The Older Parents

It’s sad how the elderly parents are treated in India, and may be all over the world. After a long time I spent this weekend reading a book (I’ve been trying to complete The Last Mughal now for a long time), sleeping, and watching TV. On TV they show an ad where they show a retired person being treated rudely by the family of, probably, his son, just because he is not financially independent. Then they say if you buy their insurance policy this won’t happen.

Why do some of us treat our parents so badly, of all the people? I’m not giving a moral lecture here. I think our parents spend a big chunk of their lives trying to keep us comfortable, emotionally, physically and financially. This is truer in the hypocritical Indian society where the youngsters don’t take a second to declare their “independence” while still taking pocket money from “mummy” and “daddy”. In the western countries if people don’t treat their parents well or prefer to keep them in old-age homes it is understandable because their parents don’t make much effort while bringing up children, and the norms of the society are such that people move out at an early age. But in India people sometimes depend on their parents even after their marriages.

Even the parents live their lives for their children. Take for instance my parents. My father spent a big part of his life struggling in the foreign lands so that his family could live comfortably. Similarly, my mother zealously took charge of us and the house while our father was away. Now that I’m married, I can feel how terrible they must have felt living away from each other for so many years. Although I have had my share of ideological differences with my parents, I cannot even in my dream imagine treating them with contempt or talking to them rudely. I’ll be ashamed of myself if I ever do so.

Let me quickly add that I don’t think parents who maltreat their children (no matter what overbearing frustrations they have at those moments) deserve respect when they grow old. There was a relative of ours who was not only cruel to animals but also to his wife and children. His children still loved him when they grew up and took good care of him before he died. He not at all deserved that treatment, but strange are the notions of human feelings (sometimes children treat cruel parents well just to seem good to the society).