Old age homes are mushrooming across the nook and cranny of
Kerala, which is popularly known as God’s Own Country the world over. With age catching
up and diseases spreading among them
they become helpless and naturally turn out to be a burden to their children
who are grown up, educated and have entered the mainstream of life with
well-paid jobs either in India or abroad, get
married and become parents, the latter without even a moral prick dump
their parents in the so-called old age homes where many a old one spends his/her
twilight of their life and the aged ones are helpless and disillusioned and to
escape from boredom and painful memories, mingle with each other and share
their feelings of their sombre existence with deep sighs. Sometimes forgetting
the surroundings they go to the extent of shedding tears recalling the ingratitude
of their children whom they fed with love, affection and care and whom they
sent to schools and colleges and tried their level best spending huge amounts to
find jobs for them. With their children getting married and in due course
become parents, their parents gradually become a burden to them and mull day in
and day out about disposing their parents in old age homes. They don’t have any
reluctance to make payments to the authorities of the old-age homes to cater to
the needs of their parents. These sons and daughters often pretend to forget their
parents who raised them to greater levels and provided them with love,
affection and care are left in the lurch with the sunset of their life hovering
over their parents. These are not the cases of old people in distress. Let’s
for a moment think about those parents who are harassed, tortured and thrown
them out of their houses and leave them in the premises of temples, churches or
street sides wherever they like.
This is the case of old age parents of Kerala, the so-called
God’s Own Country.
Let’s ponder over the wretched way the old cattle are dealt
with while they were young and were beneficial to the man like cows, buffalos and
goats which produce milk, the young ox are used to plough the fields or to pull
carts especially bullock-carts and goats etc on entering old age
and turn helpless, skinny and sick these animals are left at the abattoir.
This is the case of trees like mango trees, jack fruit
trees, guava, cashew trees or rubber plants. These trees upon ageing turn less
productive and they too turn out to be the victims of the tree-cutter.
We have already mentioned the aged men and women, aged
animals and aged trees.
In this period of murky politics across India too the aged
political leaders who deserve respect and reverence who even in their old
age are blessed with vigour, strength and high spirits are shown the door by
the middle-aged political leaders and
allocate the posts of the aged leaders mentioned earlier to familiar faces.
Take for instance the recent dropping of L.K.Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi from the
BJP (Bharathiya Janata Party) from the all powerful Parliamentary Board by
Party President Amit Sha after holding consultation with Narendra Modi, Prime
Minister.
L.K.Advani, who was instrumental in building up the party
from scratch and enabled and ensured the
growth and victory of the party which later headed the National Defence
Alliance govt from 1998-2004 which was led by A.B.Vajpayee who is incidentally
ill.
Likewise Murli Manohar Joshi, who held the post of BJP
President first and Human Resources Development Minister, later has also been
thrown out.
In this world where age alone is the criterion to measure
the worth of anyone and nothing less than that getting older is something
painful but natural even if Amit Shah, Narendra Modi, Janardan Dwivedi
(Congress) and anyone for that matter. It would be a better thing if we are
aware of this universal truth.
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