The protagonist, this old man of ninety-four, is writing his last autobiography after writing two autobiographies earlier when he was sixty-five and eighty.
Why an autobiography? Not because the extraordinary has happened to me but because nothing happens. Or in other words, because I have nothing better to do and because there’s nothing much else I can do … my hands are still working; my memory is clear as glass. The rest of my body has packed up … my ears have become walls.… I keep the hearing aid in all day.…My eyes? I have eyes and I don’t have eyes. I can see long distance well enough but everything close to me is in darkness… my hands can still do their job… they shake a little.
The book looks like an easy read, at the outset. The disarmingly simple style of the first-person narrative succeeds in keeping you under that impression initially. But as you delve deeper into this rich ethnographic account from an insider, and go beneath the light-hearted banter, you come to see what ageing is! What’s so new about it? Don’t we see it all around us? Yes, we do. We see so much of it that we have never really looked at it. We have never really cared to ‘see’ it for what it is.
What exactly is the challenge in ageing? It surely is bodily decline, as the passage above amply demonstrates. With debility comes a loss of movement. Bandu, his doctor-son, never tires of directing his movement: ‘Don’t take too long bathing. Don’t sit in the open for too long. Don’t linger in the hall. Don’t walk in the balcony. Don’t climb up to the terrace. Don’t go into the garden.’ All this makes the old man feel that even a prisoner has more freedom than him. And, to add to this, since he is a foodie grown up on choicest food, his life couldn’t have been worse. For, a hazaar restrictions, based ostensibly on medical grounds, come at him to the detriment of all that had given him the joie de vivre to go on. Then there is that ‘Big factor—MONEY’. He has no control over his own hard-earned money, to use it according to his wisdom. As if all this isn’t bad enough, when ‘she’, his unnamed companion of 75 years, passes on, we know what to expect.
Loneliness. A state of being suspended in limbo, unable to connect to the people and the world around who deny him his essential human right—a life of dignity. Not for want of effort from his side to reach out, but because the others around him don’t really care. Or so it seems. The old man’s claim to being an ‘immortal engineer’ is based on building a huge bridge, his name acknowledged in a stone plaque at the site of the bridge. Despite the father urging the son to visit the site, the son does not. Instead, he tries to bluff his way only to be caught by the old man. Heart-breaking, this kind of devaluing from one’s own kind.
This is not to say that the book is a grim lesson in moral science. The telling is sprinkled all along with a quiet, uncynical humour which tickles us. The episode dealing with his most unlikely comeback after a stroke is superbly hilarious. This is how the text describes it: ‘Essentially the whole world—my family and others—had decided that I was all but signed, sealed and ready for delivery, like a case file in an office, once a matter has been settled’ (p. 79). Look at these nuggets: ‘A good doctor has to be a good actor too. The difference is only this: an actor must show what he doesn’t feel; a doctor must practice keeping his thoughts off his face’ (p. 69). ‘When we crossed the eighty mark, we could no longer make it to the park at the foot of the hill, so our Hill-walkers’ Club slipped off the hill and landed on a bench at the Public Gardens’ (p. 80).
There is no mistaking the serious intent. This is a book that lays bare the fact of ageing in all its starkness, and compels you to pay attention to every detail, every moment evoking true empathy for the old; not mere lip sympathy, like Bandu, his well-meaning if domineering doctor-son. Old age is not just a medical problem but a human condition that needs greater understanding and support. The novella gives us a peek into the most challenging stage of human existence marked by loneliness, decline, dependence, and loss of dignity.
Who is better suited to translate this text that plays the advocate for the cause of the weak and elderly than the author of that heart-rending narrative, Em and the Big Hoom? Jerry Pinto has rendered the text in an informal spoken English register interspersed with Marathi to create a familiar experiential world that holds the reader in thrall. The judicious use of footnotes, something not in fashion currently, to explain cultural practices like antarpat, a benediction from Sanskrit, or a line from Sant Ramdas adds value to the smooth and flowing narration. A brief introduction to the context of the writer (especially when s/he is a lesser-known writer in the English-speaking scenario) and the place of this text in the Marathi ecosystem could have added some gravitas to the text and helped readers to build a more adequate picture about the context of production. It is curious to see the narrator, a retired engineer who has had no whiff of literature or art by his own admission, using words like uxorious or non compos mentis. Also, the use of the word ‘disinterested’ (p. 43) in the novel teased me into reconfirming its difference from ‘uninterested’. Many are the thrills of reading a translation!
The author-translator duo deserves our gratitude for reminding us to be kinder and gentler toward the aged. This potent narrative is a must read for all, especially the elderly, and their caregivers: sons, daughters, and helpers.
Vanamala Viswanatha, independent bilingual scholar and translator, taught English language and literature for over four decades in premiere institutions in Bengaluru. She writes in Kannada and English.