Kamal Ghorui
Old age has seeped into my parents’ lives like damp on a monsoon wall, gradually spreading until one day we realised everything smells faintly of fear and pain balm. These days, every unscheduled phone call from my parents feels like a trailer for a horror film I never bought tickets for.
That morning, my father, a doctor by profession, stoic by habit, called, his voice thin and fading, like the last flicker of a lamp struggling against the wind. His BP had dropped phenomenally. This, from a man who a few days back had treated his mild stroke like it was a mild inconvenience, the way one treats a delayed food order. Back then he had practically shooed me away from coming to Kolkata, insisting they were “perfectly fine,” which in parent-language roughly translates to: “We are not fine but we don’t want to trouble you.”
And then as I sat there speaking to my father, it felt as if the universe had hired a particularly sadistic scriptwriter, my mother entered the scene, literally, being held up by a neighbour, looking like she had just lost a boxing match with gravity. Blood clots in her mouth, forehead swollen, dignity slightly dented. She had fallen while rushing back from an ENT check-up because, of course, her husband wasn’t well. In our family, even emergencies are multitasked. My father, voice trembling like a poorly networked phone call, whispered, “Ma has fallen… I can’t even get up to help her.”
And just like that, the roles reversed. The people who once held the world together with safety pins and home remedies now sat helpless in the middle of it. Two elderly people. Two separate disasters. One shared loneliness. An epidemic that has embraced the lives of many, beset with old age, as children have decided to settle abroad.
Naturally, we sprang into action, trying to book tickets from Delhi to Kolkata with the urgency of contestants on a reality show. But fate, wearing the hat of airline pricing algorithms, decided to play villain. The Great Bengal Elections were around the corner, and airlines were making hay while the sun of desperation shone brighter than a Bollywood climax. Ticket prices had shot up like they were aiming for the moon, Rs 25,000 and more for a one-way trip, because apparently democracy now comes with surge pricing and opportunism had attained a record height.
The flight itself was a sociological documentary in economy class. Domestic helpers filled the seats, sent back by their employers like valuable parcels, fast-tracked by air so they could vote and return before the washing machines missed them too much. Fear, urgency, and civic duty, all strapped into seatbelts.
Emergencies, I’ve realised, are like badly behaved guests, they show up uninvited but insist on teaching you life lessons. The next day, we found ourselves at a reputed neurological institute, hoping for some reassurance for my 83-year-old father. What we got instead was a masterclass in patience, an experience that even saints would politely decline. Patients waited like forgotten luggage at a railway station. Elderly bodies sagged under the weight of illness and time. There were no seats, but I told myself this was a bonus, my daily “stand goal” would be attained. Optimism, at this point, felt like applying lipstick on cracked lips.
We waited for over ninety minutes. Honestly, I was half-expecting Samuel Beckett’s Godot to stroll in before the doctor did. And then, he arrived. The “Divine Healer” entered with the swagger of a man who knew time bent around him. He saw patients the way one scrolls through Instagram reels, quickly, mechanically, without emotional investment. Five minutes per patient. Prescriptions filled like grocery lists. Tests recommended as if he were ticking off items on a buffet menu.
Manual examination? Optional. Empathy? Out of stock.
My father, who has spent a lifetime in the same profession, watched this spectacle with utmost disappointment. Around us, the hospital staff moved with a peculiar blend of indifference and efficiency. Smiles were rare, warmth rarer. Everything felt transactional, like we had accidentally walked into a wholesale goods market instead of a place meant for healing.
Everyone, it seemed, was making hay while the sun shone.
As we stepped out, emotionally drained and physically exhausted, the city greeted us with political processions. Loudspeakers blared promises like overenthusiastic salesmen, freebies, hope, dreams, all bundled together like festive discounts.
We got stuck in traffic, naturally. Because what is a crisis without a good old traffic jam to marinate in your thoughts?
And as the car crawled forward inch by inch, I sat there, tired, overwhelmed, slightly amused at the absurdity of it all. Life, I realised, is less a well-written novel and more a chaotic WhatsApp forward; messy, dramatic, occasionally funny and impossible to ignore.
Fear, I’ve understood, has the talent to arm-twist. Very efficiently, like a seasoned extortionist who doesn’t need to raise his voice because he knows you’re already trembling. And once fear enters the room, it rearranges your priorities faster than a last-minute wedding caterer.
It is also, quite conveniently, excellent for business.
The fear of your name mysteriously vanishing from the electoral roll sends you scrambling across cities, wallets flung open in patriotic panic. The fear of illness, far more intimate, far less negotiable, makes you sit obediently in overcrowded waiting rooms, nodding at doctors who treat empathy like an optional add-on.
You don’t argue. You don’t question. You comply.
Because fear has already done the negotiation on your behalf.
And in this grand drama of urgency and anxiety, there are always those who know exactly when the sun is shining and exactly how much hay can be made before it sets.
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