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On the flight to San Francisco, I got talking to the lady seated next to me. With her was her grandson, who must have been around 11 or 12 years of age. She told me that they were returning from a ten day vacation in Kenya. They were flying from Mombasa to Dubai, and Dubai to San Francisco, where she would drop her grandson, and then take the flight home to Los Angeles.
That got me thinking of older people back home. They are generally expected to make themselves inconspicuous, but useful, to the next generation. (Of course there are the domineering ones who never relinquish reins till the day they die. I am NOT speaking of them, but those silent others who are expected to be always in service to the younger lot, their children. Yes, there are many such as them too.). They pursue no interests of their own. It may be forgivable to an extent if the grandfathers among them have any to follow, but grandmothers are expected to tread the beaten path of ‘caring for the family’ and not have any interests of their own. At the most, they might be ‘allowed’ to have interests of a religious nature, but otherwise ‘sacrifice’ is supposed to be her other name and most of them believe it to be so wholeheartedly.
Leave aside desires that go against the grain, sometimes, even innocuous ones within the ‘sanctioned’ framework, are denied. I personally heard my elder brother-in-law refuse permission to my otherwise dominant mother-in-law to go to hear a religious discourse at the Ramakrishna Math. I was a new entrant to the family at the time. But, I remember being aghast that he did so, and even more astonished that the MIL did not demur. I wrote a story once (link) about an older woman whose small wish (of making a journey of a spiritual nature) was denied by her children. It is a fictitious account of another true incident I witnessed later on in my life.
What surprised me most was how the many who read the story came up with excuses for the children. It could be because of this, because of that, they told me. Really?!! You are actually coming up with excuses for restrictive behavior? As if those reasons as possibilities (not that I agree with them) never occurred to me (yawn), in the first place. In the second, and what to me is more important, is the fact that I accept NO excuses for curtailing freedom of others, unless they are minors and you as guardian and/or parent are using your discretion to protect them. It was amazing to me to note how similar it all sounded to the way excuses are made to justify the oppressive ways of parents/adults on the younger lot.
Why do we love and justify such restrictions on adults, be they for the older or younger among us? Why do we as adults (younger and older) kowtow to restrictions placed upon us (and justify that too)? Why cannot we trust adults to make their own judgments, MAKE MISTAKES and learn from them? Yes sometimes we do end up having to pay a price in life for things we could foresee, but others could not. That is life. Doesn’t it happen the other way too? So how does being restrictive be the right way? Why cannot we live as adults and let others live as ones too instead of merely existing (as controlled zombies)?! When you are young your parents control you, when you grow older, the young control parents and we call that our tradition and culture. How weird that we try to find happiness in being oppressed. Perhaps it is time to redefine happiness.
Shail's Nest 
your last line is so very well said!
How exciting for the grandmom and grandson to spend time together in a vacation! I really find that so wonderful! 🙂
I found that awesome too. It is not always about meeting your grandmom at the ancestral place. You can enjoy going with her to new places too:)
Well written and thought provoking post. Like my mother always says quote after marriage your MIL controls you and after your son’s marriage your DIL will try to control or you will try to control her. I don’t want to be either controlled or control anyone.unquote. Today although my parents do visit my bro and my sis-n-law in Bangalore they make sure that both the parties get enough freedom and privacy to make their own decisions and choices. After all you only live once and it is important that you live it on your terms and not dictated or controlled by anyone.
Well said Shail!
I think this says it,”I don’t want either to control or be controlled!” 🙂
Thanks Swati 🙂
Hi Shail,
Thank you for dropping by and leaving your footprints. I enjoyed our chai session yesterday. Hope to do it real life as well. Till then stay blessed and take care. P.S. keep posting pictures of your winged friends as well.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Reminds me of a friend of mine, her mother, she and her daughter go on a weekly trip every year. Her mother is one of the most bindaas ladies I’ve ever met.
There is another lady in the church, she is a mechanical engineer , in her sixties, retired from a government job, now working in a private firm. Didn’t see her for a few weeks and then we come to know that she is attending Autocad classes on weekends. That’s the way to live!
Indeed it is! 🙂 Makes me happy to read about them.
Everyone has their own lives to live even our parents and grandparents. We all have our own path. My parents were not only my parents but my dearest friends. I loved them dearly and took care of them when they each became sick until the day they died. I did it because they would have done the same for me. No one wants to be controlled. Everyone wants to have a say in their life so we must respect that.
Yes,we must respect that each one has their own path. Thanks for the comment, Kathy 🙂
I have so many thoughts here… I might as well write a post!
Do so, Hitchy 🙂 Waiting to read!
Loved what you wrote..especially the past para
Thank you, R’s Mom 🙂
because it irks people to see do something that satisfies themselves and not them
.Errr… would you please say that again?
I go and watch movies alone, spend a day out or even go out and have a meal at a fancy restaurant. You would be surprised at the shocked and disapproving stares I get. People after a certain age are not supposed to do such things! They are supposed to sit at home waiting for the younger ones, only solitary trips to local temples are allowed.
Looking for a “like” button here to click! Hats off to you, Ritu! I’d love to see the look on the faces of those “disapprovers”! It’s my dream to go see a movie alone one day. I’ll let you know when I do, promise!
I hear you, Ritu! Loud and clear.
My woe is of totally opposite reason Shail! My Amma is here in Dubai now and all I want to give her is rest from household work and trips and new experiences but all she wants to do is household work.. sigh!
It is something familiar to her, in the strangeness of her surroundings. Let her, within limits
I agree with you. When I see the elderly folks here, it fills me with new enthusiasm towards life! They have hobbies and friends and are self sufficient!
That doesn’t mean they don’t spend time with their families!
I wish folks would learn this and not act like their life is over by the time they hit 60!
Absolutely agree with you, Pixie!
Your post takes me back a couple of years.
I am now 64.
My parents are no more now.
They would have been in their ripe old nineties if alive.
They lived independently as long as they could.
During the last five years of their lives, it became impossible.
We (my brother and I ) took turns to keep them with us though they did not want to and insisted on staying alone by themselves.
Did we control them?
Yes, we simply HAD to control them
But that was for their own good and for health reasons.
We never controlled them when there was no health issue at stake.
They were free to live their own lives and pass time the way they wanted to.
We would take them out when they wanted as long as it was not too inconvenient to us. There were times when I had to politely turn down their request to be taken out somewhere. The reasons were often compelling and we always explained to them.
My Dad suffered from mild Dementia towards the end of his life.
I used to take him for a walk everyday in the morning.
Obviously at his age, he was a slow walker and used a walking stick.
I would leave him on the garden bench while I continued my brisk walk around the park.
He would be out of my sight for not more than 5 minutes at a time there were other people known to me in the park and so I did not feel it was unsafe to do so.
One day, I returned to where he was supposed to be sitting and found him missing.
He had wandered off and it was the alertness of the security staff at the gate to our residential complex that prevented a mishap. He was seen trying to leave through the main gate and cross a busy road and was waving his stick at the traffic in an effort to get them to stop so that he could cross. Anything could have happened if the security staff did not use their discretion and physically stopped him, and alerted our family through the internal phone.
I rushed and took him home.
On asking, him why he did that, he had no answer.
He did not even remember getting up from the bench and walking off.
On another occasion, he quietly opened the main door of my apartment, while my wife and i were busy in the kitchen and got into the lift to go down on his own. Other occupants in the lift alerted me through their cell phones and I had to rush out and bring him back. He would protest that he wanted to go out on his own but we just could not allow it as he was not physically fit to do so.
He cribbed often and wanted to be taken to Kerala (where he was born and brought up). We obliged him once or twice but had to put our foot down when he insisted that he wanted to stay there. We could not even make him understand that there was no house there anymore and the ancestral house we had taken him to on a visit was now sold, had changed hands several times and was now occupied by another family. It was really nice of them to invite us inside to allow my father to see his old house after several decades of being away.
We had done everything practical to keep him comfortable. He had his own room with a bathroom attached and his own cupboard to keep his things and a second TV in his room. In spite of this he would constantly plead with me to buy him a ticket to his native village and leave him there.
He would enter the bathroom, and rush out saying there was on old man inside.
We had to convince him that there was no one and what he had seen was his own reflection in the mirror. When that failed, my wife pasted a newspaper on the mirror so that he could not see himself.
At night at most unearthly hours, he would get up and one night, at around 2:30 am, I heard strange sounds from his room and when I went to investigate, I found him trying to pack a suitcase. When I asked him what he was up to, he replied that he was packing up to go on tour! To Pune! Official work, it seems! He had retired 30 years ago and obviously he was troubled by old memories.
I had to gently escort him back to bed and somehow put him to sleep.
These are just some examples of the kind of problems some very old people pose to their children. I hope I will be better behaved when my time comes!
I have no plans to stay with my children. I am now glad to help my daughter and we cheerfully spend six months at a time babysitting our only grandson in California. But I know that after he reaches a certain age, our services will no longer be required and I will not impose myself on them.
We (wife and I) plan to move into a retirement home or assisted living center at the appropriate time. There are quite a few of them in Coimbatore which we visited just to survey them and now many are coming up in Bangalore.
Old age is a fact of life. We simply have to live with the problems that arise.
Regards
GV
What we do to take care of people who cannot be trusted to take care of themselves either due to illness or incapacitating problems of old age is strictly speaking not ‘control’. This post is not about such cases either. 🙂
I have always been in favor of retirement homes and I do keep an eye out for those new ones coming up.
I really wonder why Indian parents of adult kids are so over indulgent in their kids’ lives? Is it because they are not allowed to have any hobbies ,likings of their own and therefore their world revolves around their kids’ lives and seeking importance is their food to their self esteem……or because they want to be always available to their kids ,solicited or otherwise, that’s why they don’t cultivate any hobby or independent life without their kids?
I also see so many adult kids having a sense of entitlement to use their parents for making their own lives easier. Taking loan , asking them to help out in raising grand kids ,doing stuff dealing with Govt offices which is time taking etc.
Both are problems we see so commonly 😦
Aww reading about the lady and her grandson just warmed my heart! If only older people back home would evolve their thinking and start adopting the same kind of zest for life and stop feeling sorry for their old age.
And you’re in SFO! Have a wonderful stay Shail! 🙂
Thank you, Deeps 🙂
True, older people should have their own interests and the younger ones should stop taking them for granted as easy ‘help’ when they need it.
It is so true Shail… frankly I feel our society & culture is all about controlling… in the name of family honor, society status and the most important thing ‘what will people say’ … every one is controlling someone or the else in the family….
Control and false honor. Nobody even wants to relax and enjoy.
Hi Shail, this is a very thought provoking post. It is very inhuman to deny old parents to have an outing. If the parents are fit and healthy, they must be free to go out and visit places. I am now 77 and immobile. . Till some years back I used to go out for shopping, meeting friends and visiting places. Even now i pursue my hobbies, invite friends at home. In fact my children encourage me and feel happy.
That’s very nice to know 🙂 It is always good to have hobbies.
Quite recently my MIL came visiting us home and she was full of things like “I will buy this plot for my grandchild and diamonds for you. Also give money to both my sons” and everyone around patiently listening to her. When we both were left alone I said to her that for god’s sake go travel go meet your friends/relatives. Take a trip to Sri lanka do with your money what you desire. you have done enough for your kids. She looked at me first with surprise and then she hugged me. And started to cry. She said I might not do all this but the fact that you are almost reprimanding me about this touches me so much 🙂
Shail we need to realise that inhibitions come naturally to people and sometimes if a push goes a long way in deterring elderly people from trying things a pull might inspire them to try more than their comfort zone also.
Richa
That was such a heartwarming gesture on your part, Richa. 🙂
There are all kinds of people…some who dominate and control, some who get controlled. What’s your take on those elders who tell their mother that they cannot keep her with them because their Punjabi n South-Indian DILs will not like. Whereas they tell the DILs, “We now don’t call up Mom coz she might again ask us to bring her here.”
Why can’t people just be honest, instead of being manipulative and putting the blame on others?
Blaming others is a habit with some people. I also hate manipulative nature and can take honesty any day!
The grandmom and the grandson solo trip sounds very new to me but interesting. and about everything else you said it holds true and I have seen a lot of elderly people devoting their life to their family or simply living a vanished life / non existent kind of life. But on analyzing I happily realized it has not been the case in my family though my dadi has very few interests that involves out doors but what ever little she has and whatever else she wants to do with her time while at home we completely indulge her.
Same has been case with my maternal side of grandparents. But now I see that changing. I don’t see both side of parents living that kind of life ever and I don’t even wish that infact they all want to have an independent life as long as possible and are well planned for that.
And you know it is not always about adult children neglecting them it is also about the kind of lives they have lead otherwise also. May be there weren’t many hobbies they developed, or were not much into TV or internet even in their young age.
I mean there is a lot to this topic than what seems on the surface.
It works both ways. Some parents cling to the children, some children take parents for granted. Glad to read about your family 🙂
Very thought provoking post! And kudos to the grand mom. My parents and their circle of friends have a social life which is more active than ours. We are so glad that they are traveling, meeting friends, eating out and having a good time. Though the same cannot be said for few other elderly people we know. Their lives are dictated by their kids….
That is so heartening to read about your parents. I know some couples like them too. 🙂
Well said Shail. I hope to be like the grandma in this story. Dreaming of taking my little one for a small trek. I hope my knees don’t give away. Pray for me.
Oh you surely will Nadira. Here is wishing you good luck! 😀 And when you do, share pics on FB 🙂
“Why cannot we trust adults to make their own judgments, MAKE MISTAKES and learn from them? Yes sometimes we do end up having to pay a price in life for things we could foresee, but others could not. That is life. Doesn’t it happen the other way too?”
Very true! It’s basically about control, I guess. Live and let live is one of the most difficult concepts for us to understand, especially in a family environment.
Well articulated!
And how wonderful for that Grandmom and her Grandson 🙂
We really must somehow find a way to assimilate that concept of ‘Live and let live’ into our lives! We have this belief that if we stop pushing ourselves into the life of others, that’s because we don’t love them enough. *eyeroll*
My mum-in-law is all for solo trips. We usually advice her to not strain herself especially in summers but she hardly listens. 🙂 I really like that quality in people.
Hi5! I like that quality too 🙂
you got me into thinking mode.. I have mostly seen the control happening from top to bottom.. i.e. from parents to children and also in same level i.e one spouse controlling the other..