The man who wouldn’t grow old

There he stands, a tiny, shrivelled old man, directing traffic. Khaki clad, with a scruffy white stubble dotting his chin, but his scanty hair usually dyed jet black, the 79 year old defies the chaos that encircles him. Meet Uncle Jerry—fighter and fierce optimist.

You’ll find him at the crossing of Royd Street and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road during a traffic jam or at rush hour, directing the mad motley of autos, buses, trams and taxis. Auto drivers bump against him and joke ‘kya uncul?’ (What is it uncle?) Each one of them knows Jerry—he’s helped out on that crossing for almost a decade now.

The first thing that strikes you about Uncle Jerry is his age. Having shrunk with advancing years, his question-mark shaped frame curiously resembles a featherless bird. But that’s what Uncle Jerry is—a featherless bird that always dreams of flight.

Now you’re wondering why the septuagenarian mans a chaotic crossing. Ask him and pat comes the reply, “I can’t keep sitting; it’ll make me sick”. Unlike many others, Jerry doesn’t think the inertia of rest follows the inertia of motion, after life has sucked the sap out of you and discarded you like scrap iron.

Jerry works with the Kolkata Home Guard with which he’s been involved since 1966. According to him, the case allowing an old hand to continue with the organisation if he’s capable of performing his duty has been won by the Secretary of K.H.G. thrice.

“I also like helping the traffic policeman whenever there’s a jam” says Jerry. Behind the words is an eagerness to test his mettle, making sure his ability to be in charge doesn’t atrophy; behind them lurks the fear of becoming “useless”. But most of all, the words betray the determination of an old man to fight the void that threatens to engulf him. Jerry fights the Gerontion within him.

However, Jerry isn’t just about spending the remainder of one’s life actively. No, he embodies the ability to dream even when winter gnaws at your life. Scratch below the surface and you realize how difficult it is for a man in his circumstances to dream at all.

Born during the British era to a French father and an English mother, he’s had to struggle it out from a very young age. Jerry’s father died the year he was born, leaving his wife to care for their three children. The young boy attended St. George’s Free School because it had an attractive bonus—“a free meal and clothes”.

Jerry hasn't received much formal education, but he knows history well. The reason— he’s lived through some landmark dates. “I’ve seen a lot of bloodshed” he says simply. The boarding school Jerry was shifted to once his mother remarried was converted into a hospital in 1943 for the wounded soldiers of World War II.

It was then that he went to live with people to whom his mother sent money for his upkeep...till they told him she’d stopped sending the cash. “How could it be that my mother wasn’t sending them the money?” asks Jerry, firm in his belief that the people lied.

The boy found shelter in his friend’s home. When he fell sick, the friend’s parent wrote to Jerry’s mother informing her of his condition. There was no reply.

“There were times when I had no food in my stomach,” recalls the septuagenarian. Things started looking up when his oldest sister came down from Shimla and took him under her wing. Though Jerry’s mother returned to India after the war and rented a house for the family, he followed his sister to her new home after she got married. He’s still hoping that this sister will be able to get him out of the one-room flat in which he stays with his two sons, daughter-in-law and dog.

Jerry lives in 5 Park Lane, where a number of one-room brick houses, all painted the same shade of blue, huddle together in the compound of a dilapidated old building. As you follow your little guide down the winding lanes, ducks fly out of your way, hens peck across your path and you notice aluminium basins with the day’s washing on alternate doorsteps.

Through his life, Jerry has closely guarded the flame of hope... the hope that one day he’ll be able to make his way out of this huddle. He’s pinned his hope on relatives scattered around the world—a daughter in Denmark, a niece in Germany, a sister in England. “My sister’s son loves me a lot. He’s been trying for a long time to get me across,” says Jerry, completely secure in the genuineness of their assurances.

The elderly man doesn’t let even a single doubt flit past his mind—his castle’s walls are made of glass. Jerry’s dream is what keeps him going; this hope for a better future. He can’t risk shattering it, the loss would be too great...though loss and rejection isn’t alien to Jerry.

His wife gave birth to a girl in 1964, but the baby died in infancy. The couple had another child, two years after which Jerry’s wife left him for another man. The emotional trauma resulted in Jerry losing one of his jobs; but he managed to hang on to the Kolkata Home Guard organisation. His second wife passed away in 2003.

Uncle Jerry’s life, like that of others, is like a stage—characters enter from the wings and exit, leaving him adrift. Perhaps that’s what makes Jerry cling to something that doesn’t have an independent existence...hope. It’s born of him and he guards it like one would a child. He knows it won’t leave him unless he lets go. For once, he’s the person in charge.

“My younger son is the smart one” smiles Uncle Jerry. “I want to go to England. You know why? I can then pull him along.” Even as you return his smile, his brows begin to crease; he remembers a dependant he can’t leave behind. “The problem is my Spitz, he’s like my child. But it isn’t easy to take animals along.”

If you wonder why he’s thinking about his dog, you’re missing the picture. Jerry’s dream is as real to him as his khaki uniform, the Royd Street crossing, his blue brick house. Perhaps even more real. He’s worked out all the intricacies of migration in his mind, down to the last detail.

Jerry’s woven a cocoon-world for himself and doesn’t allow a single doubt to dent its walls. Is his rock-solid optimism simple naiveté or an old man’s steely determination to banish all doubts from his mind that threaten to snuff out his hope? The dream supports the man. He’s worked out all the procedures and formalities of migration in his mind. He knows he’s going to get there— that’s what keeps him going as he slowly walks back home, the silhouette of a frail man entering his dimly lit basti, where smoke from the stoves of dingy one-room homes aspire to greater heights.


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