Two weeks ago in Bangalore, a friend’s grandfather went missing. The 95-year-old was at home, and while his daughter was dealing with some salesman who had dropped in, the grandfather picked up his wallet and walked out of the house. It might have taken about 10 minutes before they realised he wasn’t home. They searched the immediate neighbourhood, asked the security guards and neighbours if they had seen him, and when there was no sign of him by late evening, they began to panic. The police was informed, they set up road alerts and my friend bandied together a group to search a wider area. He wasn’t found.
The following day, she set up a social media campaign. She created a Facebook page, sent out requests that her grandfather’s photo be shared widely. The page went viral, many thousands re-tweeted the details on Twitter. They searched hospitals and nursing homes. He was nowhere to be found, no one had seen him. Day two faded out, day three faded in. Hope shifted shape and took new forms. If any news was considered good initially, by the third day, the lack of news started becoming something to cling on to. And all the while, my friend and her mother found several ways of blaming themselves for what happened. Because her grandfather was a sprightly 95-year-old, the neighbours assumed he was simply going for a walk and saw nothing amiss about the fact that he was alone. In January this year though, he had fallen in the bathroom and although nothing serious happened, he was beginning to lose his memory. He tended to fade out once in a while. My friend’s mother had spent two decades in the cause of looking after her husband. In the last two years especially, her life revolved around making sure he had his meals and medication on time. They had wondered about whether it was better for him in an assisted living facility. But this is India, our values don’t approve of ‘shunting’ out our elderly, and even as they flailed at the edges, they thought no one could look after him better than them, despite the fact that there were likely to be small, inescapable lapses. This provided them adequate reasons to justify beating themselves up.
Day four passed with no news and so did day five. The Facebook shares and Twitter mentions added up exponentially. A lot of calls came through mentioning sightings of the grandfather, but they all proved to be false leads. On day seven, a news story about the disappearance appeared in a local tabloid. That morning, a teenager had gone to the local park for a jog and noticed an old man cowering. He asked him questions but got no replies. He offered him some food from a kiosk nearby, but the man declined that too. He went home and read the paper and it occurred to him that the old man at the park might be the same one in the story. So he called the number mentioned. My friend went to the park, searched everywhere and found him trembling and delusional in a far corner. They rushed him to the hospital where he is now recuperating.
It is incredible how a 95-year-old turned up nearly 20km away from home. It is a wonder that he spent seven days outdoors and although hungry and tired, is otherwise fine. “The most positive thing to come out of this,” my friend says, “is the generosity of friends and strangers. People helped in all kinds of ways. Friends in the city helped by joining the search teams. Friends outside Bangalore got their city-based acquaintances to help. And I was surprised that quite a few people who called me or messaged me had similar experiences to narrate. It gave us hope.”
It is significant that plenty of people had had similar experiences. The number of elderly who go missing in our cities is rising at an alarming rate. The Bangalore police informed my friend that this is a very regular occurrence. As our cities grow and change rapidly, their elderly are left dazed and confused. They often move to the city to be with their children and find themselves alone in an alien environment. We hardly have any sidewalks, and where we do, we barely make room for them as we rush past to our important meetings in our important lives. But worse than all this is the stigma of seeking help. Anyone who thinks of an external living situation because they are unable to look after the elderly is immediately cast as an ungrateful progeny. It is no wonder that a study by HelpAge India published in June this year found that 50 per cent of the elderly face abuse in their homes. By 2050, about 20 per cent of the population will be elderly, and these problems are only likely to increase. The stigma of paid professional care is a relic that we need to shed fast.
“While friends and strangers helped, the extended family has spent the last fortnight blaming us for having lost him,” my friend says, explaining why she doesn’t want her name revealed. The Indian family is a much-lauded support system. But often, it comes at the cost of unmitigated insensitivity. As demographics and lifestyles change, it is time to look beyond the cliché of the family being the ‘fabric of Indian society’, and reassess what’s best for us — the young, the old and those in between.
(Veena Venugopal is editor BLink and author of The Mother-in-Law . Follow her on Twitter @veenavenugopal )