Publisher's Synopsis
It is a true story. The aging persons disgraced, suppressed, and oppressed by the sons and daughters-in-law, they had to leave their houses. Domestic violence is mainly based on property. They with their walking sticks got used to having a morning walk down the vast area of well-known Maidan of Calcutta to get fresh air with other old friends. Widows, widowers, age-old prostitutes, women separated from their husbands used to walk in the morning. They took shelter in Old People's Homes scattered all over the city of Calcutta. The Old People's Homes were to them like a concentration camp. None could harass and try to disconcert them with questions why they had left their houses. They lacked sparkle and vivacity of life in mind and spirit.
It was hard to feel their grievous and afflicting sorrow. They were borne down by oppressive and burdensome memories they had had in their lives. Their walking was slow and dull from loss of vitality. They had passed many hectic days in their own family. They had forgotten the doctrine that pleasure and happiness was the sole and chief good in life, They couldn't help laughing. Furthermore, they knew they shouldn't go, but couldn't help themselves. Some wanted to see how they handled the problems. They had not enough money to see themselves through, and could not understand what they wanted in themselves. Their sons had only sown the seeds of discord. Some aging women got used to walking in the morning in run-down and shabby clothes. Sometimes they were unwell, because they felt debilitated and got back early to the Old People's Homes.
Their heart was full of speechless sorrow, and fluttered with a terror. Their mind was beaten to the ground by the catastrophe. They knew: 'Man can ordinarily have two kinds of character. One is the negative character: the character of the criminal, the character of the anti-social, the character of the rebellious. Another is the positive character: the character of the conventional, orthodox, respectable. The society is murderous about the negative. And naturally, on the other hand, the society respects the positive.'
The old persons living in Old People's Homes were like a wounded bird pierced with sharp arrows, whining and pining for survival. Sons' manners to their parents were a disgrace. Humiliation and sometimes ostracism sent them to Old People's Homes in disgrace. They preferred death to life with dishonor. The notoriety of their sons and daughters-in-law was an exceeding shame on them. Old People's Homes were a last anchor to leave their last breath. The loss of self-esteem made the elderly parents weak, ineffectual, and unimportant. Their faces were disfigured by diseases. They were smiling to mask their discontents. A willful perversion of truth in order to deceive, cheat, and defraud their parents involved their dishonest sons.
There was a dichotomy between their sons' contradictory statements and practices---branching off an ancestral line into two equal branches. Sons never admitted their errors for their hostile criticisms. Their parents were detached from the members of the families. The parents got to know that their sons were morally unclean and corrupt. On the way to the Old People's Homes, the old persons got shocked as they heard sons or hymns of grief and lamentation as if rains that
animated the barren hills. They alone expressed deep sorrows by shedding tears in their own room in the Old People's Home. They were weeping for their sins and errors of their misfortune like a tree oozing sap. Drooping over their knees,
their tears were flowing sluggishly and in drops. It is a weird world full of strange and mysterious.
Sons' invincible hostilities and unrestrained insults had weighed against them. The Old People's Homes had a saddening and disheartening effect. Their sons had never felt the weight of their responsibilities towards the parents living
in a miserable condition in the Old People's Homes.
