A friend Whatsapped that an airline was offering huge discounts to seniors, just as I was planning to take a short trip to Delhi.
When you get ancient, everyone is nice to you and for some reason treat you like a baby and you pay only half price on planes, trains, but never on Uber.
(Jokes apart, the taxi aggregator offered me cheap rides for a couple of weeks not because I am decrepit, but because I am a frequent traveller on Uber since I had vowed never to drive in India after being traumatised by Bangalore’s traffic).
Now for the first time I have noticed that there are elderly folk in the world, after having lived in the Arab Gulf states where most of the population (between 30 to 50 per cent) were young people under 25 years of age.
“Where are the old people?” asked my mother-in-law, on her first visit to Dubai, maybe scared that there was a law against getting aged and whether she needed to dye her hair and get a facelift while she was shopping in one of the malls.
It was like living in one of those futuristic cities where time has stood still and where everyone is young and innocent and where the evil ones live underground and are deficient in Vitamin D.
“The grey-haired ones are all sent to Europe for R & R in the summer and they come back looking refreshed,” I said, and my ma-in-law looked at me with a big question mark on her face and then turned and looked askance at her daughter.
So, it was refreshing coming to Bengaluru and seeing flyers all over downtown that were offering work, for retired people only. “Finally, someone realises how important is the knowledge and experience of the seniors,” I told my wife. Blank expressions
“I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, ‘Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes’,” said my wife.
“Hope there will be no campaigns against the elderly just like those against the migrants, who the young people think are taking away their jobs,” I said, worried.
When I go with my wife for a brisk, creaking walk in the evening before it gets dark, we see many of the aged being led out of their houses by their caretakers for a quick shuffle of feet down the street. When they reach the end of the street that merges with the highway, the wise ones stand and look at the fast-moving cars with blank expressions on their faces.
Then they are led back to their homes along with the dogs who were also taken for a walk and who were excited about meeting their neighbours who bark all night long.
“I don’t trust that airline,” I messaged my friend. “The last time it kept us on the runway for hours and refused to take off. I think I aged a lot that day,” I said. “And they do not even have a separate meal for seniors that is easily chewable and does not give gas,” I said grumpily.
I have also noticed that most newspapers in India have a separate section for the aged and it is full of news about people who have “left their earthly sojourn”, or taking their “final rest” or that woman who was “whisked away by destiny”. There is too much happening in this section.
But unlike in Toronto, Canada, where the Koreans and the Taiwanese have taken over the undertaking business and send you lovely brochures of walnut wood coffins with velvet cloth finishing inside, there is no such merchandise being offered to the seniors here in India.
“There is a huge market for various funeral services,” I told my friend. “We can offer senior, sorry, deceased discounts,” I said.
Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. You can follow him on Twitter @mahmood_saberi.
