old people

visited an exhibition by bangalore's top photo journalist K. Venkatesh, about old people in old homes. very hard hitting photographs. the old homes he has photographed are more like orphanages for old people, mostly coming from lower income stratas of the society, many of them just abandoned at the gate by their children. this would have been quite unthinkable in india a couple decades back, but now the numbers are rising, especially in cities.

i took this shot in "gorkhi mandir" in gwalior, winters 2006.

incidentally i am reading a book which covers various aspects of "humans" (the book is called "Human"), and recently was reading about how old people are valued in various societies across the world and factors based on which various societies assign status to a person. there is a clear correlation between how industrialized a society is and how much value it gives to its older people. the more industrialized a society the more marginalized its older people, especially by their own children and society in inter-personal context. the less industrial a society, or more agricultural, or tribal it is, the more value, status and respect its elder people get from their children, family and society, for their life experience and the wealth of knowledge. does it mean that being humans, as a society, we value someone only if we can get something in return? so in industrialized societies (long lasting)status comes from the wealth accumulated, and age and experience are not of much importance - as "years of experience" don't mean much in the fast pace of development. where as, in agricultural or tribal societies, where things tend to be the way they always were, experience and knowledge accumulated over years are useful for young people, so old people are "respected" for that. this is kind of a depressing thought.

as a society if we are incapable of sincerely caring for our own old, who in today's times have less and less to give anything in return(of course we conveniently forget what we have received in past), then can we really claim that the love and care we give to our next generation is truly selfless? is it really possible, for some one to selflessly love their children and not care about their parents? they are the two ends of the same relationship after all! i dont have a personal experience of this, so its hard for me to fathom, but it really leaves me guessing.

why is the love from parent to child stronger and lasting than love from child to parent?

i took this shot in hampi, next to "krishna temple", mid 2006