'WHAT HAPPENS NEXT'

'what happens next'

'what happens next'

Old age is a time when we need the love and care of our loved ones most. However, in our country some old people are put in homes for the aged and are conveniently forgotten by their children. While the government has built special homes for the elderly and provide them the care they need, it is no substitute for one's own home.

I was on my way to visit a home for the aged during a school trip, wondering how I would feel when I saw them and how they live away from their families. I have heard and read a lot about the good care of old people on TV and magazines but this painted a much nicer picture than the reality I found.

We spoke to the patients and heard about the food they are given and the place they live in and I found their plight tragic. One old man cried as he told us how he used to sacrifice everything for his children and his children's gift to him in return was to throw him in the old-age home, never to visit him. They all long to return to their homes and live with their family. They feel cheated after all the years of love and care they had given to their children, but their children seems to have left them to their fate.

These homes are for those who are childless and do not have anyone to look after them. Surprisingly, in the homes for the aged, there are many inmates who are put there as their children find them a burden. I remember a photograph published in a newspaper about some of these old people and reading about an old woman who said she was thrown out of the house by her son just to please his wife! While an old handicapped man was put in one of the homes by his son to get rid of the burden of looking after him. I am shocked at these happenings.

None can deny the parents favor upon their children. The parents are the underlying reason for the existence of the child. They have reared him in his babyhood and experienced painstaking efforts to provide full comfort and sound well-being. Your mother had you in her womb while you were a parasite there sharing her food and whole being for nine months. It is a preliminary stage followed by incubation and breast feeding for two years marked by peculiar fatigue and hardships. The father, on his part, is meanwhile also fully engaged catering for his child and bringing him up, not sparing any sort of instructions or guidance he could provide his child with; the child, meanwhile, a helpless creature neither harmful nor useful to himself.

Mrs Allan is 91 years old. He walks with a slight limp, has wrinkles in his face and one would think that this is a man who is waiting to live out the last days of his life wallowing ...