The definition of ‘Empty Nest Syndrome’ that I found online is ‘the feeling of sadness, loss and grief that parents experience when their children leave home for studies or on work.’ This is the name that has been given for what almost all parents feel when the last child has left for higher studies or has become so wrapped up in their concerns that for all practical purposes they might as well not be at home. But here I don’t intend to dwell on the psychological impact that falls on middle aged people when loneliness and loss of the purpose that had been keeping them going suddenly sets in.
Rather, I am concerned about the actual empty nests, the empty houses and flats that abound in our state (I don’t know if it is true of other states also). Those which are not totally empty are occupied by one old person or two, and even they don’t live there all the year through. And in most cases they confine themselves to a small portion of the house. They live in one corner, most likely on the ground floor, often leaving the upstairs to be swept and cleaned once in a while.
The earlier generations built houses and planted trees in the hope that their descendants would continue to enjoy the comfort they provide and enjoy the fruits of the trees that they have planted. It did not matter that the mango tree would bear fruits only after the person who planted it died; there would be future generations to enjoy them.
But what next? This question is troubling our generation. The Malayali is incorrigibly inclined to build big houses, providing separate rooms, even suites of rooms, for every child and an additional one for the random guest who might land up while the children are all there. While I write this, I have in mind the picture of a desolate house that I sometimes visit. The children have left home; there are no guests who stay overnight and the house with its five bedrooms stands as a monument to the folly of planning so far ahead into the future. So much struggle had gone into the building, not spending on other things, so that this house could be perfect, the constant supervision in case something was not ‘just so’. Such a waste!
A house is many things. It is not just ‘a machine for living in’ as Le Corbusier said. Perhaps, in an ideal situation, that is all it should be. A shelter against the elements, a place to stay in. But it is so much more to most people who build a house. It is a symbol of their aspirations, those that have been achieved after a life’s struggle. It is a reflection of who you are, perhaps a challenge to others, to look and envy. Above all it is an affirmation of a continuity, of something that will last even after you are gone. And it is this continuity that has now lost is assurance.
It is such houses that I think of when I say empty nests. As I said, the previous generation had the luxury of building houses that they thought would be lived in for at least a few generations, of planting trees that could be allowed to bear fruits decades later. Our generation does not have that luxury. Any building that you construct, especially if you are past middle age, carries the warning that it may not be in use for very long. Even repairs carry that caveat with them. How long do you want them to last?
Some lines in James Fenton’s German Requiem seemed to talk of these empty houses as well as those Fenton described: ‘It’s not what they built. It is what they knocked down./ It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses./ It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.//’
Every road that you had walked down in younger days and now revisit seem to reiterate that the spaces between the houses are different now, soon the streets too will not be the streets you walked down earlier. So, perhaps, one should learn to build just for oneself, just for the portion of the lifetime you can be sure you will live in what you have built.
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