Love and respect your parents but also make them feel wanted

It’s a weekend and you have invited friends over dinner at home. These are friends from your college days and most of them know your parents quite well. The friends land up at your home with their wives and the party begins. But before everybody settles down, they go to the parent’s room to touch their feet and get their blessings. This tradition of touching feet is an Indian culture of showing love and respect to the elders. They check about their health and have a small chat reliving the college days when they would land up at your place and mom will treat them to parathas and tea.

Reliving college days memory with parents

The party warms up soon and everybody gets busy. Men are enjoying the drinks and having a debate over CAA and politics. The women are busy chatting and getting updated on everybody’s kid’s progress report. Few are giving compliments to the host on the beautiful silk saree she is wearing.

As it is getting late, parents are served dinner in their room. Meanwhile one of the friends notices this. He immediately goes to the room and invites your father and mother to come and spend some time with them in the living room. Everybody requests the father to have a small drink with them. The ladies, on the other hand, appreciate the snacks prepared by the mother and ask her to share the recipe. Parents enjoy the little moments of glory as it brings back the old memories of socializing days with their friends.

This feeling of “being wanted” is what brings the smile on the parent’s face. And this combination of love and respect along with making them feel wanted adds to their longevity.

Love and respect the older ones but also spend time with them

Our work schedule and regular household chores take away most of our daily time. So much that by the time you are back from office, you straight away head to your bedroom, change to more relaxed clothing and lie-down on the bed. Whatever time you have left is taken away by social networking or Netflix and Hotstar. Where is the time to sit with parents and chat? Since parents stay with you it is taken for granted that they must be busy with their daily schedule. You love and respect them but when it comes to giving time to them, you fall short on their expectations.

Exercising is a routine

The schedule of parents also is fixed. Dad is a habitual early riser. He goes out for his morning walk regularly as this is the most relaxing and enjoyable session for him when he meets his friends in the park. It is a common sight in the park early in the morning when you see a group of senior citizens doing their morning exercises together.

An Intellect Class

Most of them are retired and their long experience at work makes them an intellect of a different kind. They are highly opinionated. Some speak in favour of the current government policies while some are against it. Once back from the park he has a morning cup of tea and a without-fail newspaper session.

Mom’s daily routine is also similar. She gets up early in the morning. She does her alom-vilom, pranayam and then goes out for a walk. After her knee replacement her speed has slowed but her spirits haven’t. All her friends sit in the park after their walk and mom also joins the gang. Once back from the walk, she gets busy with the kitchen chores. Even today the paranthas or the sabzi prepared by her have no match.

As you and your wife leave for office and kids for school, parents get restricted to the four walls of the bedroom. Dad keeps himself busy with the television while mom gets busy with her daily calls to the daughters to check on the kids and the family. Mom loves knitting and keeps herself busy in the day making beautiful hand knitted sweaters.

Love and respect is ok but can you take out some time?

It’s after having lunch that the feeling of emptiness sets in. They look forward to kids coming back from school in the afternoon as their noise makes the house lively. But the moment is short-lived as they have to leave for their tuition classes. Grandma asks them to have lunch properly but gets the same reply every day “Dadi, I am getting late for the tuition. Will have it after I come back”. Kids love and respect their grandparents but in this competitive world, they are also running short on time.

In the evening they look forward to their son coming back from the office and having an evening tea with them. But the office workload and the travel leaves no time for the son to sit with them. The evening is the time that takes their loneliness to its height. While in the morning they get a chance to go out of the house, meet friends, chat with them, in the night they get restricted to the bed and the television. The run-of-mill soaps on television no more interest them and they eagerly look forward to a live chat with either the son or spouse or the grandkids.

Days spent with my father

I lost my father some three years back but still have some sweet memories of him. It was he who developed the newspaper reading habit in me. In the morning both used to read the newspaper together. He will read HT while I used to read TOI and then we would exchange.

On a Sunday winter morning, both used to sit in the sun. He got busy with the Sunday sections of newspapers while I would read my magazines. Giving us the company was our pet Bruno, my dad’s favourite. In between, I would update him on what was happening in my office. He would also narrate his experiences of Civil Aviation and at times tell me about his professors of Allahabad University where he had studied.

Watching  a cricket match together was fun

He was a big fan of cricket and would watch IPL along with my domestic help who happened to be his best mate. Often, I would also join the party and the three of us would watch the match together. He was a big fan of Dhoni and would argue to any extent in favour of him. After I lost him to destiny, I lost interest in cricket. But the time spent with him still gives me those goosebumps.

Loving and respecting mom and spending more time with her

My mom still carries on with the same routine. She is busy in the morning with her exercises and walks followed by cooking. She has a passion for cooking and to keep that passion alive, I also keep demanding some dish or the other. The latest was when I asked her to make the “Gajar ka hulva” (Carrot pudding cooked in milk) an all-time favourite in winters. It was a bit of a challenge for her with frozen shoulders but my spouse and my help followed her instructions to come out with that magical hulva.

Watching Netflix is a good time pass

In the evenings, I try to give company to her by watching Netflix or Hotstar. Though I must agree that Netflix needs a lot of censoring. But both of us enjoy watching the animal kingdom on Netflix titled “Our Planet”. It is one of the best Animal kingdom serial produced to date on Netflix. My only wish is that if it would have Hindi subtitles, a language in which my mom is more comfortable.

Watch Our Planet on Netflix. Click on the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aETNYyrqNYE

Even my kids follow the same culture when it comes to loving and respecting their dadi. If they are booking a movie ticket, they will first check with their grandmother if she would like to watch the movie. Most of the time our family dinner outings are with her. Whenever it is shopping time, especially during festivities she accompanies my spouse and daughter to the mall. And last but not least, on Karva Chauth, I still get a couple of sarees, one for my wife and one for mom.

So let’s make a resolution this year that we will spend more time with our parents.

Read more such similar stories on my blog. Click on the link below:

The Journey of Life with parents by your side

The Grandparents and their walking stick standing in a corner