Page 30 - Seniorstoday August-2023 Issue
P. 30
The tug of her parents and Bandra was well-heeled and single that she was, money
too strong to resist, as she always said was not a problem and she was able to
to her friends. She joined a well-known handle the rigours of treatments. More than
global consultancy firm based in Mumbai the money, she had an unwavering support
and eventually rose to head their India and company of Ritika, who was a qualified
operations and the Asia Pacific region. She nurse.
had a successful stint from a rookie to a Ritika’s parents had been serving the
ranker at the firm and had superannuated D’Sa household for decades, since their
when she turned 60. teens, and had been well looked after
She prepared herself well, physically and respected. Rebecca herself had been
and psychologically, for her sunset years. brought up with love and care by Ritika’s
She found joy in travelling frequently parents and for all practical purposes,
to interiors and reserve forests of India, they were like her own parents. Rebecca
around the world, visiting her brother and always considered herself and her parents
his family in Washington and visiting all lucky that they had Ritika’s parents in
significant religious places dotted all over their lives. Ritika used to be in and out of
her ancient country. She was agnostic more the D’Sa bungalow during her childhood
than atheistic in her beliefs and found equal days and play around in the huge lawns of
joy in visiting all the shrines, be it a church the bungalow. It was a welcome relief for
or a temple or a masjid or a synagogue or her since her own parents lived in a small
a gurudwara and India certainly had all room in one of the semi-legal tenements
of these in plenitude amid the plains and in the vicinity, with barely any space for
peaks. Regular exercises and jogs, meeting fun and frolic and play which children
friends were all a part of her routine and so desire and need. Very often, Rebecca
these kept her busy and kept at bay the used to take impromptu tuitions for Ritika
feeling of loneliness. She had lost her during her spare time and this went a long
parents a few years before her retirement way in making Ritika apt and ready for
and sorely missed them. Save for occasional her paramedic courses, which saw her
visits of her brother to India and a few becoming a qualified nurse.
cousins based in Mumbai, hers was a life Ritika had married a para-medic, working
of solitude and the company of books and in a municipal hospital, after she qualified
music, which she inveterately relished. as a nurse. They were blessed with a baby
A love relationship in her late twenties girl, who unfortunately was diagnosed with
had gone sour and she never had the good spastic cerebral palsy, a developmental
fortune of any alluring companionship disorder, when she was three. Between
finding its way into her life. She was stoic her husband’s meagre salary and her own,
about it, given her innate resilience to they somehow managed to give reasonable
accept life as it comes. care to their daughter, aided by frequent
A decade ago, Rebecca had been detected help from the D’Sa family, though her
with failing kidneys which over time took parents had ceased working long ago at
a turn for the worst, enforcing frequent their home, due to advancing age. Nature
dialysis and leading to other endocrine and has its quirks and can deliver brutal
cardiovascular complications. Mercifully, shocks, as it did to Ritika. Six years into
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