Silver Service

A mother’s words inspired one of Mumbai’s largest elder-care movements. Nine years on, the son, Sailesh Mishra, is powering on to fulfil his calling, writes Sahil Jaswal

- Sahil Jaswal

Sailesh Mishra is not your average social crusader. There is no pain of missed opportunities, no regrets he is trying to make up for, no past atrocities he is attempting to recover from. Yet this 53 year-old is driven. Can compassion alone have motivated Mishra to become a noted gerontologist?

“I believe it was my mother who set me on this track. I will never forget her words, ‘Forget yourself for others and others will never forget you’,” says Mishra, who founded the Mumbai-based Silver Innings nine years ago.

Through his foundation, Mishra has been working to change the perception of ‘silver years’, from a time of ‘retirement’ to a stage when elders can pick up where they left off before the responsibilities and baggage of adulthood begin to kick in. Instead of looking at retirement as a time of winding down and vicariously reliving one’s youth through the eyes of one’s grandchildren, Mishra says it is a time to put the ‘live’ back into ‘living’.

“We, especially the middle class, are conditioned to think that there is no life beyond 60 and I used to be one of these people,” he shares. “But I have seen dreams and hope in the eyes of seniors and that tells me they are alive, and not just living. I once helped a senior citizen to procure his identity card within 60 days, when the mandated time to process the documents was 90 days. With tears in his eyes, he handed me a candy from his pocket and hugged me firmly. In that instant, the force of all his emotions hit me. Not only was it a touching moment for me, it was an eye-opener to all the emotions and love that seniors harbour.”