Touchwood

I had written this for a book but it didn't get published. I feel proud to share this with my friends:

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I was reading the newspaper sometime back (a rarity for me), and I saw the statistics that in Chennai, only around 25 percent of the old people are economically independent.

And I was struck by the fact that in my family, 100 percent of the old people – my parents and in-laws – belong to that category though they may not have been part of the survey.

My mother is the youngest of those four people at 69 years. She started teaching music sometime after she was 40, after her three children had grown up, and is not ready to retire yet. Till she was about 64 years young, she insisted on using the public buses. A very bad knee forced her to consider autos – but that was the only concession she gave herself. Today, come rain, come sun, she is busy from 10 in the afternoon to 8 in the night, teaching music. Her students include housewives who come in the mornings, office goers - she teaches in the Income Tax office to working women during lunch hour, and school students from after 3 – both at her own house and in other people’s homes up to a radius of 5 to 6 kilometers. To meet her, you need an appointment.

My father, a seventy-three-year-old retired government employee, waited for retirement to enjoy life after having slogged at the customs and central excise for all his employable life. His goal was to catch up on the music programs that happen in the city, and evenings find him in one auditorium or the other. But to me, he has grown into a hero of a different sort. During his youth and my growing up years, I don’t remember him “fathering” me much except as the breadwinner. But since I started my own family, despite a bypass and an angioplasty, I only need to call him and he comes running to take care of my young children as I rush off to pursue my career or my passion – dance. My husband complains that I am stressing my father out. But my father simply says, “I am able to do it. So you don’t worry about it.”

Now I need him less, and he has found some translation and proofing jobs that keep him busy. Pension keeps him independent of his children. Recently, he released a CD of his songs - TV Debut - and this has spurred him to write some more.

My mother-in-law, seventy three, is also a music and veena teacher, who, despite having a back problem, cannot dream of giving up her work. Though she teaches mostly from home, her commitment is first to the classes and then to everything else.

But I leave my father-in-law for last not only because he is eighty-one-years-old, but also because only this January, we forced him to retire. He abounds in restless energy and uses his bike to commute short to medium distances. Even after he officially retired, he has been working steadily. He was last Vice-Principal at a spoken English training school. Even after he quit there, he continues to take classes on Saturdays at the institute.

Seeing their positive attitude to life and work, it is difficult to tell them to rest and relax - they have adapted their lifestyles to cope with their physical limitations while still using their mental faculties and talents.

I think all that the current generation and the next one can hope for is to keep this spirit going.