Emotional outbursts
We’ve all heard it from our parents – when you are parent you will understand… From childhood onwards – every time we exasperate – out comes this remark, made from a supposedly higher position.
Well yes, now that I am a parent, I do get exasperated too. However, I seem to be in the minority, who hasn’t forgotten ‘that age’.

Having reached this age one can only admire what our parents achieved with so much less. Continuing education, producing three children, their education, saving up for the weddings, all without a single complaint on how tough life is. We hated being left behind(for our education) on that foreign posting. Unthinking, we thought they were having a whale of a time, meeting a clutch of foreigners in another country, not knowing the local language, living isolated, the only Indians in a small town. A place where Vijayanthimala was the name of every Indian woman in a saree and Bol Radha Bol the song to sing after her. At the same age I’ve found it impossible to live in a city where Hindi/Urdu(my mother tongue) are the second language, Malayalam the third and English a distant fourth, where there is population of over 30% Indians.

We grudged them their holiday in Europe. Yet, with all their responsibilities they found the time and money go through Europe, living in cheap lodgings, carrying drinking water, and walking every where.

We’ve not understood how they could stoically stand by and look at years of hard work and savings go down to bull dozers of the Emergency Raj. At 14, I could have killed Sanjay without remorse. To go back and rebuild, to fight for an essential part of the whole… one can only wish for that courage.

That courage still exists can be seen in their ancient eyes, tired and lost from betrayal of decades long love. Love that was given at the cost of support to their only son. Love that supported during times of need – with ready cash, with emotional support, with hands-on labour. Always seen as the blessed – beautiful and rich – few saw the sheer effort required to walk back in the summer heat for lunch from work to be home when I reached home from school – to save the cost of petrol. No one ever saw us scrimping on food – living on dal chawal – when the cash ran low and the instalment for the flat had to be paid. No one saw the endless hours in the kitchen garden for fresh vegetables (3-4 days of bhindi on the table every week, the only vegetable that produced enough).

They’ve taught us to live with our heads held high. To bear uncomplaining the ravages of time. To know that this too, shall pass – the good the bad and the ugly. To enjoy the rain, the sunset, the sunrise, the smell of the soil as the first raindrops fall, the chill of winter…

Will we be able to pass on even a fraction? To give our children a core of values to last their lifetime?