Sixty & Sizzling
By Kamini Mathai, Times News Network
Recently, retired Lieutenant Colonel K Ramraj shot and killed 13-year-old Dilson when the boy entered the army officers' enclave to pick almonds. The 58-year-old, who had retired two months ago, was supposedly unhappy and unable to deal with his own loneliness.
While, for Girija, retirement meant getting started on everything she wanted to learn, for T Gurumurthy, it was a matter of learning simple skills to keep himself independent. When the retired staffer of EID Parry found that his right hand was so unsteady that he could not even sign a cheque, he enrolled himself at a handwriting class to re-master his own signature. "I just want to be independent as long as I can," he says.
Brinda suggests making a financial plan to figure out how much money you'll have at your disposal. It will put your mind at ease or make you work harder to get things in order. It's also good to come up with a social plan, one that will keep you mentally active. "Recently, a woman brought in her husband for counselling," she says. The man, who had retired a little while ago, had started interfering in every little thing his wife did and it was upsetting her. "She would shout at him and say she did not need his help.With nothing to do, he slumped into depression," says Brinda, who advised them to divide chores and domestic responsibilities.
"He soon snapped out of it. He just needed to feel important again, like he did at his workplace," she says. Most organisations that work with the elderly try and guide them to cope with retirement. At Dignity Foundation, for instance, they take on members from the age of 50 onwards, to encourage "productive ageing". "We steer them towards taking on social work, or a second career or hobby even before they retire so that when they finally do leave work, it doesn't hit them," says social worker Sindhu S.
Eighty-three-year-old K Ganakasabapathy, for instance, is learning various regional languages. "I am learning Telugu and Malayalam now," says the retired transport officer. "It is just to expand my social circle. I can now make friends with people who speak only these languages," he says. "And it means that there are thousands more books left to read." Brinda says that the one thing you must avoid is stock-taking, a futile but common exercise among the retired. "They spend their time brooding over how they have wronged and been wronged. It just makes them retreat further into a shell," she says.
That little mantra has been the base philosophy of the lectures that Lakshmipathi K has been giving for the elderly at various centres all over the state. The 73-year-old retired headmaster and popular motivational speaker says that at every seminar (and he has one almost every week) he tells his audience to learn to live in the moment. "Retirement takes a toll on a person, but it is up to us to decide how much. Learn to adapt, be tolerant, exercise and meditate. You just can't go wrong," he says.
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