The bell rang breaking the silence of the morning. It marked the beginning of just another routined day for these people. These people who had lived off their lives, traversed their obstacle filled paths and were now just waiting for the last hour of their life. They were the occupants of the old Age Home opposite the H.H.L. of Kolkata.
The harsh pealing of the bell shattered my trance and I stood there amidst all these old people looking into their undefeated eyes. Those eyes narrated their entire life histories, their struggles, victories and their pride. The thing, which I noticed was, there was a cloud of insecurity surrounding them all. This struck me the most. I could not bear their sorrowful and disheartening chronicles of their lives, their helpless tears. I was ashamed and embarrassed of my presence there and the thought that haunted me the most was that I could not do anything to help them ----- except console them. I wondered how mean those children must have been to dump these humans ------ ‘their parents’ into this god-damned place filled with isolation. Their minds, their thoughts and their actions were no less than those four- legged creatures. I could not help cursing them.
Each of those withered faces I encountered had a different story to tell. Their faces were battered, hand and legs had the remains of the deep-rooted wounds they had once received and their eyelids heavy, not from fatigue but from old age. They had carried their mild yoke all life long. Their eyes had still their life’s images floating in them. Eyes which were still young, intense and hopeful. Why life can’t be a little more good to them? –I wondered.
All life long, they had struggled to maintain their family, keep them safe from all dangers and yet all that had amounted to this – a life filled with gloom, darkness and terrible isolation. Is this what they deserved and that even from their near and dear ones, their sons and daughters? –No never, but if that is the case then their importance was no more than just paying bills of the household.
There were so many desires in their hopeful eyes—the desires of seeing their family all together once again, playing with their grandsons in their laps, get loved and give love in return but all these have been substituted by the unbearable pain of getting isolated from their sons and daughters, sympathetic visits from strangers and the pain of being reduced to a stranger by their own loved ones. Their faces had so many unspoken thoughts and sad tales to tell.
Their expression made me sad, very sad. A feeling of guilt scorched me from within and I didn’t know how to and what to speak to them. My first encounter was with a man who was creating some handcrafts. He was trying to spend his time. Time was a burden there. I offered him some chocolates and he took them without the slightest hesitation. This relieved me a little. I felt they would accept me. The next person I met was history personified himself. He was a soldier of the World War II who was brought to India from Myanmar. His face and hands had so many scars and fissures and one of his legs was mutilated. The man moved about in a wheelchair. He was thin and frail and his wrinkled skin seem to hang from his body yet his eyes were undefeated. He reminded me of Ernest Hemmingway’s ‘The old man and the sea’. ----- “A man can be destroyed but not defeated” .He looked quite happy to see my companions and me. We talked with him a little. Then we met a man from Bangladesh, whose son had left him five years ago and there was no news of him till then. Another man, whose grandson sold his house and took the money and went abroad and settled there. All these stories were filled with so much pain, sadness, unfaithfulness and cruelty that it was impossible for me to conceive that a son or a daughter or a near one had done all these. I thought about the people whole day when I returned home in the afternoon. The experience has left an indelible mark in my heart and I feel contented of the fact --- that I could help them, for at least one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment