Books: India's Elderly; Greying India

INDIA'S ELDERLY
BY S IRUDAYA RAJAN, U S MISRA AND SHANKAR SARMA
SAGE
PAGES: 475
PRICE: RS 356

The three authors dedicate their book to their wives and children (neat one son, one daughter families) and not to their parents or to the elderly in India! Who will look after India's elderly (60 plus) population as their number swells to over 100 million by 2012? The state cannot take care of all the elderly, the pension schemes are only for the privileged few. There is a pathetic scheme for giving an allowance of Rs 100 per month to the destitute old. Examples of the community taking care of the old are abysmal.

With the adoption of small family norms, the probability of sons taking care of old parents constantly declines. Indian society does not favour parents living with married daughters. Living with married sons invites a tale of miseries. Old age homes are not favoured anywhere. With the cracking up of the joint family system, even brothers and sisters may not be of help in old age.

The book puts together a comprehensive profile of the elderly based on census and NSS data, supplemented by the results of an ageing survey conducted by the authors. It is enriched by 15 case studies on life histories of the elderly in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Orissa.

The authors compute an "index of general feeling" based on 13 questions asked to the elderly about their handicaps. The first five (negative ranking) are as follows: children do stay with them, 72.9 per cent; not enough money for housing, 71.1 per cent; nobody to prepare food for them, 70.2 per cent; nobody to help in times of need, 70 per cent; nobody to help when sick, 70 per cent.

The 15 perceptive life histories tell more than the 150 pages of statistics. Take the case study of a widow who does not stay with her son because of "the behaviour of the daughter-in-law" and chooses to stay with her elder daughter -- who decides to remain a spinster to take care of her elderly mother.

AUTHORSPEAK
MAURA MOYNIHAN

Karmic Yankee
Getting high on a trip called India

Nothing could be more "corny", said Andy Warhol, than "agonised, anguished art" that seeks to uncover hidden depths. But his protegee and friend Maura Moynihan would obviously beg to differ, at least in so far as the art of writing is concerned. The author of Masterji and Other Stories (Roli) attempts to probe the hidden layers of Indian society through a complex interweaving of the interaction of foreigners and Indians in India. For this American, who hopes to attain Indianhood in her next life by virtue of her karma -- "Everything about India is so wonderfully familiar. I don't feel very much at home in America. I feel like an exile and an outsider" -- writing short stories is another way to cement her love affair with India.

The affair, which began at 15 when her father Daniel P. Moynihan was posted as the US ambassador to India in 1973, continued through her undergraduate years at Harvard and was strengthened when she met the Dalai Lama and two Tibetan monks who had been severely tortured by the Chinese. India acquired a new fascination for it not only "gave the world Buddha and Gandhi but also gives shelter to the Dalai Lama". Says Maura: "My life was changed forever. I knew I had to do something." That something was working to help Tibetan refugees and she is currently a consultant to Refugees International, a Washington-based NGO. The lady is a Jane (let's be politically correct here) of all trades -- she sings, writes lyrics, studies dance and paints too -- each of which reflect her two obsessions, India and Tibetan refugees. Her lyrics, for example, are in Hindi and Tibetan as well as in French and Italian.

Her stories are unabashedly based on her persona as well that of her friends. To give her due credit what really strikes the reader is the grasp of the Indian psyche. A quarter century in and out of India has served to tune her comprehension of the thought process of surprisingly varied levels of Indian society -- from the bitchiness of high society dames struggling to rise in the social strata ("Visa") to the aspirations of a servant in a white household ("A Good Job in Delhi"). However, after the second story the writing tends towards the tedious and the characters are just that -- they do not metamorphose into people, an essential prerequisite if the interest of the reader is to be held. And the depths of Indian society remain unexplored. Warhol may have approved.

-Manjari Chatterjee