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Friday 22 July 2011

Sunset Hour for The family


wednesday, january 31, 2007


The sunset hour for the family

By Punam Khaira Sidhu
For his class assignment, my younger son — all of 11 — had to visit an old age home. The cheerful unaffected young boy who put his best cub reporter foot forward emerged from the experience a sombre young man after a poignant set of interviews with the city’s senior citizens.
The old age home was clean, and the management had tried to provide a home away from home. But was it really a home? Tears clouded the eyes of the inmates in response to my son’s query: why don’t you live in your own house or with your children? Each elder was a living epitome of an emerging social trend. The days of Shravana, who carried his parents on his shoulders, are clearly in the realm of legend today.
Nothing is more debilitating for a relationship than dependence. These are not times to test the time honoured bonds of love and respect. Stresses and tensions abound in the lives of urban professionals due to hectic work schedules and children’s requirements. The first casualties of high stress are relationships with elders, perceived as redundant or unproductive.
Acquisitive consumer lifestyles, with both men and women working to support them, have meant that the authority of elders is completely undermined. Unlike in the West, where parents ask children to find their own place after they turn 18, Indian parents live each day planning and saving for their progeny. Before student loans became more easily available, almost every Indian parent effectively sacrificed the present to provide for the child’s future. Many a desire was forfeited with a smile. Wants and comforts took an altruistic backseat to fund children’s aspirations. Is it unreasonable then for them to expect to be looked after in the sunset of their lives?
My father often called us, his children, his best investments. Do these investments pay off? Or is it time for parents to shed their altruism and provide for their old age first? The elders at the old age home believed that they had been traded in by their children for materialistic considerations. For my son, whose best friend is his grandfather, this was hard to accept. Can televisions, cars and refrigerators even compare with the love and care received from our elders? The answer to this question has to be a product of the circumstances of each family and each set of individuals. One can’t be overly judgmental about these issues.
But what our generation can strive for is to resuscitate the wonderful tradition of respecting our elders. I have found that when it comes to grandchildren, elders have a natural instinct for nurture. This is why each family should reach out to grandma and pa and mend frayed emotional bonds. If, in the extreme case, you can’t get along with your own, adopt one, unhampered by the emotional baggage of relationships that have atrophied. Nothing warms the cockles of the heart and soul quite like love from grandma/pa. You have my son’s word — or rather a grandson’s word — for it!

Dutiful Sisters





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the year was 1997. mother teresa, founder of the missionaries of charity order, was ailing. she had suffered a heart attack in 1983 and then again in 1989 and wanted to be relieved of her duties. pope john paul ii advised the nuns in a letter that the missionaries should be led by a woman of deep spirituality. for eight weeks they conferred. the selection effort culminated in a closed-door vote, where 132 senior nuns elected sister nirmala, unanimously, as their new superior-general on march 13, 1997. sister nirmala, then 63, had not been groomed as a successor to lead the order. her selection left her no choice. she was born into a nepali brahmin family of bihar before converting to catholicism and was trained as a lawyer. she supervised the order’s centres in the united states and europe, and since 1979, had devoted herself to meditation and led the contemplative wing of the order. this year, on march 4, sister nirmala stopped over to spend time with her chandigarh family. as a volunteer in the home, i saw her at close quarters. sitting in the little room that serves as a reception area in shanti dan, her eyes brimmed over with unconditional love and empathy. she was dressed in the order’s uniform of a coarse white, blue-bordered, cotton sari. her small feet bore cracks and were shod in rubber chappals. but the aura surrounding her was bright with peace and purity. when she spoke she radiated love and compassion. she said, ‘‘love demands that we give until it hurts not from our abundance but from our wants’’. her message for the people was, ‘‘god loves each one of you tenderly — trust him totally and seek his will in your love. his will is to love one another as god loves you’’. this frail woman presides over 676 convents in 129 countries which today have 4,500 nuns. sister nirmala handed out what she called mother teresa’s visiting cards and narrated a story for how they came about. a visiting businessman, calling on the nobel prize-winning missionary, had apparently handed out his business card while asking for mother’s. she wrote down a prayer and handed it over to him saying, ‘‘this is my business card’’. the card reads: ‘‘the fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is peace’’. a visit to shanti dan rejuvenates one in spirit and mind. the poorest of the poor, the sick, and the old have a home here. babies abandoned at birth are nurtured and cared for. the stench of neglect does not enter the convent. there are smiling faces everywhere. love pervades every nook of the home, from the cabbage patch outside to the nursery with the little babies fragrant with talc. mother mary watches over the home. on taking over, sister nirmala had said, ‘‘i am in dreamland right now. it’s a big responsibility. but looking at god, and depending on prayer, i think i will be able to continue god’s work’’. seeing her guiding the local nuns, presiding over mass and hugging each inmate of the convent in her frail, caring arms, it was clear that god’s work goes on.



House of Steel Frame


sunday, january 4, 2009

The Steel frame

House of steel frame

It is perhaps an understatement to say that joining the IAS, is the dream of every young middle class Indian. And therefore every aspirant to this premier service, dreams of walking up the road to the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy, Mussoorie, as I did on a sunny October afternoon.The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Administration(LBSNAA) is located in the old Charleville Hotel. Ruskin Bond writes that the locals always referred to it as the ‘Charley-Billy’ Hotel, which he thought was an obvious mispronunciation. But the laugh was really on him, because according to the records, the original owner had two sons, Charley and Billy, and he had named the hotel after them.
The LBSNAA comprises three distinct, picture-book campuses: Charleville for the probationers, Glenheys for the staff and Indira Bhawan for the mid-service courses. After the fire in 1984, the Karmashila Block was reconstructed and now accommodates the auditorium, library and computer lab. There is an open air theatre as well, set right amidst the clouds, with the Mussoorie skyline for a backdrop. The Mess is run by a trainee officers committee and there is a fine dining hall. The crazy walkways and endless steps connecting the main hostels Ganga, Kaveri (the girls block) and Narmada, mean aching calves and sore ankles for the probationers in their first few weeks.
The road to LBSNAA is long and arduous. Over 1 lakh aspirants take the Civil Services Preliminary exam conducted by the UPSC in June each year. Just 7000 qualify for the mains in December. I600 odd get called for the interview leg in May, while only 400 odd are finally selected for the IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS IAAS, CISF, Customs, IFtS, IRTS, IPOS, and other allied services. I checked out the profile of the batch selected in 2001 on the LBSAA website. Details of the 2002 batch had not yet been uploaded. 38% were below 25 years while 55% were in the 25-30 age group. Of the batch of 226 probationers, who took the Foundation Course here, 164 were male while 62 were female. 143 came from an urban background, while only 62 were from rural India.
Just outside LBSNAA used to be Baretto’s, now replaced by a Chopsticks and of course the Ganga Dhaba and Midway Restaurant that provide a respite when probationers tire of campus food. The owner of the provision store just outside the Indira Campus is a doppelganger of Hans Raj Hans. Hari tailor still stitches bandgalas for scrawny young probationers. The stationery store just outside the Academy is where every probationer gets his first service letterhead printed. The Academy is the venue for many probationer twosomes. Some relationships mature into marriages and enduring friendships. Batch after batch, of trained officers, leave the portals of this Academy to provide India its permanent civil service.
Punam Khaira Sidhu Posted: Feb 22, 2003 at 0000 hrs IST
published originally in Indian express