Portrait of Ageing: A collection of essays to better understand age-related complexities of elderly

Those living with elderly parents might agree. At least most of them would.

The first brush with old age is not when people actually reach the eighties, or nearabout, but when they start dealing with aged folks at home. In a changed “situation-ship”.

That’s what author-journalist Priya Sahgal says in a chapter she contributed to A Portrait of Ageing [Destiny Media], a collection of essays about the complexities of old age. It’s a fascinating and personal account of living with an ageing parent and provides another perspective to the many the volume offers about something unavoidable.

According to Sahgal, people in their fifties, or sometimes even earlier, suddenly discover a change in relationship where parents are no longer the “decision-makers” but dependent upon their children, not merely in terms of taking medicines, keeping appointments with doctors or dealing with joint pains but also in matters of filing income tax returns and handling bank accounts, etc.

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The award-winning journalist, educated at St. Stephen’s and Welham Girls’ School, says these realities dawned upon her when she saw her mother in her early eighties struggling with her dentures and other ailments. “The buck stops with me because I have to take her to all those missed appointments. The buck also stopped with me when I got to her bank account,” she writes. “Although her physical wounds healed in time (a hip fracture, surgery and another hospital stay for the inevitable Urinary Tract Infection that followed), she was never the same again. In the process, somewhere, she lost her self-confidence and sense of self. And became increasingly dependent on me.”

It’s an account as candid as can be, yet sensitive, and never patronising. Nor does Sahgal try to moralise; rather, what comes through is self-criticism. If the tone is emotional, it is because of the subject.

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Sahgal reflects upon herself and how a demanding career as a journalist with a strong sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which had her forever searching for that elusive story and that exclusive interview, had effectively shunted her mother to the periphery. “If only I had paid more attention to her daily phone calls or read the fear and loneliness in those very brief SMSes she typed out each morning with the same repetitive message — ‘Good Morning, I am Alive’,” Sahgal says, her sense of regret coming through clearly. “In her own way, she was trying to tell me something, and her overqualified daughter with a Master’s in English Literature failed to decipher that one text that was so much more important than all the Shakespeare and Wordsworth put together.”

The Portrait of Ageing is a fascinating collection of essays written by Prof. Romila Thapar, Hasan Suroor, Shubha Menon, Dr. V. Mini Giri, Uma Chakravarti, Malashri Lala, Rami Chhabra, Saba Mahmood Bashir, Dr. Kakul Hai, Sohail Akbar (Photo Essay), Nikhat Bhatty (An Album of Ageing) and Zarina Bhatty, who has edited the volume. The book takes readers through the inevitable complexities of old age, addressed through different lenses.

If Priya Sahgal’s essay is a personal account of her “situation-ship” with her mother, others offer academic insights into the psychology of ageing or the representations of ageing in popular cinema and television. There is also a photo essay and an album on graceful ageing for those who believe that a picture speaks a thousand words. The authors and the editor, Zarina Bhatty, need to be complimented for bringing out a thought-provoking and genre-defying volume about growing old and which should find resonance with both the young and the aged.

Sahgal says she was wrong in her thinking when she and her brother felt they were doing their mother a favour by not troubling her with their day-to-day concerns. “We thought we were sparing her when we answered her query of ‘How can I help?’ with a ‘No, we can manage!’.”

Looking back, Sahgal thinks these were wrong responses as her mother did not want to be spared but needed; the assurance that she had not become irrelevant. “We thought that having worked hard all her life, we should now give her a break and let her watch her favourite TV shows. But all she wanted was for us to engage [with her] and not to be left to her own devices. Now I make it a point to regularly seek her advice on a problem ‘only she can solve’. And she loves it.”

Sahgal writes with a tinge of sadness that her mother is now on anti-depressants. “I only wish we had started these sooner. The signs were all there before the fall [that led to a surgery]. We made fun of the fact that she would watch reruns of her favourite serials but never try something new. Even if the old serials had a new season, I had to first screen them to see that none of her favourite characters died, and only then would she see it.”

“She stopped going out, and her only visits were to the two neighbourhood banks, where she went every week to update her passbooks.”

Sahgal also says that she noticed her mother would seek comfort in little cafes where she sought companionship among strangers. “When I asked her why she didn’t catch up with any of her friends or relatives, she replied, ‘everyone looks happy until you ask them how they are. Everyone who is alive is dealing with some problem or the other’. So, she would rather retreat to the world of NCIS and The Mentalist (both TV serials) that guaranteed happy endings than face the reality that those she cared about were hurting.”

Is that a belated realisation?

“I realise that now, but at that point, I let her be. I didn’t push or question her when she stopped dressing up but preferred to dress down and stay home. This is the same mother who was always well groomed (and had the looks to match!) and never lacked confidence. This was the same mother who didn’t think twice about barging into the office of the Principal of Modern School as a young widow and ensuring both her kids got admission,” Sahgal says in one passage.

Equally moving is another memory — from Sahgal’s early days as a journalist with Sunday magazine. “This again,” Sahgal writes, “was the same mother who landed at my office at the Sunday magazine in a pink flowery raincoat at 5 pm one day because it was raining, and she had splurged on a cab so that she could pick me up and get me home safely before the streets got flooded. Of course, I refused to go with her and ended up battling traffic jams on a crowded bus an hour later.”

Growing old is not easy. Sahgal says her mother has given her an important lesson to avoid growing old at all costs. “The most formidable challenge is to ensure that in the entire process, neither you nor the parent loses her sense of self. This is not a time for building regrets but for creating memories that will see you through your old age. Having said this, let me confess it is easier said than done — but if handled with care, you can get that all-important crossword right.”

The writer is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed are personal.

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