Home away from home

Sixteen women. Winter white hair. Twinkling bright eyes. Knee-weakening smiles. Thoughts of being estranged from their families and age gaining ground do not seem to disturb any of them. Though for many elderly people, living in an old age home remains a dreaded concept—having to leave everything behind and staying plonked in a minuscule retirement island where the idiom “home is where the heart is” does not quite ring true—Lotus Home for Senior Women Citizens is nothing like the autonomy-sapping, clichéd image of old age homes that trails till today.

How it came to be
Lotus Home is a project that falls under the umbrella of the Maharashtra State Women’s Council. Conceptualised by Delia Fernandes, ex-president and now chairperson of the council, it was initially intended to help elderly women who were living alone and dealing with pesky landlords, as the real estate crunch began to make its way in Mumbai.

Fernandes explains, “This home was intended to help these educated women live independently and without the fear of being duped or getting kicked out of their homes.”

Celebrating old age
Living in old age homes is yet to become a common practice in Mumbai. Referred to as a “cause for joy and not sadness” by Pope Benedict XVI just last year, old age homes or “retirement homes” is yet to be accepted as a part of old age in India. So, do most of today’s youth believe that the Eskimos were right when they decided that those who were too old to hunt were nothing but a burden to their relatives and would be sent out on an ice floe, drifting out in the large to die? Not quite.

We sit with the women of Lotus Home and begin to realise that it does not take a gerontologist to find out the secret behind their happiness. We discover that one of their magical potions to reverse time is inter-generational conversations. Malini Zaveri, the first woman who came to live in Lotus Home, is 82 years old and celebrates her age like no other. Having spent the last eight months learning French, she chuckles away,  muttering “merci” every now and then. The mother of two daughters explains that with one daughter living in the United States and the other married in Mumbai, adopting Lotus Home as her own was the “best decision she could have taken”.

Hemlata Trivedi, an octogenarian, was once a Chemistry lecturer at Mumbai University. Shy and somewhat of a recluse, she takes a few minutes to warm up before showing us her Sudoku manual and her impressive mathematical problem-solving capabilities. Smiling benignly, the grey-haired woman hides behind her intellect in her 300-square-feet room–one that she calls her “safe haven”. Soon after, a quick stroll in the corridors of the home leads us to Moushumi Batabyal. Her zest for life is palpable and her appetite for Bollywood movies as well as delectable food is evident.

While Batabyal admits that the feeling of abandonment she experienced when her son and daughter-in-law, now in New York, “left her behind” was excruciating, she has now made peace with her new life at Lotus Home. The 65-year-old chatters away about her love for chicken and mutton while her Jain friend Mrs Mehta begins to talk about her veneration for Mahavir and garlic-free food. The dichotomy of thoughts in the room is gut-busting and yet, the sense of harmony that reigns is overt.

Leaving emotions aside, are old age homes that bad an option for senior citizens, who need to be looked after? Maya, the caretaker of Lotus Home, explains, “Given that most children are living abroad, it is the best solution for the parents—they can be taken care of in a friendly and safe environment.” She does not call it an old age home and the residents concur. They refer to it as their “retirement home”, where their independence is respected and in fact, encouraged. The clichéd ideas about old age homes have long been perpetuated, especially in India. They are usually associated with loss of privacy, dignity, individuality, independence, self-esteem and more–Delia Fernandes believes that Lotus Home in fact dissipates all of these feelings.

Waltzing out, a feeling of overwhelming poignancy hits us as Maya Malkani, the 94-year-old resident of Lotus Home, bids us goodbye–her charm is inimitable, her ear-to-ear grin match the sparkle in her eyes, epitomising the very essence of celebrating the elderly.