Ageing in two worlds

We were growing old in two worlds at the same time. I don’t know whether as a result we were ageing at twice the normal rate or half but it does make for an interesting and educative experience.

As I reached my retirement we decided that we would alternate between our last place of work- Hanoi and IndiaUS where our children were. But fate intervened, and we had to change our plans to live part time in the US, where my heart doctors were, and India, where my heart really lay. In this process we are learning to live and adjust rather than to choose between the two worlds.

As is usual post retirement, the major burden of adjustment falls on the better half. So Ena, my wife, who had been hoping to finally get rid of her household duties and enjoy a carefree life, with both the children finally out of the house, instead found herself managing not one but two households and those in two different countries. In India she found herself not so much managing a household as managing a revolving cast of servants—she was constantly searching for a good cook, interviewing the candidates, negotiating their wages and then constantly overseeing their work. And just when everything was in control, the cook would leave and she would have to start all over again. Back in the US she was managing no one but herself. It was tedious but she was in full control and there were no personal problems of servant to manage. And she has never quite made up her mind which she prefers…

Of course in India the emotional support system was great and something one looked forward to – with various cousins, aunts, relatives and friend dropping by at all times of day and night. There were problems to learn of and problems to solve. Till after a while, the real problem became that various cousins, aunts, relatives and friends were dropping by at all times of day and night and real life problems became too difficult to sort out with all the past histories of imagined slights and insults. And we then yearned for the formality and structure of the west. Till that too became too cold and distant and we then yearned for the emotional warmth of the east.

In India our conversations were generally focused on problems of daily living and medical issues and of course the extent of corruption. It was invariable depressing and negative after the usual information had been exchanged about all the mutual friends. It reminded me of conversations during the Bush era when the general mood was of depression and helplessness as the horrors mounted in Iraq and the world. There seemed to no light at the end of the tunnel, indeed most seemed convinced that it was not a tunnel but a deep hole in the ground into which we sinking by the day. The focus on India was never on a search for solutions but rather a reiteration of insolubility of all problems, not on what could be done but rather on what was never possible to be achieved. Of course, here our views were listened to with respect by the young because of deference due age. In the west there was little deference if the views were not sound or worth listening to.

All this underlie the essential dilemma of aging in the two worlds. In the one, an infrastructure based on servants provides physical comfort and a family network provides emotional warmth. But this comes at some price of individual freedom of action and a constant need to sustain that very system of support in time and effort. In the other, there is a freedom which makes one feel younger but which all too often felt cold and isolated. Perhaps the true test comes in a crisis say when one is ailing or in hospital. You could get the best physical care in the US in the hospital but at home you were completely dependent on yourself .Visitors were few and helpers none. In India people complained of the cost, quality and availability of hospital care but there were always helpers and visitors around to care for you. I often fretted about whether there would be enough pall bearers here – a worry that never even crossed my mind in India.

A recent book on ageing by Athill, which recently won the Costa Book Award for biography, ends with her realization: "There are no lessons to be learnt, no discoveries to be made, no solutions to offer. I find myself left with nothing but a few random thoughts. One of them is that from up here I can look back and see that although a human life is less than the blink of an eyelid in terms of the universe, within its own framework it is amazingly capacious so that it can contain many opposites. One life can contain serenity and tumult, heartbreak and happiness, coldness and warmth, grabbing and giving - and also more particular opposites such as a neurotic conviction that one is a flop and a consciousness of success amounting to smugness."

Getting old may not be much fun but one can certainly enjoy the end (see Buchwald “Too soon to say goodbye”) especially if you can do it in two worlds at the same time.