Illustration by Josie Ford.
Story by Nidhi Chawla | Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder, Silver Talkies; Co-author, Rethink Ageing
Meet Nalini Simha*, she is in her 60s and lives alone in Bangalore. Her children live overseas. Simha’s world came crashing down when she lost her husband a few years ago. Her life revolved around her husband as he took charge of things while she tended to the family and home.
In another part of the city Col. Thomas*, who served the nation all his active years, now lives alone while his married daughter lives some distance away. Col. Thomas was dependent on his wife to take care of him and the household. He didn’t even know how to make a cup of tea. So, when she passed away, he found himself spiralling into depression.
Balasubramaniam* is retired and lives with his spouse, son, and family in Hyderabad. While he lives with family, he has no one to talk to or listen to as his children are busy with their respective lives. He does not have many friends to hang out with as he spent years building his career and raising a family. Hence, he spends most of his day reading the newspaper and watching TV, with barely any social interaction.
In Mumbai Sharmila Thakur* became an empty-nester once her daughter got married and moved out of the home. While Sharmila’s spouse had his hands full with work, she found herself spiralling into loneliness and depression, aggravated by the pandemic.
These are normal stories of real people. If you look around, you may see a similar story unfolding right next to you. While the story may feel ordinary, at a deeper level there are many shades of loneliness, isolation, dejection and sadness.
The longest ongoing scientific study of happiness ever conducted,the 85-year long Harvard Study of Adult Development, found that the people who were happiest, who stayed healthiest as they grew old, and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections with other people. In India, the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) conducted in 2017-2018 found that six percent of persons aged 60 and above are living alone and it is around 9% among older women. While the majority of older persons live with their children, about one in three are widowed and have lost their life companion. An Agewell Foundation survey of 2017 revealed that every second urban elderly feels lonely. Intergenerational communication channels within families are problematic due to various reasons and older adults are left facing social isolation, loneliness and depression. With lifespans increasing, what can we do to protect an elderly loved one from going through this mental and emotional trauma?
For me, the answer lies in a community model based on the concept of active ageing. Community-based models like the Silver Talkies Club allow older adults to find like-minded companions and activities involving group learning and common interests. The journey of Silver Talkies started a few years ago, and was based on observations at home – of changes happening in our own parents’ lives. The lack of a social circle and engaging activities was making the post-retirement life for my father boring and mundane. In my business partner Reshmi’s case, her father became socially isolated and homebound after retirement, while her mother was getting ready to transition from being a hobbyist into an artist entrepreneur. Our pursuit of finding meaningful opportunities and a supportive ecosystem for our own parents went in vain. This led us starting Silver Talkies in the year 2014, as an exclusive community and engagement platform for the 55+. At Silver Talkies, our aim is to make active ageing a desirable and viable goal for older adults, ensuring loneliness and isolation are non-issues for the ageing. Today we are a tech-enabled community and engagement platform for the 55+, offering our members a social network, opportunities of lifelong learning. The 55+ community have access to service providers and experts, support and assistance through volunteer network and a digital magazine.
The challenge in expanding something like this is that since the importance of social and emotional fitness are not well-understood, the acceptance of the model is slow. Social fitness lies in the “want” rather than “need” category, hence it is the first thing to be dropped off the schedule when things on other fronts of life change. The area of social wellbeing of older people requires a lot of awareness and sensitization to understand, appreciate and implement the Japanese concept of ikigai- promoting a long and happy life.
(*names changed)
What we have learned…
In the last 9+ years of working the eldercare space we came to understand a few things:
- We are ill-informed as a society of the importance of social and emotional well-being in the life of the oder adult. We tend to focus exclusively on physical health completely ignoring the importance of social connections and the joy of possibilities.
- We tend to tie down the older adults with our assumptions and stereotypes about ageing and tend to discount or overlook their zeal and desire to live an active and fulfilling life. It’s almost as if we clip their wings by retiring them at a certain age, expect them to hand up their boots and be happy spending time with grandchildren, impose that they engage in slow-moving activities, lead a lonely life in case of loss of spouse or in case of empty nesters.
- Peer-led mechanism and social fitness can be the game changer and can improve the quality of life and health of an individual.
—
Nidhi Chawla | Chief Executive Officer & Co-founder, Silver Talkies; Co-author, Rethink Ageing
Nidhi Chawla is the co-founder of Silver Talkies and co-author of the book Rethink Ageing – Lessons in Ageing from the Older and Bolder Generation published by Penguin India in the year 2022. Nidhi believes active ageing is the most promising form of preventive health care and through Silver Talkies, a tech-enabled community and engagement platform exclusively for the 55+, she has been working at promoting healthy ageing and making loneliness and lack of social engagement opportunities a non-issue for older adults.
Return to the success stories overview page.
