Whispers within the aged and young widows, widowers and divorcees

 

Parent care in global village Globalization of the world also accelerated along the exodus, primarily on account of faster and relatively cheaper physical mobility, plus the growing ease of affordable email, smart phone and round the clock engaging and free social media. These developments, however, did not increase but reduce person to person physical contact even within the nuclear family, leave alone the vanishing joint family or among close relations. Person to person spoken content is now confined strictly to essentials. It is not unusual to observe every middleclass family member from infant onwards engaged most of the time with lap top or smart phone and any interruptions evoking sharp disapprovals and admonishments. Even conventionally round the clock chatting young couples are no longer an exception. While smart phones work nonstop, phone calls have become near extinct and subsite toted by “good morning” message and some social media posts. Limited person to person chatting may happen only in social gatherings for which invitations also come via social media. The tradition of visiting or be visited by neighbors, friends or close relations gotburied with Covid 19 but could not be restored after it ended and to almost everybody’s delight. The only exceptions being the aged and less educated who are unable to afford and handle smart phones/social media and therefore would prefer conventional modes of communication and interactions, but who cares? Since young parents no longer speak much to each other or with their game addict children, how then can they be accused of ignoring their parents/grandparents or close relations? Even the long tradition of family members sitting eating together has been bid farewell. It is also common to observe kids returning from schools rushing to get connected andsnack/refreshment servedwhile online. Investigations like “Can childhood survive the smartphone?” ignore the bigger question “can nuclear family survive the smart phone? The only silver lining for the elderly is that most ofthemare pensioners and therefore economically self-reliant though lonely. Non-pensioners of the community are also receiving some monthly cash and kind relief post-exodus. We are already beyond the age where kids in each locality used to gather after school hours in some play areas and engage in some physical activity? The designated play areas are now mostly deserted barring some festival time gatherings. Birth and work places in twenty first century for the professional class are mostly not only poles apart but also changing frequently across globe and thereby adding another challenge to parent care? This in particular is true with our community. While Jammu people offered every help and assistance on arrival, they resisted the adjustment of displaced employees in the province for fear of their staying forever here. This is why camp institutions and offices had to be opened to accommodate such employees. While our work places remained mostly around resettlement places, the gen next has therefore no such option but to move out. Even the community youth offered jobs within the state un der a PM sponsored rehabilitation scheme are also posted back in Kashmir only. Their number already exceeds two thousand and is expected to reach the sanctioned six thousand strength shortly and the number maybe revised upwards under efforts to reverse the exodus. Since the valley is still not safe enough and accom iodation a challenge, parents have to be left behind to fend for themselves. Parent categories today The aged and ageing parents presently comprise two broad groups. The largest group is resident within and around the resettlement camps in Jammu and elsewhere. A vast majority living on their own with nuclear family already a norm. As long as health and mobility are not issues, the group manages itself and in situations of urgency the support is not far off and medical emergencies covered under Ayushman Bharat.The second group, apparently the privileged, includes parent(s) shuttling periodical ly between their resettlements and those of the offspring within and notably outside the country with a microscopic minority, no table single old motherspermanentlyin company. Shuttling and adjusting within India is relatively easier for obvious reasons but shuttling outside the country is a formidable old age challenge as alsoinvolving multiple legalities, like valid passports and visas,im migration and emigration check ins and outs. Growing anti-i’m migrant sentiments across the western world are already making their tasks all the more difficult, rather a near future impossibility. Adjusting to and managing ground realities in foreign lands, like languages and cultures are also not easy, especially in countries where English is neither the language nor do the common citizens speak or like, for example France. The belief that Kashmiri is a difficult language to learn does not hold as most of the Europe an languages are far more difficult to learn and speak. However, their top most challenge is adjusting within the four walls ofthe homes where every member, kids included, is awfully busy round the clock with online work, study and social media. Online work culture, rather working from has already rendered services of grandparents to look after infants or aftercare of grandchildren returning from schools redundant. While an old couple can keep each other engaged, singles are left totally lonely and isolated. Never take the comfort and happiness of such accompanying parent(s) for granted. Any investigation would reveal that none of the accompanying seniors is comfortable in foreign lands. It isn’t uncommon for them also to be repeatedly told how privileged and blessed they are for being accompanied as almost none of their friends and colleagues have accompanying parent(s). Outside homes, they find themselves among total strangers/curl turesand indifferent neighbors. It virtually amounts being “like fish out of water?” Resolutions to “never return” again are not only common but mostly exercised by old accompanying couples after just two-three sojourns, desperate singles are mostly the sole exception. Had a “walk in” into another life been real time walk,most old singles would embrace the option gladly. Back in India, neighbors and close relations envy them for the privilege of living in greener and developed pastures like North America and Europe. The commonly held belief that daughters could be better care takers alsostandslargely shattered,given their work routines, besides the round the clock addiction to social media in which even their offspring get ignored. More importantly, the culture of parents visiting, let alone living with married daughters has never been there as having even a sip of water at their homes was socially unacceptable until half a century back. Their children, expectedly, behave no differently, busy as they are with study and online gaming. The pleasant surprise is that daughter in laws seem to be better caring and even somewhat ready to engage provided their sentiments are respected and opinions and arguments not countered. This observation holds equally good for son in laws as they may not mind engaging in some brief conversation coca signally, perhaps on account of rare and brief encounters. Accompanying parents being almost exclusively retired persons, their economic status also gets significantly down grad ed abroad as pensions, handsome by Indian standards, when converted into Pound/Dollar/Euro become worth peanuts. As if this was not enough, the accompanying parent(s) has also to buy travel insurance to cover medical emergencies which cost a for tune. For instance, single person six months insurance cover in US at the minimum costs over thousand dollars, leave alone costs ofair travel. Pensions of permanently accompanying parent(s) are also mostly subject to double taxation. The privilege of even being accompanied is ruled out where grandparents are surviving and which is no longer rare. The top mostchallenge lthough the community faces multiple challenges, omnipresent ence of young singles, notably widows, some in late twenties or thirties with even an infant or two, remains on the top, yet nowhere in the agenda. While spouses of expired government employees are entitled to family pensions, rest have to fend for themselves after the monthly migrant relief is discontinued. Recall a mourning presence where an infant crawled over me and being informed that the toddler is the second child of the deceased who had died in a road accident. The young widow with her kids could not be adjusted by her in laws for long and was living on her own subsequently, her case is not an exception. The number of young widowers is also fairly large as the remote and rare old male remarriage practice seems also discarded for long. How can young singles manage to live alone for multiple decades, even half a century or more? How can young widows, notably those neither employed nor pensioners and alone bring WHISPERS WITHIN 39 up kids and live alone after they leave for greener pastures? In fact, many young women had lost husbands to accidents/fatal illnesses much before the exodus, rather half a century back and are already lonely. Only a small number may be accompanying the offspring as shuttling to foreign destinations is neither easy nor comfortable for the aged notably women. Has their victim hood ever been debated, leave alone addressed? The number of young divorcees, notably women, has also been on the rise as post-marital incompatibilities are no longer put under the carpet and those with a kid mostly do not remarry despite being pretty young. What does the community indifference and silenceindi cate in an age where joint family is history and even nuclear family a victim of smart phone and social medias tress? How can any community, notably the educated, economically better placed, with faster declining religiosity and orthodoxy allow young singles, especially widows to live on their own and live miserably for multiple decades? In contrast, is even a single widow or family of any slain militant in Kashmir not rehabilitated and supported by the community. Even the government there has been finding ways and means to rehabilitee them, as also the surrendered militants under multiple initiatives. Is it not true that all offspring of HM Chief, Salahuddin, now resident in POK, not been offered government jobs and possibly out of turn promotions as well. Have the close relations of late Hurriyat Chief, Sayed Ali Shah Geelani not also been treated likewise? How should our community now face the challenge under reference? Remarriage: only way out How has the challenge we face now been met in the developed world? Our challenge does not relate to loss of homeland only but primarily on account of faster economic growth and global ization of work places and the resultant divorce between birth and work places which also keep on changing frequently. Developed world responses to meet the situation might offer some guide to steer the challenge. How did the developed world, rather the overwhelmingly Christian West, confront it?Christianity also views marriage as sacred and discourages divorce generally, although some denominations and interpretations allow for di vorce and remarriage in specific circumstances, primarily based on the grounds of adultery or abandonment. But as the challeng es of modernisation began to surface, they have moved on and made compromises. For instance, inhibitions associated with di vorce and remarriage have not only been shunned by the majori ty but even live-in relationships for all age groups also welcomed. In fact, live-ins are now more popular than marriedcouples,given the freedoms it allows to change partners as and when required and commonly referred to as boy/girlfriend. It is common to find elderly singles seeking and getting boy/girlfriends and then living together to manage old age, escape lonelinessand reducedepen dence and physicalproximity of the offspring. Today, parents here themselves force18 plus children to leavetheir homes and learn to live/study on their own, almost like birds denying entry into nests to fully winged offspring. Their world, of course, isdifferent and ready to embrace the reality. Industrialization and sparce population have made partand full-time jobs there available in plenty, rather much in excess of supplies. For the aged,state help is at hand and medical assistance only a phone call away, health care either entirely state funded, as in most of Europe, or almost fully insured like in the U.S. Provisions also exist for the old, notably singles to shift tonearby subsidized social housing centers with almost all basicamenities available under one roof and lonelinessalso taken care of either through socialization or through live in relationships.Social security/old age pensions are also universal. For Muslims “live ins” may be forbidden but divorce and remarriage are universaland supported by families and the community. No age is too high for remarriage, in fact, a wom an is expected to have a husband until she reaches the grave. In Sikhism, remarriage is generally discouraged, but permitted under specific circumstances, such as widowhood or in cases of marital breakdown with the consent of the sangat (community). In Buddhism and Jainism, divorce and remarriage are generally acceptable, though Jainism places a strong emphasis on celibacy, especially for monks and nuns. For Hindus in general remarriage is also not as big an issue as it has become for the microscopic and highly literate and with the least younger generation religios ity KP community. Are divorce and remarriage a community taboo since long? The answer apparently seem to be in negative. If memory serves right, Kalhana’s Rajtarangni, for instance, does not seem to refer to the malice at all for the centuries he covers.Kota Rani, the last KP ruler of Kashmir, had also married after the death of her husband in early fourteenth century. As for the legality, the Hindu Widows Remarriage Act of 1856 legalized it and Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 further enshrined the right to remarry after divorce. Even during the worst of the Afghan times, the community hadshown some flexibility to save daughters being abducted and taken away by the Afghans. The community had initiated marrying them very young as married women were mostly not the target.Marriage ceremonies were also solemnised day time to escape being spotted during nights. While remarriages are mostly universal, why are KPs an exception?Are KP couples alone made in the heavens and for seven generations: “saathjanamkephere”? And when one partner expires prematurely, has theother partner to wait a life time to unite again in new life? Do we not rememberonly what we leftbehind in Kashmir in 1990 and regret and recollect the loss quite frequentlybut nothing from our past lives?Moreover, mar riages usually happenbetween strangers, why then can this union be onetime only?Moreover, had KP couples really been made in heavens and for seven lives,how then could post-marriage incompatibilities arise and even result in divorce? While male divorcees and widowed can still roam about freely and meet or make friends with neighbors and strangers, females are not that privileged and therefore stay aloof, lonely and stressed.Why? As the saying goes better late than never.Let us pay some attention to what Julia Roberts said long back: “When people leave you, let them go. Your destiny is never tied to anyone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It just means their role in your story is over. But when they leave…our paths must now diverge “(Julia Roberts). Surprisingly and shockingly, the issue does not seem to be on AUGUST 2025 the agenda of the community nor for any of our socio-politica lactivist groups. Theirfocus, instead, is centered around return, relief, andabove all erecting memorials in the name of some great soulsas well as replicas of prominent Kashmiri temples in the city of temples, with not even a provisionfor any attachments likea school, dispensary, college.Huge memorial centers have already sprung up in the outskirts of Jammu city, as elsewhere. However, these complexes mostly come to life on annual commemorative festivities or when sublet for marriage, sacred thread or other ceremonies. Another surprise is that attendance at temples has been on a long decline while new temples get built and morn ing and evening prayers mostly reduced to replaying recorded cassettes or other devices.In contrast, remarriages had attracted the attention and some follow up well before independence when mobility was limited, joint family intact, literacy low and religiosity and orthodoxy pretty high. Kashyap Bandu and his team under the auspices of Arya Samaj traditions had launched a successful movement for the remarriage of young widows and also got a large number married. But the movement seems to have died soon after primarily due to community indifference. If the initiatives to end the malice could begin then, why not now when the literacy is cent percent, nuclear family the norm and work place mobility high and global? For the aged couples and singles: self-funded community housing Given the challenges of the world’s most populous country In dai, government would not be in position to build and maintain social housing for the aged as is the case in the developed world, notably Europe. It is time for self-funded community housing and fortunately, our aged are mostly economically sound with monthly pensions/state relief and some new asset ownerships, like a plot of land/ house/ flat and can therefore fund it themselves. The already referred to memorial complexes would be ideal locations for such centers within or in close proximity. The aged are suffering loneliness in their now empty and ghost like houses. The community centerscan offer help by getting some social housing units constructed within or in close proximity at the expense of the beneficiaries. Their requirements would be a single room sets with provisions of a common kitchen and some dining space for the desperate elderly. Their presence would bring the memorial complexes into round the year activity. Being mostly pensioners and those on monthly state relief, they would be too glad to self-finance the entire expense and offer help to those who can’t afford the total expense. All they need is some togetherness and socialization plus a health care center to offer some emergency relief. The most popular Gopi Nath Ashram, with a wide network of centers and volunteers, could lead the initiative so that the idea catches up. The initiative would also bring relief to the offspring of those accommodated dispersed across the globe. As daily gatherings keep on happening at these complexes, the new residents would find company and some socialization. While the whispers of the aged are loud and clear, it is time for the community respond. Let the community respond to the whispers before they snowball into a tragedy that brings shame and sorrow.

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Courtesy:  ML PANDIT  and  Spade A Spade-August 2025