In India, grey does matter

We met her in winter that year during a calendar shoot we were doing for the Ministry of Social Justice. One of her grandsons explained how that season was the hardest part of the year for her as she sat quietly on a charpoy in the courtyard, soaking in the sun and surrounded by her grand and greatgrandchildren who were chatting among themselves excitedly at the sight of our camera cases and photo equipment. She couldn8217;t see very well but acknowledged our presence as one of the young women from her household came and affectionately draped a shawl over her head.

The calendar was never published, and when we wanted to visit her again some months later, we learnt that she didn8217;t survive the winter. Although her brief presence at the polling booth was immortalised by many papers, much of her story what she thought of her long life, her large family, old age or for that matter, the state of our democracy is forever lost for us. Much like the voices of many other elderly, whether abandoned widows in temple towns or forgotten freedom fighters, yesterday8217;s champion sportspersons or the ordinary folk, subjects of only statisticians, who pass away each day.

It was the urge to capture at least some of this especially from those of the disappearing worlds and cultural processes, whether India8217;s shrinkingJewish and Parsi communities or many of her folk arts, to give two instances that gave us the urgency to keep going in this project with our limited resources and even when we could not convince any other individual, institution or business house to support this effort.

The average life span is going up in almost every country in the world. In India8217;s case it has almost doubled from what it was at the time of independence. This accomplishment poses its own challenges, with the rapidly eroding traditional systems for taking care of the aged and harnessing their productivity. In the absence of an adequate alternative formal structure, the situation is quite alarming. Our attempt in this exercise was to give a human face to some of these much-discussed and analysed trends and statistics. For this purpose, we had identified 400 people all over the country, of which we have covered 100 so far.

With 1999 declared as the International Year of Older Persons by the U.N. and 2000 the National Year of the Aged bythe Indian government, we have put out some of the photographs and text from this on-going project in the form of an exhibition that we hope to take to at least 24 cities and towns all over India. Although so far we have done only Delhi and now Mumbai, it has been very heartening to see that while specialists working with the elderly have found our efforts to be substantial, non-specialists such as school children and collegians, or even the elderly, have been able to make emotional connections to it.

Many students and teachers have expressed interest in having the exhibition at their school or college. The response from fellow artists and creative people, critics and media people, has also been quite overwhelming and positive. We have also attempted to create a platform for organizations working with the elderly in each city to reach out to the general public as well as facilitate their work. Although we have approached many business houses and foundations, we haven8217;t yet found any means other than our ownto complete work with the remaining 300 people in our research list or to take the exhibition beyond the metro cities. Visitors to our show have often pointed to their favourite images in the show and in turn asked which ones are ours. This is a difficult task, to me some of the most moving material among the lot has not made it to the exhibition stage due to a variety of reasons. A 127-year-old man who looks about half his age and lives a quiet life, averse to publicity. A club of elderly that meets for various cultural activities every Sunday morning, followed by breakfast hosted by one of the members. A septuagenarian and very spirited poet closes the proceedings by reciting a freshly composed poem. The subject of the poem? The elderly member who had hosted that morning8217;s breakfast!

Text by Vijay S Jodha, photo by Samar S Jodha