Loneliness

Loneliness

I was fortunate to work under many honest, efficient and able bureaucrats. They used to be visionary, meticulous and ensure proper implementation of the programmes. During the fag end of my service career I worked under a Principal Secretary, who was not only dynamic and efficient but also a hard task master. The one quality that outshines all other qualities was his compassion for humanity. I am yet to find an administrator who is more humane, more considerate yet so strict.

One day he rang me up and said, “How about starting a Computer training programme for senior citizens?”  “I could not get you Sir.” I replied. He explained, “We have thousands and thousands of pensioners. In Bhubaneswar alone you will be finding multiples of thousand. Have you ever tried to understand their problem? Imagine the unmitigated loneliness they suffer and how silent they have become in their sadness. If they could communicate, chat and see their children or could use Skype to converse- how easy it would be for them to find a new meaning to their existence. They could also use internet banking, e-payment of utility bills and a lot.” I was dumb for a few seconds. “We will do it Sir”, I replied in a choked voice. “How many days you will be taking to design the module?” “Sir, I will have to consult the computer faculty but I am sure it can be ready within two weeks.” He agreed.

 We designed the module, well below schedule, within a week. The Principal Secretary was delighted. He advised me to provide the logistics so that it would be easier for the pensioners to participate. That is how the Computer Training for senior pensioners took its shape. I was told, such a programme was first of its kind in India. I do not understand much of statistics but what moved me deeply was the compassion of an administrator and his sincerity in mitigating a human problem which we always experience but conveniently ignore.

While designing the module I remembered the experience of one of my closest friends in managing his aged mother. His mother, in her late seventies, has been confined to the wheel chair for about five years. To add to it she has turned deaf a couple of years back. She had been frantically craving for uninterrupted human company ever since she became immobile. She needed a person to talk to. The maid had a horrid time, in absence of suitable company, because she had to face the volley of questions. My friend stays at Bhubaneswar. Whenever he visits her she asks about the Bohu Ma (Daughter in Law) and her intended visit to her place. My friend shows two fingers indicating within two days. She rebukes him by saying, “You are a liar. You had promised the same thing last time too”.  My friend, who is a jewel of a son, tries to give her as much company as possible but he has various other compulsions too. Had she been a computer literate, as we intend to turn the elderly persons in our computer training, those agonizing moments of loneliness could have been addressed to.

The Computer Training programme was a huge success. The participants, ranging from age- sixty-five to eighty- were ecstatic about their new-found skill in communicating. The childlike joy, in their faces, was worth watching. New expectations were visible in their eyes. They profusely thanked us for the initiative and implored us to extend the training programme to five days in stead of three days

There was television coverage of this programme in shape of news clip and I was asked to explain the reason for initiating such a programme. I told them that we are concerned about the emotional isolation of senior citizens. Most of us feel helpless in our old age. The senior citizens knew nothing to fall back on to extricate them from this impasse. Now they have technology to support, to communicate and to declare to the world that they exist, that too with dignity. They are no longer isolated nor do they feel lonely. That precisely answers what the programme is.

I do not know what will happen twenty years down the line. Would I be helpless? Would I be left alone?