Is your MOM cared enough?

     India is an ancient country. We have a history of thousand years. In many ways India ,as a country, is a grand-mom to almost all other countries in the world. In a pleasant contrast we are also a country of young people. According to World bank report published in 2012 every second person in India is young ( person of working age).  But it doesn't mean that rest all are old; remaining population is made of older or younger people. My specific interest was in knowing how many of them are old which typically means people above the age of 60 years. And data shows that 10% of them are old. It means every tenth person in India is old and this percentage is growing every day. By 2040 every eighth person in India would be old and then onward there would be steep increase in the number of elderly people around us. Are we, as a country and society, ready for this demographic change? Unfortunately answer for this question is big "NO".

     Our countries infrastructural and socioeconomic changes are in fact creating a very unfavorable environment for elderly people. If I have to state a few major problems then they would be...

1. Cost of Living and Medication 

2. Marginalization by society which is prominently young

3. Stress of lifestyle mismatch with current generation

4. Weakening of family bonds 

5. Psychological side effects of loneliness

6. Elderly unfriendly infrastructure and provisions  

7. Virtually non-existent elderly care system            

      All these factors have assumed big enough proportion to be looked into and addressed. Time has come that we proactively look into these issues and start creating necessary awareness about the elderly care which in turn may lead to favorable government policies, better focus from NGOs and possible attention from business community.

    My friends we owe so much to this grayed population; now time has come to return the favor. 

MICRO AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I characterize myself by a prime time TV character, Homer Simpson. I am amused by the similarity of this character, or rather exactness of this character, with a character called me. In fact I started suspecting that author has developed Homer after carefully studying me and my lifestyle. My suspicion forged into confirmation when I saw this picture of Homer Simpson. 

The reason I am sharing this is very simple, I intend to set your expectations right. As a brainless chap I lived a very insignificant life and following is a brief account of the same.    

I was born to a school teacher and a house maker. Being their first child they had lot of expectations from me. But I was quick enough to set their expectations right. My father detected my brain paralysis (or rather absence of anything called brains) in my early age . For my mother, it took some time to come to the terms but eventually she accepted the fact. Being a mother she was little more patient but years later my choice of bride has confirmed the condition to her. 

I have two siblings; a sister and a brother. They are twins who collectively carry the load of the very same expectations which my parents earlier had from me. All three of us did our schooling in a small town from Maharashtra and went to same school. Me and my school never had a cordial relationship. We always had differences of opinions on what is right on what is wrong, especially in the context of answers to exam questions and behavior in general. Obliviously I, being meek and week, was always overpowered by school. This resulted in less than poor performance at school and less than zero appreciation at home. 

My existence in school was so much insignificant that I am merely remembered by anybody in the school. To quote an example, my class teacher of six consecutive years , who would eventually become my mother-in-law, was so much so unappreciative of me that she had to be reminded of me when her daughter re-introduced me to her. She could relate to me only when it was told that I am elder to my younger brother and sister who also studied in the same school. Obliviously my parents were not wrong in resting their hopes on my siblings. 

After my schooling I did my diploma in mechanical engineering and by some strange coincidence landed in National Chemical Laboratory(NCL) which is a reputed research lab of India. I joining NCL was a reason strong enough for my relatives to question the credibility of NCL. During my NCL tenure most of the time I was doing nothing; there I was a total misfit among those scientists, chemists and PhD aspirants. I survived there for a year and later made a switch to information technology sector. One biggest advantage of IT industry is that jerk like me can easily hide himself in a crowed and can still claim contribution to success under the disguise of teamwork. IT industry was kinder to me it and it continues to provide me my bread & butter & pizza & McD Burger & many more such essential things. 

Later I married to my long time girlfriend who had special preference for dumb husband. She had a belief that dumb husband is easier to control than the smarter one. She was a smart girl and she always believed in conventional wisdom. Understandably, falling in love wasn't difficult for me because being dumb comes naturally to me. 

A Couple of years letter we were blessed with a daughter who is six years old now. Recently I overheard her talking to her mother; she was referring me as brainless scarecrow from a popular children story book, "The wonderful wizard of oz". This book features a Scarecrow as a character which is in search of brains. That day my life came full circle as I was being called by the same name as my father used to call me by, BRAINLESS. Of course, this time, along with truth, there was lot of innocence in it and I loved it.

Note for the personalities mentioned in the story above: Please do not feel offended if you find your mention untrue and far from the reality. I wrote this blog as a creative writing exercise; I have no intentions to hurt anybody. It was just a fun writing for fun reading. :-) 

Image Credit: photobucket.com