In architecture school, I explored the built complexities of ‘creating’ a community for the elderly. Little did I know that I had forayed into a stream of sociology that, apart from being neglected until recently, was also a deep-rooted and debated aspect of the Indian culture.
We, as citizens and the youth, have arguably failed to recognize the future from the lens of seeing ourselves age. Instead, we associate ageing as a concept for ‘others’. This translated into the mushrooming of ‘old age homes’ that are, as Stephen Conway would call it, “homogenised and sanitised”[1] in popular culture. Yes, the elderly like the company of people their age. It is by virtue of the morals that they hold and experiences that they have lived. But that is in no means a license to build communities and retirement homes that remind you of death; a well marketed and celebrated reminder at that.
So, am I suggesting the absolute erasure of old age homes? No.
What I am suggesting, and hope to explore, is the re-interpretation of these elder care homes — their location, management, and design. Subsequently, how we can shift our outlook on ‘‘imagined communities’’ [2] from singular to plural nature.
“It is imagined because members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the images of their communion” — Benedict Anderson
While Stephen Conway, in his paper ‘Ageing and Imagined Community: Some Cultural Constructions and Reconstructions’, doesn’t completely agree to the imposed idea of a fraternity of the elderly, I wish to take a different route. I believe there is a common thread (no, it is not the physical trait of age). But we all equally fall into that commonality by being a part of a society that values socialising, learning, and communication; all of which aren’t generation-specific. Why, then, do we choose to live in a city that feeds our social needs but find it fitting to push our grandparents to ‘lakeside towns and hilly retreats’? Why spend on extra resources to be taken to the outskirts when we can add to our existing neighbourhoods?
Hence, I ask why do we have to be fixated on a singular narrative of the “imagined communities”? More specifically, why can’t we actively evolve the idea as we ourselves evolve? Anderson’s definition may have helped mark boundaries for countries. Yet, I am wary that it is also unknowingly being used to dissect our social fabric. Today, what is supposed to be an ideological construct is being misunderstood to be a physical construct. I believe there is a need to constantly switch between the micro and the macro scale of the idea to truly understand its potential; which lies at the intersection of multiple such “imagined communities”.
As Douglas Adams rightly sums up-
“The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move” — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
References (that I am grateful for)
[1] Research paper — Ageing and Imagined Community: Some cultural constructions and reconstructions
[2] Imagined Communities as defined by Benedict Anderson
