“Life is valuable and an elderly person is not to be discarded, but an asset who can connect you to your culture.” Winnie Singh’s quote espousing intergenerational bonding struck a chord with me, having grown up with doting grandparents.

Working on Our Better World’s multimedia story on her India-based non-profit Maitri India — which supports elderly widows who have been shunned by their loved ones and society — resonated with me on an emotional level, as it evoked memories of my late paternal grandmother.

What conceivable parallels could be drawn between seniors from a joint family structure and those living on society’s fringes, you may wonder.

Senior isolation, an underlying theme of the story, is universal. A 2015 study conducted by Centre for Ageing Research and Education (CARE) at Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School revealed that 9 per cent of Singaporeans aged 62 years and older reported being lonely. This is despite the fact that many live in multi-generational families.

Feelings of loneliness are often looked asquint in Asian households, where the subject of emotional well-being isn’t your standard dinnertime fodder. Instead — in my family, at least — we express our care and affection through actions such as plying one another with food, or finding humour in the mundane.