Today, a lot is being written and discussed about the old parents and the indifference they face from their children. The immediate comparison is in ‘those good old days’ in a joint family all were happily living together. Now it is not!

I feel now it is not! I know then also it was not!

The two or three gen lived together out of compulsion and necessities. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have. There were no families where both husbands and wives worked round the clock in the ubiquitous IT field and drew hefty salaries and perks like the present day. So invariably, the daughters-in-law were on the receiving ends of the mothers' and fathers-in-laws and many times of husbands also.

Today the situation has changed. Because most of the children are not in this country itself. They flew to the US, UK, Europe, Australia, Singapore and even Papua New Guinea.

The parents of the present day are also very proud of it and care a little about the absence of a joint family. Because these people too have wealth and properties or the son’s or daughter’s, to take care of. They live in one of their many houses or a good or luxurious old age home depending on their finances. With the technology developments, they can talk to their children through video calls and interact. Even they watch the celebrations here and vice versa.  Well, they may miss the physical proximity of their sons and daughters and their grandchildren. Even that is satisfied with once in two years trips for six months or more. 

I honestly feel that as the sons and daughters would have turned into half the foreign citizens and the grandchildren will not even care about these oldies anyway.

Assuming that even if they are together, what sort of conversation can be expected with their children or grandchildren except India's famous game cricket? To talk or converse with someone, we need a common topic of interest. In the present circumstances, both politics and religion are quite incendiary.

Many times, even in my college days, I have rarely come across very cordial father-son relationships.

Now, how can there be?

Ladies with due respect to their emotional attachments are invariably finicky and get upset. I recently heard that even my lady cousins hardly communicate with their daughters though they live in the same city.

If these wise senior citizens try anything with the grandchildren, it will end up in face-off only. Neither the ‘grandmas’ are as intelligent as one popular Tamil writer used to depict in her stories, nor their wards are as wonder struck by them as she used to claim.

Yes. After a particular stage, children can be a matter of pride, not a pillar.

It is, therefore, wise for senior citizens to live alone or in some home; there too it would be tough only; because without any tangible expectations, life becomes dreary. It is a bitter truth.  

The popular dictum says, ‘Old is Gold’, but we overlook the fact that ‘Gold never gets Old’.