracing the other’ is one of the greatest challenges for every human being.

Conflicts in contemporary times span a wide range of issues. Conflict ensues from a state of opposition between persons, ideas or interests.  Given the fact that there is no single view or interest that is common among diverse people belonging to different nations, cultures, religions and gender, conflict cannot be wished away. Since we have been gifted with the faculty to think and articulate our individual views, opinions and interests, it is not an exaggeration to say that we are genetically tied to the other and thence to conflict.

The concept of the other assumes urgency in the 21^st century in the context of the unprecedented violence and unrest affecting different parts of the globe and severely impacting civil societies and humanity at large. The turn of the New Millennium saw a group of suicide bombers bang up the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and snuff out three thousand innocent lives besides inflicting a disastrous fall-out on American economy and the global markets. It brought to the fore the fatal animosity between two groups-one founded on religious fundamentalism and the other founded on material civilization. Benjamin Barber refers to this as “Jihad Vs McWorld”. India had also witnessed suicide killing ten years earlier when the nation’s ex -Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber. The 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, four years after 9/11, and the 26/11 attack on the iconic Taj hotel in Mumbai in 2008 were a repeat of suicide-cum-terrorist bombing that had gained mindless acceptance among uninitiated minds as the only means to assert one’s faith or ideology or doctrine against the ‘others’ who did not subscribe to it. In the present century this method of killing oneself in the process of killing hundreds of anonymous victims (who have no personal or collective animosity against the suicide bomber) has become a heinous and reprehensible tool in the hands of naïve, artless and unsuspecting minds, brainwashed to believe in killing and dying for a specious cause. India has in recent years seen the rise of Naxalite-Maoist insurgency killing hundreds of people annually. There are many parts of the globe today such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Gaza, Ukraine etc., that experience violence, bloodshed and barbaric savagery- seemingly a throwback to the primitive ages and to the unleashing of primitive passions to settle scores with the opposing groups. The only difference in today’s encounter is the striking use of fatally superior weapons often labeled as WMD or weapons of mass destruction. This is what Sartre meant when he said: “hell is other people”. Sartre said this in the context of three conclusions he had arrived at:

 (a) human beings are inextricably linked together

(b) human existence is intertwined with other people and

( c) When one cannot relate to the others, existence becomes hell.

Can we allow our existence to be hell?  Can there be a halt to inhuman barbarity that we see all around? Can innocent minds be restrained from acts of violence and inhumanity against ‘the other’ on account of fallacious reasoning, unsound arguments and delusory dogmas? Can the future generation be educated to explode the myth of fraudulent and erroneous beliefs so that humanity is spared the blushes of primitivism? The only answer to halt this pernicious spread of hatred and violence and to resolve the conflicts that arise out of a clash of with ‘the other’ on religious, social and political issues  is to cultivate a catholic, liberal and all inclusive views and beliefs nurtured by tolerance and broad-mindedness, empathy and magnanimity- in short to cultivate humanity.

How do we chart a new path that resolves this clash between ‘I’ and ‘You’ or between ‘We’ and ‘the other’- in short how to embrace ‘the other’. It is axiomatic to affirm the fact that there is no new value on earth to be discovered. Value is nothing but the meaning we give to life. Man (I use it in the generic sense of being human) has to create the values that make man, man. Everyone has to make his/her choice and willing to accept responsibility for the way that choice will impact others. This is exercise both of freedom and responsibility.  To live means to be involved in a situation in which one must make a choice ethically, responsibly and without arbitrariness. Sartre says: “In choosing ethics, he makes himself” and explains:

“The only way of creating a human community is to accept the human condition- that we exist, that we must work, that we are mortal, that we are involved, that we must choose, and that in choosing we invent ourselves and take full responsibility.”

These words knit well, but when one tries to follow them, they fall apart. It is here that we have to take lessons from the lives of great men and women who have proved that it is possible to make a choice without shirking responsibility- a choice that helps us to embrace others. Gandhiji  was a living example who by his words and actions made his choice that was an ambrosial mixture of courage with conviction, religion with reason, strength with  forgiveness, tolerance with firmness, openness with rootedness and above all love with compassion.  Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability and above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule. In this process he eschewed violence and hatred. 

In the peaceful struggle he led – not against the British, but against the British rule, -he said: “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.” He believed in the Swaraj and said “All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is surrender.” The fundamentals that he believed in were morality and non- violence. This gave him enormous moral strength which he said was far superior to the strength derived from physical capacity. His strength came from his indomitable will- the will to achieve one’s legitimate goal through ethical means. He said “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” The will to achieve self rule or Swaraj was his noblest and highest form of selfishness for freeing his countrymen from an alien rule. His values are the products of his will to moral power that made him a man out of the welter of men.

Gandhi derived his sustenance from his faith in humanity. “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” This is the message that we in the 21^st century should understand and follow. A few insane terrorists cannot make the whole of humanity evil. It is wrong to castigate a whole religion or community for the sins of a few radicals who employ terror as a political and religious weapon. The uniqueness of Gandhiji lay in his ability to marshal the goodness of humanity and make it a potent force to counter a small minority of terrorists. He said:  “I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.” Gandhi’s message is not just one of tolerance towards others who are different from us but one of accepting and respecting the others as well as their ideas and ideologies.
Gandhiji stood like a colossus who had the capacity to give and receive strength and whose words and action strongly influenced the freedom movement. He had no hatred even for the few misguided groups that took to violence. He said: The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” He never wanted anyone or any group or any nation to remake the world in the way they believed in, because the beauty and splendour of the world lie in its pluralism. The greatness of human beings, he said, did not lie in reshaping the world as according to their perception, but in their ability to remake themselves according to the demands of the world.   The best way to accept ‘the other’ even if the other is different in all respects is through love and empathy. He spoke about the power of love. “ Power based on love,” he said, “is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.” He believed in the “I and the “You” for the two are the two sides of the same coin. Coming 2000years after Jesus, Gandhi admired Christianity and its teachings whose cardinal principle is “love thy neighbor”. Embracing the Other is possible if we learn to accept fellow humanity. In Hitopadesha, it is said:  “Ayam Nijah paro veti gananaa laghuchetasaam udaaracharitaam tu vasudeva kutumbakam” (The thought that one person is related to me and another is not is that of the narrow minded. For the broadminded, however, the whole world is one family) This concept of Vasudeva Kutubakam is what Gandhiji affirmed all through his life and this, he felt could be possible if we accept, respect and love our fellow beings.

I will be false to myself and to you all if I do not say what my young nephew and niece told me when I was attempting to write this paper. They are young in their late teens reaching adulthood in the next couple of years. They were skeptical about the power of love in the present  world where individualism, materialism, selfishness, fundamentalism, greed and violence dominate , where obedience to authority overrules obedience to one’s instinctive responses, where violence cannot be countered by non violence, where all relationships between I and you are  impersonal relationships that hinge upon mutual benefits that accrue from it and where ‘embracing the other’ is more a slogan than a reality. Though initially devastated, I understood the validity of their doubt and explained to them that  I-thou relationship should be based on mutual trust and love. Marriage is an exemplary bond between two individuals. Through marriage one enters into relationship with otherness, experiencing its response. “Real marriage leads to vital acknowledgement of many faced otherness- even in the contradiction and the conflict with it.” (Martin Buber) In a similar way I and others who I meet in different situations are also interwoven and this is the basic structure of the body politic.  In accepting otherness, I-thou relationship gets mutual trust. One of the best ways of generating trust is through dialogue. It is in the dialogue that we can open ourselves to the otherness of the persons we meet and interact at different phases of our lives. In place of the present day dialogues with AK47 rifles , we have to enter into genuine dialogue with the other or others in which each one of us, the participants keep in mind the presence of the other or others and turn to them with the intention of establishing a  living mutual relationship between them and us. This means seeing the other as not oneself, but as someone different but nevertheless communicating with him. This also means confirming and acknowledging the other even while differing from him. It is this acknowledgement of the other as an authentic human being that develops trust and love. In the process we authenticate our own existence.

I ended my dialogue with the two young persons with a quotation from Soren Kierkegaard, the 19^th century Danish philosopher who wrote in his Works of Love:

 “There are a you and an I, and there is no mine and yours! For without a you and an I, there is no love, and with mine and yours there is no love but “mine” and “yours” (these possessive pronouns) are, of course, formed from a “you” and an “I” and as a consequence seem obliged to be present wherever there are a you and an I. This is indeed the case everywhere, but not in love, which is a revolution from the ground up. The more profound the revolution, the more completely the distinction “mine and yours” disappears, and the more perfect is the love.”

Gandhi’s message is his own life that nurtured and preserved the bond of love and trust among all fellow beings. In the wake of increased consciousness of the human potential for destructiveness, Gandhi has charted a new path towards global community. His life is his message and the message he has left as his legacy is to embrace the other to cultivate humanity.

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