Safe havens for the elderly

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 20 October 2012

I AM PRESENTLY on a holiday in my hometown in India, to spend a month with my aged parents.

The other day, for the first time in all these years, a random thought regarding my parents’ declining of health crossed my mind: Mom and dad should perhaps pack their bags and go to an old age home. There, I can imagine the instant look of horror on your face! You would want to censure me, stamp me evil and ungrateful but I am unaffected. Even if the world declares war on me, I would stick to my view and you will soon know why, and in all probability, agree with me by the end of this article.

This particular rumination hit me on October 1 — the International Day for Old Persons. And no, that’s not preposterous and mean, but, in fact, purely coincidental. Keeping with the mood of the event, reports and discussions on the rising levels of geriatric abuse and fervent calls for restoration of old-age dignity have been rife in the media. Everyone, who has a voice and conscience, has been condemning the manner in which we are choosing to treat our old people. Even in the midst of the din, I hold my own – my parents should go to a home for the aged.

Picture this: An old couple whose children live abroad, who have equally old people for neighbours and who grapple with ailments — frail limbs, failing memory and undulating vital parameters. They live in a house that needs to be preserved with regular maintenance work. They have chores to take care of that involve constant squabbling with the house help and the handy man. They have utility bills to pay and banking issues and tax returns to deal with, and worst of all, they live in the constant fear of being robbed or murdered for petty cash and jewelry they keep as their savings. It is a scenario that can incapacitate the most gallant veteran in town, and induce insomnia and panic attacks in their children living miles away in foreign territory.

Now imagine a new setting: A common abode for old people in a locality that is now aptly re-christened a ‘retirement community’, where none of the above concerns afflict them and where most of their routine affairs are taken care of. This is a place where loneliness doesn’t debilitate the mind and there is no house to maintain and no kitchen chores to do. Doctors are available to attend to any emergencies. Isn’t the very idea invigorating to our generation of overseas sons and daughters?

Of course, there are innumerable instances of filial ingratitude in our society where the old folks are trashed and trampled for the most selfish reasons, but that’s not what prods me to support the cause of old age homes. We need a mechanism that offers safety and support to our parents, because it is practically impossible for many of us to be by their side at all times. Our folks themselves desire independence and for many reasons would dispose suggestions to live under our roof as unviable. Thus, the only arrangement that can guarantee their well being and our peace of mind is a ‘retirement community.’

My earliest memory of an old age home is a decrepit building, where the unwanted elderly crouch in corners and cursing their fate. They were cast-aways who were dumped by their families and were often forgotten. But times have changed and so has the concept of old age homes. It is no more the place that children choose to offload their burdensome parents; it is where we believe we can deposit them to be kept in safe custody. It is where they can re-retire and lounge unencumbered by the hassles of a changing world and enjoy their retired life.

Viva la Gangnam style

Khaleej Times (LIFE) / 13 October 2012

It is time to play the devil’s advocate.

This article is in support of all those who thought Kolaveri Di was the coolest piece of music ever composed; for all those who have now taken up phantom horse riding for a dance form and have made gallop their natural gait; for all those who added Fifty Shades of Grey to their private library as if it was a classic that would be later bequeathed to their children; for all those who considered movies like Rowdy Rathore, Tiger and Eat Pray Love phenomenal, and thus helped them clinch blockbuster status; for all those who can’t figure out why they are being slammed for loving all these. Tastes, after all, are a matter of personal predilections over which not even one’s spouse or pet dog has any right to comment. And finally, for all those who wonder if there are species on earth left that can listen to Beethovan or Bhimsen Joshi on the weekend and read Ernest Hemmingway, Thomas Hardy or George Orwell on a flight.

Folks, this one is for you. I wholeheartedly stand behind you in your struggle to hold your own against an orthodox cluster that has made a habit of passing judgements on everything you do—from the way you dress in your slit-in-the-knee jeans, to the tattoo on your back to your spendthrift ways, to even your new methods of loving and leaving.

I understand (and I say this without an iota of malice or pretence) that you live in a completely altered environment from what your geeky uncles, aunts and professors lived in. It is banal to go into the details of your smart, sassy world, but you need a strong case to present to the old school, lest you are mauled and maligned for no apparent fault of yours.You need to tell them that you dumped what they called timeless, because you had less time. You need to tell them that what they thought was classic, rings to your ears as crass.

You are a lot on the move, and can’t care about using your head for frivolous things. Your head has other uses — to build a career, sort out perennial money woes, tackle a nagging boss (both at work and at home), climb the social ladder and much more. Amidst all these, what you are looking for is some quick fare that will revive you instantly and give you a shot of adrenaline to stay in the rat race; not sedatives that will make zombies and ninnies out of you (combat games on PS3 are exceptions). Yours is a life on the fast lane, and you can’t nod off while you are at the wheel. You need to be alert, so you tune in to funky remixes that keep you jazzed all the way.

Tell them not to ridicule your choices, because you can snigger at theirs too and ask, “Seriously guys, how do you read through books full of words and expressions that give tedious descriptions instead of telling the tale as it is? Don’t you catch cerebral fever?”

Tell them that you love quick, easy-on-the-grey cells stuff that doesn’t weigh you down with literary eloquence. So what if novels these days use yuppie language and read like movie scripts? What if the movies are a slew of bizarre sequences that follow illogical plots? What if the music you shake a leg to is bereft of lyrical quality and just goes bang bang bang? It is what you understand. It is what you can bite, chew and digest. You love burgers and hot dogs. Now if they call it junk, are you to blame?

Move over quality, welcome mediocrity. Let’s now “Oppa Gangnam Style!”

Lost in the accent

Khaleej Times (life) / 5 October 2012

MY HUSBAND and I recently got two free tickets to the latest Batman movie. Although popular wisdom and practice prescribe that anything that comes gratis must be grabbed and gobbled at once, I asked my husband to pass on my ticket. He could watch the movie with whomever he wanted, for all I cared. I wasn’t interested in watching it because I don’t, for the life of me, understand a word of what goes on in an English movie!

The last English film that I watched in a cinema was either the first or the second part of the First Blood series during the early eighties. I still can’t say which was worse on my ears — the guttural mumblings by Sylvester Stallone or the rattle of his machine gun. I was accompanied by my neighbour and family, whom I considered superior creatures for being able to enjoy the movies. But the best I could think of doing was plugging my ears and squeezing my eyes shut till it hurt, and wait for the lights to come on at the end of the movie. (One can’t even doze off with so much noise around you!)

And now decades later, I still don’t have the guts to walk into the cinema to watch an English movie. Believe me, I have let gems like Titanic and The Beautiful Mind, and magnum opuses like Gladiator and Braveheart pass, while the world was raving about them.

My friends were surprised at my linguistic deficiency and I guess they even chortled in secret. It is just a mind thing, they said. You will get tuned to it if only you started watching them, they averred, almost like one gets used to driving in Dubai. But the truth is, I cannot follow the movies, and the bigger truth I deeply suspect is, not many of them can either.

I wonder what it would be like to walk up to a non-native speaker, who has just stepped out of a cinema playing a Hollywood blockbuster, and ask him whether he understood every word spoken in the movie. Chances are — assuming they are not offended and are willing to be candid — that they will give me a coy grin and say, “Well, kinda. We understood what was transpiring.”

Now, I don’t want to spend money to ‘kinda’ understand things, especially when I can follow things almost completely free of cost in the cosiness of my living room. God bless Mr. Whoever for tagging English sub titles to movies on TV and DVDs. All right, watching classics on screen does make a sinking Titanic in the Atlantic look like a paper boat sinking in a plastic tub (especially on the 21-inch screen that we had way back then), the Roman army look like a swarm of ants and the Spiderman look less amazing and more like the commonplace gossamer spider crawling on our house wall. But at least, I don’t have to strain my ears, glue my eyes, blow my brains and yet come out of the hall completely disoriented just like I used to after our Calculus classes in junior college.

I don’t know if this issue with English movies is a woman thing, becase I haven’t heard men grumble about it as much as women. Men are probably more able to, by some strange design, able to follow the different accents of the language. Or does the truth lie elsewhere? What’s your bet on the possibility that a majority of those proficient, self-styled, non-native English movie buffs are in the same boat as me, but are merely too vain to concede that they too only ‘kinda’ follow things?

“Believe me, that’s generally the case,” a male acquaintance recently confessed.

Ah, that’s some relief! I now feel completely vindicated about a prolonged feeling of inadequacy. It’s okay to not understand English in the movies, after all.