It was around two in the afternoon. It was hot and the fan made slow circles in the air. Nam Ju had come for her English lesson and we were having a pleasant conversation about a Korean lady who provides accommodation for Korean ex-pats living in Mumbai without their families. The phone rang and she attended to it. Her voice suddenly turned shocked and soon her eyes welled with tears. I asked her what happened and she said that she just hear news that her grand aunt in law had passed away.
“She was fine only three years ago,” she told me. ” She was 96 years old but very healthy and strong. Her daughter in law who is 66 is in fact sickly. Because she is sick she put the old lady in an old people home.”
In Korea it is customary for children to look after their old parents and the old auntie lived with her son for over  forty years. But when his own wife became too weak to look after the mother in law, they very reluctantly put her in a home. Both the son and his wife and the old lady were miserable about this but there was nothing they could do.

But things are changing in Korea, Nam Ju told me, hers will be the last generation to look after their old parents. She says that she and her husband will either live on their own or move into an old age home. I told her that the same thing is happening to our country too. With modernisation and Westernisation we will have no place in our children’s lives. I wonder if this is a good thing or bad.

This is a fine example of an old age home in Pune. It is modern and well constructed and many of my friends have already got apartments here. So perhaps it is not such a bad idea after all.