An old problem

Ila Arun in a rehearsal for Yeh Raste Hain Pyar Ke

It was earlier this month that this newspaper had published a series of articles about Celine Sequeira, an 83-year-old resident of a four-storey house in Borivali West that the BMC is now threatening to redevelop. Sequeira is the only person remaining in the building. The three paying guests she had left the premises some time ago, robbing her of her only source of income. Her electricity and water supplies have been cut off, and Sequeira has no money left for food either. You can thus imagine the plight of the octogenarian, living isolated in darkness, hunger and thirst at a time when the pandemic wreaks havoc on people's health, wealth and mental framework.

Celine Sequeira being gifted a cake on Mother's Day

The reason we are recounting her story here once again is that a new play that veteran thespian Ila Arun has written deals with the travails that senior citizens like Sequeira have had to face over the past year. It's called Yeh Raste Hain Pyar Ke, and Arun will perform a reading of the script online this weekend, along with her co-actors Avinash Ujjain and KK Raina. The plot revolves around two elderly people, played by Arun and Raina, who find themselves completely cut off from the outside world during the pandemic, save for sporadic phone calls. Eventually, when parks reopen, they meet each other while out for walks, and the conversations they strike up act as a breath of fresh air because they have been starved of the oxygen of human interaction.

Those conversations lead them down a metaphorical road - named Yeh Raste Hain Pyar Ke - with the journey revealing aspects of their lives that complete what the plot is about.

Arun tells us that she had been mulling a play on the pandemic ever since it started last year. "But I didn't know where to start since there were so many real issues. Relationships were falling apart. Domestic abuse was on the rise. Mental health was at a low. So, in all this, I decided to focus on senior citizens. I started thinking about what the hell is happening to them. Elderly people anyway tend to be isolated by others. But Covid-19 has now become an excuse to isolate them even further," she says, explaining how when the lockdown was lifted after cases dropped last year, senior citizens were still advised to stay at home because they were perceived to be in greater danger.

KK Raina

The two protagonists in the play, she adds, represent every such person, including someone like Sequeira. These people are anyway living on borrowed time, Arun says. But the pandemic has now essentially deprived them of two years in which they could have fulfilled some of their remaining desires, even as their days are numbered. If that sounds morbid, it's because it is. But, there is always hope, as Arun's central characters display when they find each other. Even in Sequeira's case, her neighbours and well-wishers came forward on Mother's Day on Sunday to gift her a fridge, money and a cake filled with love. And the picture we printed of her biting into it showed how - at least for a while - the dear woman was not hungry, thirsty or alone at all.

On: May 15, 7 pm
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