The Drikung Gyaltsay Charitable Trust has set up a 30-room old age home at Aho village in Sikkim, which is about 14km fom state capital Gangtok, to house senior citizens who either are bereft of the support of their families or are too poor and feeble to take care of themselves.

The home, which is spread across 2,600 hectares, also has a Buddhist monastery and a prayer hall within the sprawling complex.

“This probably is the largest home for senior citizens in Sikkim and we have been able to accomplish the task thanks to the blessings of the Drikung Gyaltsay rimpoche (religious teacher),” said S.G. Kaleon, the chief functionary of the Trust.

The home for senior citizens has been constructed on the land donated by Chumjay Bhutia, a social worker and the wife of late Namnah Bhutia, a former registrar of the Cooperative Society, Sikkim government.

“We have only just completed the construction, and we will formally inaugurate the home in a month once our chairman (Drikung Gyaltsay) returns from Australia,” said Kaleon.

The home will be made available to those who can afford to pay the fee and are without care because of their children’s’ inability to afford them time, those who can help in the daily chores at the home and are also similarly without care, and to the very poor and ailing.

“All these (decisions) will be firmed up in a meeting of our trustees once our chairman returns,” said Kaleon.

All the 30 rooms at the home for senior citizens have attached washrooms and are adequately furnished.

Kaleon added a relevant point about a practical change in mindsets needed in contemporary society when so many senior citizens have to live alone with their children working far away.

“It is not a shame to live in old age homes. Given the times we live in where kids have to go outside to earn their livelihood and cannot find the time to take care of the parents, and not always because they don’t want to, such homes will be a blessing,” said Kaleon.