When he heard about the Day Care Centre for the Elderly, the Pakalveedu, father’s expression made it clear that he didn’t like it. His naturally dark face grew even darker. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead.   His lips twisted as if he had tasted a bitter herbal decoction given as remedy for illness.

“Father, it’s not as you think. It’ll be quite interesting there. You can spend time there talking with men of your age. The very thought of having been isolated would no longer haunt you.”

We were trying our level best to change father’s mind.  But his face wore the look of being forced to listen to an unknown language. Both Bharathi and I were of the same opinion in the matter. Both of us had to go to our respective offices, and our daughter and son to their convent school. This meant that Father would be left all alone in this large house. In case he met with an emergency… nobody would get even a wind of it.

It was one of Bharathi’s woman friends who told her about the Pakalveedu. Their vehicle would come at nine thirty in the morning. Afterwards you need not worry about anything. They would properly care for each one of them, giving them the kind of food and medicine they have been put on at its time. They would bring him back in their own vehicle at five in the evening.

“It’s like taking little children to the LKG, isn’t it?”

Scorn and disdain lay petrified in father’s words. We did not understand why father was stubborn like children about this.

“I’ve become a burden to you, haven’t I?”  Father continued with a disturbing question.  “When one grows old…like giving pension…if facilitating for taking one’s life too had been the government’s obligation!” We were quite embarrassed to hear father talking to himself like that.

“Why are you talking like this, father? Will you ever become a burden to us? We don’t want you to be left alone here. That’s why.” Bharathi’s words brimmed with sadness.

“Didn’t I live all alone all these years?”  Father’s words, spoken defensively, tasted of disdain.

“Father, you are getting older and older. Just remember that. Once we are off to office, we lose our peace of mind thinking about you.”

When I said that, father started laughing.

“That means, you have begun to feel that my death is imminent.” Father suddenly stopped laughing and said gravely, as it were: “Right. If that’s what you like, let it be so. You may go ahead and make arrangements for it.”

We knew quite well that it was not of his own free will that he had agreed to it. It was much like children giving in after being repeatedly persuaded to do something.

Nevertheless, we had no choice but to take his half-hearted compliance as complete agreement. We did not want to send him to a home for the aged, as most others did with their elderly parents and relatives. It was thanks to father’s efforts that we rose up in life. Therefore, we did not desire a life without him.

There was a time when father did not have the feeling of being left alone in the house. Both Pravin and Prasida had a lot of questions to ask him.  Their interest in urging father to open up his treasure of stories before them was endless. Seldom did they spend a moment away from father’s company. “Don’t disturb father so much like this. Let father take some rest.” Whenever we chastised our children like this, father would say: “Never mind about that. Who else would clear their doubts but I?”

But as soon as they started going to a convent school, they hardly had any time to spare. Once the homework, computer class, tuition etc. were over, the time for cartoon network would be on. Their routine was bound up like that. “Son, don’t you want to hear a story?” Whenever father posed such a question to them, their listless answer would invariably be, “No, we’re watching the cartoon.”

Whenever I happened to witness the children talking like that, I would ask them: “Why don’t you go to grandpa to hear stories from him?”

“It’s the same old stories that grandpa always tells us. We’re really bored with it.” I was embarrassed to hear them answer me like that.

But the distance of time that I could perceive in their eyes did silence me.

However, I felt that father was slowly sinking deep into a kind of quietude. He seemed to have forgotten his old playful mood, laughter, and cheerfulness.

It was quite unbearable for me to see him reclining on the easy chair either reading something or looking vacantly away in the distance. His eloquence had shrunk considerably. “Father, get up, it’s time for the lunch,” Whenever Bharathi talked to father reminding him of his meals and all that, he would just hum to it by way of answer.

Meanwhile, it was Bharathi who drew my attention to that scene. Father was talking to himself. Reclining on the easy chair, he was saying something moving his legs and hands as if making certain ominous gestures. I was shell-shocked to see that.

“What’s this father, what are you doing? Who are you talking to?” When I asked him in fear, he stood up and walked toward the washbasin as if to splash his face with water saying ‘o, nothing’ like a child caught red-handed skulking away from being punished.

It was from that day that I began to think seriously about father. We feared that being left alone like this might make him mentally unsound. It was when we mulled over a solution to this that Bharathi’s friend Kamala Bhaskar told her about the Day Care Centres for the Elderly, the Pakalveedu. 

It is an arrangement which literally imitates what is known as crèche! A calm and serene building at the foot of the hill; there is a mango grove around it. The centre also has facilities for relaxing and taking pleasure in entertainments. Young female home nurses especially trained to care for the aged ones, giving them their medicines and food at the appointed time are also there. “Father cannot but like the place,” Kamala Bhaskar said conclusively. Her husband’s father is one of the regulars there.

At last father gave in to our demands. It was something like lazy children going to school after being persuaded for a long time. The time when father would persuade me to go to school as I, reluctant and stubborn, clung to mother during childhood flashed through my mind.

All the same, the change that had come over father after a week was astonishing. In the beginning, father would not get up from the lap of the easy chair when their vehicle came and waited outside blowing the horn. Now we were surprised to see father go out well in time to wait for the bus after taking bath, combing his hair and applying talcum powder on the face. How true Kamala Bhaskasr’s words were!

“Now, how is everything, father? You were quite reluctant to start with!” It seemed father was ashamed at my quizzing remarks.

Father was now worried that he had to return in the evening every day. One day he could not but express his wish: “If only the Pakalveedu had functioned during night time as well!”

“Then what significance the name would have, father?!” Uttering those words I laughed for a long time.

“Have you started to like it so much, father? And it seems you would shun us any time too soon!” Hearing Bharathi’s apprehensive remarks, father too laughed with us.

It seemed to us that father was slowly retrieving his old playful mood, buoyancy and cheerfulness. He was walking briskly in the house like a sixteen-year-old boy. More often than not, he would wax eloquent about the Pakalveedu and its facilities. He never grew tired of talking about young Catherine who cared for him at the Pakalveedu. Her laughter, way of speaking, gait–father would have something to say about her every day.

“O, father, now you have settled for Catherine? And we’ve all become anathema to you, haven’t we?”

Father laughed in answer to Bharathi’s plaint.

One day someone from the Pakalveedu rang me up in my office.

“Come to our office immediately. We have to talk to you about certain matters urgently.”

I was quite frightened. Has father fallen sick suddenly…? When I expressed my apprehension through phone, the Secretary replied:

“Your father is perfectly alright. But I want to talk to you about some other issues. Talking about them through phone would not be proper.”

I went straight to the Pakalveedu. The Secretary was waiting for me in his office. He appeared to be quite serious.

“Why was I asked to come here so urgently?” At last I myself broke the silence.

“This institution is meant for the aged people. It is not with an eye on profit that we are running it. We aim at fulfilling the social goal of making the senior citizens happy as well. We consider it our obligation. We see to it that our regulars do not find anything that is required to make them happy lacking here.”

The somewhat long opening words amazed me.

“But I haven’t complained to you about anything, have I?” I said, unable to understand what the Secretary was getting at with his lengthy introductory remarks.

“The complaint is none of yours. It is ours. We cannot allow anything that tarnishes the image of our institution.” It occurred to me that the words spoken by him after taking his glasses from his face and wiping them clean were particularly forceful.  What was it that he was about to divulge?

“Has my father done anything against what has been stated in your bylaw…?”

Even before I finished saying this, he said:

“Yes, I’m sorry to say this. Catherine is a smart, young home nurse here.”

Suddenly I felt that I was made to listen to something forbidden.

I was shocked. Oh, God, what’s this man saying?

“Yes, father liked her so much. Once he was home, he would talk about nothing except her.”

Just then I remembered that father had a box of chocolates bought for her saying that today was her birthday.

“Father had told us that today was her birthday.”

I said elaborating on what has already been said.

“Yes, that’s what caused all the trouble. Your father gave Catherine a box of chocolate as a birthday gift. And she happily accepted it. Similarly some others too gifted her many things. But that was not to your father’s liking. When your father saw Catherine accept those gifts, he turned violent. He grabbed those gifts from her and threw them away. Besides, he beat her too. “What are you doing, father?” when she asked him, he spoke disparagingly of her, saying “I didn’t think you were such a woman.” It was crying aloud that she came to me. Now tell us, mister, can we permit these things here?”

I can’t say for certain whether it was anger or grief that overwhelmed me at that moment. When I went to him, father was crying like a child, with his head bent down. The moment he saw me, father lost his restraint.

“I beat the girl. I abused her. I should not have done it.”

Father kept repeating those words to me.

The sorrowing and repenting father embarrassed me much.

“Father, don’t worry. Come, let’s go.”

Witnessing the scene, the Secretary also slipped into an awkward situation.

“Never mind; now your father has realised his own mistake. You need not hesitate to send him here tomorrow.”

Saying ‘alright’ I started to move out of their office.

Without uttering a word, father too followed me. Father did not talk to anyone even after he came safely back home.

To Bharathi who came asking what the matter was, I said:

“Don’t worry. He doesn’t feel quite well, something troubles him. Let him take some rest.”

I wasn’t able to tell her anything else.

Father no longer liked to go to the Pakalveedu, despite Catherine coming to invite him personally.

“I no longer want to go to anywhere,” father said determinedly. “I’ll continue to live here.”

From that day onwards I could not but helplessly watch father cower in his gloomy room nursing some private memories. I was setting father free to go his way.