In his later years my grandfather had a little mid-morning ritual. He would come to the bottom of our staircase at our home in Kolkata and ask for the newspaper. I would hand it to him and he would sit quietly in the living room, the newspaper spread out in front of him on the table.
Now it strikes me he must have been lonely. My grandmother had already died. We were busy with our lives. He used to go on little walks of his own. But after he tripped and fell those stopped. It’s as if he chose to recede into the background. Even that newspaper, he would read it only after everyone in the house was done with it.
Still, my grandfather was one of the lucky ones. He lived out his old age with the family. But it never occurred to me that he might be lonely amidst all of us.
He never spoke about it. Most people like him do not. They fear it will be seen as a complaint. Or their weakness. They do not want their children to think they are being demanding. They do not want to impose on anyone. So loneliness becomes their companion.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata.
A speech attributed to Clint Eastwood, 96, has been doing the rounds of social media. In it he talks about the hidden toll of aging. The phone rings less, the people who knew your funny stories are gone. “You find yourself repeating stories, adding details, not to convince anyone, but just to feel like you are still connected to something,” Eastwood says.
It reminded me of my mother as she crossed out yet another name in her phonebook after someone else she knew had died. On her own birthday she painstakingly noted every person who had called in her diary. “Are you including messages from your bank?” I would joke. But I realize now that in a world that was shrinking every day around her, every point of connection was a reminder that she mattered.
We accept bad knees and cataracts as inevitable in old age. But we do not want to talk about loneliness perhaps because there is no “loneliness replacement” surgery available. A friend told me a supermarket chain in the Netherlands tried a special Slow check out line for older people who wanted to also chat with the cashier.
As always we hope technology might be the solution. According to the BBC, U World, a Chinese company has just launched the world’s first full-sized humanoid robot designed for lonely people. The AI-powered robots can engage in conversation and stay with you for a lifetime, an endless love that will never betray you Michael Tam the CEO of U World told the media. For about $17,600 for a base model.
TAM1
It’s targeted at seniors but loneliness is not just a senior problem. Physical connection, even across continents, has never been as easy as it is now yet we feel more disconnected than ever. A recent survey on the entertainment platform JB.com found that India ranked as the second-loneliest country in the world despite still having relatively higher household sizes and strong family structures.
It shows that the family isn’t necessarily the cure to loneliness. Emotional connection is. In the Hindi film Baghban, the aging parents find themselves shuttled back and forth between their busy and ungrateful children, reduced to stealing tender moments secretly via telephone late at night.
BAGHBAN - Song, can you depend on your family. Baghban, a film by Ravi Chopra
My mother loved it. It would drive me up the wall. Our family is nothing like the Baghban family I would splutter.
We were not. But the uncomfortable truth about loneliness is it happens in the best of families, not just the Baghban types. The loneliness is not about abuse. It’s about feeling irrelevant.
That’s why senior programs focus a lot on activity centers for senior citizens. Organizations like HelpAge and Agewell Foundation emphasize not just healthcare but companionship, conversation and intergenerational connections. Friends shift into condo complexes so they can grow older together.
Unlike many other problems loneliness has a simpler solution. Time. Sometimes it might mean listening to the same story again. But that is okay. When we listen we are really telling someone they still matter. In the end we do not fear death as much as irrelevance. Irrelevance feels so much lonelier.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata