Between the Scylla and the Charybdis

My friend’s daughter-in-law’s father used to tell his in-laws that he would get enough time after retirement, and he would very frequently visit them then. When he retired, the money he got as a lump sum gave him a violent shock; he fell sick and became almost immobile. He has never been heard of visiting his in-laws as a result.

He had a marriageable daughter with an impaired hand and a son not yet established. The money he got was nowhere near enough to give them what they were aspiring for. Such a condition is common among parents of meagre means. Every one of them wants their children to be born and brought up in a decent way and run from pillars to posts to give them proper education and necessary supports for their establishment. But for many of them, it remains a distant dream. Many of them suffer in silence, and others can’t hide their agony.

Do children feel similarly for their elderly, impaired, impoverished, or parents of meagre means? The only son of one of my retired colleagues fraudulently took 85 lakhs of rupees and settled abroad, leaving the father in the lurch. He disconnected from him forever without giving any clue as to where he started living. Another only son took 65 lakh rupees fraudulently from his father to settle in the capital city and refused to allow them to live together. Often, I see the conditions of the elderly parents living around me, most of whom are dependent on their children and daughter-in-law for two square meals. Usually, they would not tell others their conditions for fear of retribution. They all wasted the prime of their lives bringing up their children in whatever ways they were able to.

I often used to tell my retired colleagues that they should keep aloof from the retired employees they would come across in their post-retirement lives. Though the advice was immoral, I knew I didn’t have any bad blood for any of them. But the thing was that, as most of the retired employees have different problems, starting from weak financial conditions to many sorts of family problems, I feared these would only add to their worries.

While giving such ironic advice, I took the problems of the elderly, neglected, or abandoned parents as low-scale ones. After years, I now see the problem as full-blown. The way parents are being sidelined by their children can’t be ignored or turned a blind eye to their suffering.?

Mushrooming of old-age homes since the recent past may be an arrangement to cope with the situation. But that is no solution. Because old age homes may give the needy a space to spend time until they are alive, it will never be able to stop them from being wounded or heal their wounds.

I constantly keep telling people to concentrate equally on bringing up their children and also on the safety and security of their lives in old age. I tell them not to put all their eggs in a basket. But parents are parents who are blindly in love with their children. It is very difficult to make them suspicious about the snakes they are now nursing in their breasts.

I firmly believe and attribute this erosion of the social and moral values of today’s children to the rotting society. Do we react to these newborn serpents similarly to when we see snakes coming out in the open that can bite any of us? Of course, not. What has made us so tolerant of wicked children? Was society so irresponsible and blindfolded in the past? Of course not. I don’t think society would ever regain its lost glory and act as one with a spine.

The government will have to act more stringently. It must enact laws to deal with the traitors, besides making sufficient provisions to accommodate the abandoned parents.

On social networking sites, we get to watch a great number of painful stories about cruelty to elderly parents. In my opinion, only showing the miserable conditions of neglected, abandoned, or sidelined parents is not enough. The creators of such dramas must make the central point of the dramas how they should act in time to save them in old age from harassment by their children.

I want the parents to be cautious about their future. The property they own must, under all conditions, be kept under their disposal so long as they are alive. Any excesses by wicked children must be dealt with with heavy hands. There are provisions in the law that will come in handy when one is caught between the scylla and the charybdis. By being decisive and without giving a hoot to what others say.