Sunday, December 5th, 2004
Life in the slow lane
Eslinda d’ Souza has a gift. She hand weaves the most exquisite patchwork quilts and produces a limited edition of 23 pieces a year.
Next door, Renah Remedios is tailoring clothes for little girls. She used to make at the rate of 1.5 outfits a day but a hip fracture has cramped her style and now she does the cutting and only supervises the stitching. “It’s fastest when I do it myself,†she beams.
In another wing, Wilfred Fonseca is building little cribs from shells, corrugated paper and other waste material. He has built over 50 cribs this year.
Here’s the best part. Eslinda is 86. Renah is 84. Wilfred is 74 (and largely bed ridden after losing his legs in a train accident years ago).
They are residents of The Home for the Aged at Mahakali Caves, Andheri East. The Home was set up in 1958 and is conducted by the Little Sisters of the Poor and compassionately overseen by Mother Ann. The Little Sisters of the Poor care for the impoverished and elderly regardless of caste, class, religion.
Last Sunday, we took a break from the India - South Africa cricket game and attended the Home’s November Fest: The normally placid Home was a hive of activity. Assorted stalls showcased the arts and crafts of the Home’s residents. Eslinda’s quilts, Wilfred’s cribs and Renah’s little outfits were on display alongside assorted soft toys and handicrafts made by a generation that is well into its sixties and beyond.
The Fest also featured assorted artifacts gifted by well wishers to the Home and spruced up by its studio ‘As Good As New’. The studio scrubs, washes, polishes and paints these objects and makes them as good as new. This is how the studio gets its name.
The Home is in urgent need of repairs and renovation and the Fest helped raise funds that go towards bringing sunshine in the lives of citizens in their sunset years.
For over four decades, the Home has provided for the elderly even as the city has witnessed the disintegration of the joint family system, the alienation of an older generation and increasing crimes targeting senior citizens.
J Das’ voice wafts in through the window. He is humming a Jagjit Singh melody. Das is 78 and blind but is dressed in a bright red shirt and white trousers pressed to a crisp at the laundry. The Home looks after the comforts of its residents in every which way. A large kitchen hums as rice, dal and beans are cooked for the day’s lunch. There are dining rooms, TV rooms, an emergency medicine room, a physiotherapy unit, a chapel and a green, central courtyard that opens to the sky and the sun.
The Home is run entirely on the contributions in time, talents and money donated to The Little Sisters of the Poor by the caring people of the city. Donations favouring Society of the Home for the Aged are exempt from Income Tax DIT (E)/BC/806/1517/95-96.
The address is Society of the Home for the Aged, Mahakali Caves Road,
Andheri East, Mumbai 400093. The closest bus stop is Sher E Punjab. The closest landmark is the Gurudwara near Sher E Punjab colony.
Or you can phone 28382535 (91-22-28382535, if you are dialing from outside India). You can speak to Sister Mary Joseph or Mother Ann. If you are most comfortable with email, you can write in to me and I will be happy to forward your mail to the Home.
All in all it was a Sunday morning well spent. The only hitch was, Mary Pereira stopped us for a match update. Mary is 97 and a hardcore Tendulkar fan. As she approaches her maiden century, it’s not surprising she looks to a lad who is 65 years her junior but has scored more hundreds than anyone in the world.
This is the full text of a piece that appeared in the Bombayana section of today’s Sunday Times.