"We've been all over the world, but have known contentment only here. If only we'd come sooner." THE MONGIAS, who sold their three-bedroom flat in a posh colony to move to a 425 sq ft room at Godhuli in Dwarka near Delhi

The clock in their bedroom is ticking. The day has just begun for D.S. Mongia, 78, and his wife Swarn, 72. Just like life. The Mongias are early birds. They have always been. The first to arrive at Godhuli, a five-month-old pay-and-stay senior citizens' home founded by the Servants of People Society in Dwarka near Delhi, the day they came to Godhuli with their bags, a Zen car and the key to room 201, a shower of marigold blooms had greeted them. "I felt like a hero," chuckles Mongia, frail, wrinkled and shrinking. That day, he felt eight feet tall. Four months on, the only parameter that is shrinking is time. "If only we had come here sooner," chorus the Mongias, who sold their spacious three-bedroom flat in Delhi's posh Panchsheel Park for a 425 sq ft room in Godhuli. E-mails to their three US-based daughters have never been more cheery.

Avtar Pennathur, a consultant psychologist in her late 70s, has been in Delhi most of her life. Widowed a few years ago, she's now converting her home, a three-storey bungalow-with-garden she built in Delhi's Greater Kailash-I three decades ago, into a 12-room "home away from home" called the Har-Mit Trust and Home for Senior Citizens for urban, upper class elders. "But it's not going to be an institution," says Pennathur, dismissing any predetermined image of an old-age home. "Only people who have the means but no support systems can move in." For those who wish to live in style, the home will even have suites. M.M. Sabharwal, who worked with Dunlop for 35 years, is an 80-year-old widower with no heirs. A few years ago, he pledged his 800 sq m house with a garden strip and garage in Panchsheel Park to HelpAge. It will now be converted into a pay-and-stay home, where he will keep a room for himself. Says Sabharwal: "The idea is to be comfortable wherever
you are."

"Senior citizens need model homes providing quality care." Avtar pennathur, founder of the Har-Mit Trust and Home for Senior Citizens

Sabharwal, Pennathur and the Mongias are part of a growing tribe of elders straying into hitherto unknown quarters-upmarket senior citizens' pay-and-stay homes or apartment complexes-to beat the insecurity of staying on their own in a big city with children away, domestic help scarce and, if available, totally unreliable. They are here not because they are not loved, but because they want to "age gracefully" and be "self-reliant" in a dignified environment, saving themselves the ignominy of redundancy and the possible disdain of living with children. The pay-and-stay home, which also helps preserve their proprietorial instincts, is fast becoming an urban metaphor.

Says HelpAge spokesperson Nidhi Raj Kapoor: "In the metros, elders are increasingly feeling the need for homes that provide care and an honourable lifestyle. The upper middle class is opening to it like never before." In the past two years, in Delhi alone, over six new elders' complexes have sprung up and many more are under way. These homes boast barrier-free-old age-friendly-architecture and offer in-house nurses, a novelty in itself, considering such institutions didn't admit residents with medical problems earlier.

OLD TIMES' SAKE: Delhi's Jahanpanah Club started a special scheme for senior citizens

Clearly, the public-funded old-age home has had a subtle image-makeover. Even linguistics have changed: old-age homes are "senior citizens' homes" and inmates are "residents". Says Sabharwal: "Builders are also cashing in on the need for such residential complexes." For most elders, this has meant a reprieve from cumbersome housekeeping and intimidating domestic help.

Group Captain S. Roy, 80, a Vir Chakra, and his wife Indira gave up their apartment in Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin because the domestic help was getting "out of hand". Childless and alone, the couple moved into the Air Force Association Senior Citizens' Home, founded for ex-servicemen two years ago in Tughlakabad. Today, their compact double bedroom, equipped with cable TV and a telephone, is home. No more standing in snaking queues to pay electricity and phone bills. Says Indira: "If there's a problem in the middle of the night, all we need to do is lift a finger to buzz the intercom." The home has 76 rooms and attempts to provide the lifestyle the officers enjoyed during their working lives.

For a society that's greying fast, the numbers could only go up. There is an estimated 77 million elderly in India, compared to 19 million 50 years ago. The share of the 60-plus people in the total population is currently at 7 per cent, and is expected to double in 25 years. Security is of grave concern. Police records show there were 18 registered cases of murder of those over 65 in Delhi in 2001, up from 14 the previous year. This year it has gone up. "With rising crime rates, these homes offer security over everything else," says Kapoor.

There are indications from other quarters too about the growing recognition of senior citizens as an emerging social group. The Jahanpanah Club in Delhi, for example, introduced an exclusive senior citizen's scheme early this year offering membership at subsidised rates as a means of opening avenues of entertainment. The new members now spend the day playing cards, snooker, squash or living it up at the bar. At the Godhuli home, residents hang out at the library, card room, garden and even organise picnics. There are no compulsions or deadlines.

Other private efforts abound. The Senior Citizen Home Complex Welfare Society, a Delhi-based NGO, is building 864 flats (cost: Rs 6.5-8.5 lakh) in 15 acres of land in tranquil Greater Noida. On the cards: a health centre, gym, clubhouse and swimming pool. Raghuvir Shivhare, general manager of the home, says over 35 per cent of those who have booked the flats for their twilight years are from the defence services.

It's a long walk before sunset. Back at Godhuli, the clock is ticking. The Mongias are sending out yet another e-mail. Life for them has begun at 70.