Death, here is thy sting

 The newspapers and the social media had a rather sad, quite tragic, news today. A rather well-known, senior Marathi actor in his mid-seventies was found dead in his rented house. It appears he might have died a few days back.

Sad as the news is, it made me think a lot, and deeply. How come none of his relatives, however busy, never noticed that he had not communicated with them for three long days? Or was it the case that he was so lonely, so left out that none communicated with him at all?

Yet another question I have issues with is how come he never had a "mama", a male nurse, with him, especially because he was a senior citizen, and living all alone,  and he was supposedly ill, moreover? It seems he was staying in that rented house while he was recuperating!

Even in the apartment as well as in the area, how come none noticed that he has not been seen around for quite some time?  Serious questions with tragic overtones galore! Surely, as a senior actor, there could be financial issues as well as there is hardly any support system once an old actor stops getting any work, any role.

Of course, one feels very bad for the diseased, and one prays that his soul would rest in peace. Yet this death brings out the gerontological issues in to focus yet again. The senior citizens form almost more than forty per cent of the population. Most do not have any pension. The next generation, busy with their own lives, may not stay with them. Daily life itself must be death. Hence the title of the blog. 

There must be well-defined policy measures regarding the elderly. That is an urgent social need. These policy measures include not merely financial issues. The police, for example, must every alternate day be on the round, keep a contact with the elderly in the vicinity, for instance. There could be jobs wherein the young or middle-aged  trainees work for a few hours per day. The job profile would  include collecting the gerontological data, keeping in touch with the aged per day, fulfill their shopping needs, for instance.

The elderly, too, should manage their finances well. If they have no support system and are physically ill or weak, they should rather stay in a hospice. As for children, they are legally supposed to take care of their elders. And, oh, yes, with  such cheap data available in excess in India, a wapp message a day costs nothing either for the old or the relatives, right?

Despite these possible measures, one gets the shivers when one thinks of the condition of the low income group elderly. Life must really be hell for them. Death here is thy sting would be the precise summation of their non-descript, derelict lives!

Pratima@ Life is so costly and death so cheap these days that there are 'supari' killers; families are entering in to suicide pacts; so-called lovers are killing women they obsess over, and stalk. Very few are the ways for living, while many are the modes of dying. Death, here is thy sting!