Quotidian Tales

A place where they (the elderly) too can be as preoccupied as their children and grandchildren and a time where they too are alive and not merely living. “Y ou do not know what it is like to be lonely until you spend time alone wishing for companionship.” These words uttered by one of my most favourite changemakers, Ratan Tata , in the recent past finally stimulated me to serve up those thoughts that had been simmering in my mind for long. A stalwart supporter of meaningful societal change, Ratan Tata made this statement when his investment in ‘Good Fellows’, a one-of-a-kind start-up in India, was announced and made public a few weeks back. Ideated by the feisty 28-year-old, Shantanu Naidu, who apart from being Ratan Tata’s assistant also shares a beautiful bond with the 84-year-old tycoon, ‘Good Fellows’ is an aspiration towards a more compassionate living. It aims at forging intergenerational friendships between senior citizens who are lonely, and felicitous young graduates, ...

...their faceless identities empowering the subtle more than the substantial… Their tours were not actual but virtual! I t's been a ‘trying’ time for most of us. I mean in both parts of speech. Exhausting and experimental. I was losing a semblance to my preferred self and succumbing mostly to domestic drudgery and at times to depression and distance. Then one evening, almost a month ago while I was talking to my brother (referred to as Big B going forward), he introduced me to a WhatsApp group. Initially, I was not really keen on joining it as it sounded like something unusual and not-really-heard-of-before. After all, a Taurean to the core, I am stubbornly resistant to change and take a while to accept the unconventional. ‘National Park Challenge,’ the name by which the group goes, is an international group consisting of members with shared interests, to say the least. My first thought...it's just a group of fitness aficionados. Then working around it, I tried to f...