l The 80-year-old man’s face is contorted with pain. He has a profound grief hurting him all the time -- that his daughter -- married and with her own kid -- never talks with him (“even for a minute”), even though she lives in the same premises as he does. “This is the story for the past fifteen years. And after I lost my wife, I am totally isolated,” he says. He sits on for a while, silently crying, trying to control his emotion -- and then he leaves the loud-thinker’s office, his shoulders sagging, his head drooping. NOBODY would doubt the truthfulness of this silent social scourge hurting countless numbers of families in the larger Indian society.

 

Unfortunately, however, countless numbers of explanations -- or even justifications -- are also available from the larger society as to why children consciously or unconsciously disconnect with their old parents. “In a nuclear society, such a thing is very much expected”, said a professor of Sociology in a reputed college. “Even the elder generation people do not know how to behave with their younger ones in the family. They do not want to give up control”, another so-called intellectual person said. The loud-thinker disagrees strongly with all such thoughtless explanations and justifications. No matter the reasons, there is no moral and sentimental justification for giving up connect with the older people in the family, across relationships such as parents or in-laws or uncles and aunts or older brothers or sisters. Stopping to connect with them is simply inhuman.

 

The older people may have their own idiosyncrasies -- or even idiocies. But those do not offer any valid reason for the younger generations to stop communicating with the elders in the family. The younger people may never understand how terrible the feeling is when the elders realise that the younger ones in the family have stopped connecting with them. And when they may realise some day that “their” own kids were treating them similarly, it may be too late for them to effect any correction. There is another segment of younger people who do not allow their kids to connect with their grandparents. That is the height of stupidity -- as well as emotional cruelty against the grandparents. It has been a universal human experience that the little ones connect very well with their grandparents, and the grandparents, too, enjoy a great bond with the third generation bundles of love and energy.

 

However, the larger society has also seen that many younger-generation parents do not allow their kids to connect with grandparents -- for whatever reasons. They do realise that the grandparents miss their grandchildren. But intentionally, the kids are not allowed to have any connect with the grandpa or the grandmom. Is that not a height of cruelty? True, the older people, also, must learn right lessons of life as years pass by and not to take more-than-due-interest in their grown up children’s lives. But it that still does not mean that there should be a guillotine-cut in the relationship between generations. The younger generation people must understand that with advancing age, the human individuals’ emotional framework becomes fragile and they need reasonable company. When they were young, they had mastered the world. But old-age has claimed a lot of their never and verve. In that condition, they deserve some reasonable attention, reasonable respect, and a reasonable connect. Beyond this, they almost have no demands on life -- until they finally say ‘good bye’ to life.