The Hindu : New Delhi News : Breaking old-age loneliness with phone bonding

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 26, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Breaking old-age loneliness with phone bonding

Mandira Nayar

Percentage of old people is expected to reach 8.9 per cent in India by 2016

NEW DELHI: It puts a whole new twist on "working" at home. Attempting to find solutions to one of the biggest problems that face senior citizens in the city -- alienation -- Agewell Foundation, a non-government organisation that runs a helpline for senior citizens, has on its data-base loyal volunteers who never leave home -- housewives.

Highly-educated, interested in finding something useful to do and often unable to manage a regular job, these enthusiastic volunteers find that sometime this is just the job that they were looking for.

Connecting them with older women who are lonely, Agewell Foundation has found that this is a good formula for success.

"When we started, we registered volunteers. Most of these people were from all walks of life. We found that a large number of them were women. Educated and sometimes with nothing to do because of family pressure or they had children, we put them in touch with women who are widows or those who live alone with their husbands, but don't manage to get out as much as them. There is woman-to-woman bonding which helps," remarked Himanshu Rath who started Agewell Foundation.

The advance in medical science has increased the age span of people and the percentage of old people is expected to reach 8.9 per cent in India by 2016. While senior citizens are a sizable section of society, neither the family structure nor society is really mentally geared up to deal with the problems of older people in a world that is rapidly moving in the fast-forward mode.

Often sidelined and marginalised, most of the 150-odd calls that the Foundation's helplines get each day are about loneliness. And their need is sometimes just simply to have someone hear their problems.

"Life has become fast-paced. As people get older, they realise that their bodies don't do what their mind tells them. They start feeling redundant and while some get over this, there are others who never recover from this feeling. This gives them a feeling of alienation. They start bottling things up and their psychological alienation reflects on their physical state. This helpless state needs to be addressed. Giving them a chance to unburden themselves is a therapy in itself," said Mr. Rath.

"Adopting" people through the telephone, Agewell Foundation has found that these long-distance relationships are beneficial for both the listener as well as the talker.

"Sometimes housewives who are unable to get out to work invariably start thinking about their relationship with their parents and how they couldn't do as much as they wanted to. This is dangerous, so this actually helps both of them," he asserted.

A chance to forge strong long distance relationships, some of these foster children and their parents have been together for the past six years. As complicated and real as face-to-face associations, it is about finding far away family.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi

News Update

Stories in this Section