Family Ties

What do we owe our parents? And how does that compare with our responsibility and obligations to our children?

This is something I have been mulling over since a recent conversation where it was inferred that parents (should) have an unlimited and open-ended obligation. As a parent, even though I tend to agree with the overall sentiment, some caveats somehow jump up in my mind. Can a parents responsibility ever cease? The answer is obviously no! But what constitutes responsibility and how far, and in what circumstances can those responsibilities be invoked - is a question. At what point should one cut the umbilical cord to let children stand on their own feet and learn to take responsibility for their decisions? How far should parents go and for how long - financially, emotionally, physically - before it becomes counter-productive? How long is it decent for children to depend on their parents, before it becomes improper?

I am sure that there are different answers to these questions for different people.

Let me take a step back and provide a brief background as to how these questions arose in the first place.

We were talking about mutual acquaintances - a couple who are  currently facing hard times. The man lost his job recently and then managed to secure work far below his qualifications. This obviously resulted in a lower pay packet and the consequential struggle to make ends meet. The wife does not work as she has growing children to take care of. They live near, but separately from their parents. I asked as to why they did not move in with the parents, as a separate residence puts an additional strain on their already limited resources. Rent, maintenance, utilities, etc. for their house could easily be saved if they lived with the parents.

In response I was told that the couple felt that the parents were leading an independent retired life and would probably not appreciate getting burdened with the responsibility. When I commented that children moving in, hardly constitutes a burden, it was clarified that the couple wanted the parents to look after the grandchildren, so that the wife could also look for work. But that suggestion was not encouraged by the parents who were leading a busy social life themselves. I got a distinct sense that this was seen as utterly selfish behavior on the parents part and hence unacceptable.

Putting the particulars of any individual case aside - I missed the part where anyone got the inference, that by dint of the couple moving in, the parents would be lumped with the responsibility for the grand-children. I would have thought that the move-in would be a temporary measure to reduce the financial burden on the couple, till such time that they get back on their feet. Where does that state - that by the fact of their moving in the parents become responsible for the supervision and baby sitting of the grand-children?

When I opined that if that was the expectation from the couple, then the parents were not entirely wrong to not encourage the move back, I was rebuked to the effect that family is everything and one should stand by ones children at all times. Of course one cannot argue rationally with an emotional sentiment like that and I was immediately on the back foot, feeling ashamed for having thought or suggested any different.

But then over the next few days as I thought more about this I started to question whether the same sentiment would be applied if the situation were reversed? As the parents start to get old and infirm and when they need the same (physical, emotional and financial) support would the children offer to host them permanently? If by chance (like us) the children have settled in a foreign land, would they then voluntarily drop everything - their jobs, their children, their lives and move back to look after them? Would the parents even expect the children to leave the lives they have made abroad and go back to be with them?

Probably not!

So if children are neither expected to nor going to drop their lives to support parents, how can children expect it the other way?

After a long and tough life, having done what they could to provide us with a start in our lives - our parents need to relax and enjoy the autumn of their lives, without being burdened with any additional expectations. Those years are for them to kick their feet up and do what they love best. If running around behind squalling infants is not their cup of tea then it should not be expected and if child-minding is what they want to do, then so be it! But I would take that as a gift from them, rather than an obligation on them!

But then as a colleague had told me a while ago - it is in our nature to love our children more than we love our parents. We all look forward - not backwards!

Would you agree?  

Life in the Slow Lane

Last Saturday we had gone to pick up our daughter's glasses from the opticians.  The attendant there takes his own sweet time to roust himself from the chair when customers walk in and quite often grudgingly. On previous occasions, both my wife and I have noticed this and laughed about it, though it does get a bit irritating when one is in a hurry (which we always are). Anyway I noticed the guy sitting behind the counter as we entered the shop, and as usual by the time he hauled himself off his perch, we had taken a couple of rounds of the shop and tried on a few frames as well. I knew that we were going to spend the better part of the morning in the shop that day, as not only did the guy have to hike it to the back room five paces away to get the glasses, but that would be followed by the long and arduous process of invoicing and paying for them as well. Knowing this however did not diminish my impatience.

And that sense of edginess reminded me of a similar irritation a while ago at a hair cutting salon that I used to frequent. This was before the incident with the nose-hair clipping that I had written about in an earlier blog. As mentioned (in that blog) I stopped frequenting that particular establishment from that time on. Anyway that Salon is tucked away in one of the by-lanes, in between roadside cafe's, IT shops, laundries and the like. I am sure that most of their clientele work seven days a week and frequent the shop in the late evening after their day's work is done. Hence mornings were generally quiet with no line or queue to wait in.

So this particular time, as I was walking in that lane to enter the shop, I saw one of the barbers talking to a man on the threshold of the shop. I did not pay much heed but as I was being readied for the cut, this same chap comes in, goes to a corner and sits down on the floor. He starts unpacking his small backpack, out of which he takes out a grinder attached to a small generator. He slowly unravels the wires and connects it to one of the electrical mains in the barber shop.

The other barbers in the meantime started putting their scissors on the floor in front of him, and with his grinder running he commenced sharpening the scissors, one at a time. All of this is happening at the slow unhurried pace of a small village - not a throbbing metropolis that is Dubai. I asked my barber about this, and it seemed that this man came around regularly to sharpen the scissors, knives etc. of all the salons, butcher shops, vegetable vendors and restaurants. The scissors needed to be sharpened once every three weeks.

As the grinder finished honing each scissor, it was minutely inspected by each of the barbers. Six scissors had been given for sharpening and at the end of this whole process, each scissor was thoroughly inspected by each of the three barbers. A few were given back for rework, with gentle protests from the grinder who tried to explain that those had outlived their useful life. After all of them had been worked on to the complete satisfaction of each man, they were counted and recounted to make sure that it was actually six scissors and not five, and then a generous discount was extracted, before money actually changed hands. The price agreed had been three dirhams per scissor, but only two dirhams per scissor was eventually paid.

Of course during this entire process, my haircut was interrupted and paused every time a scissor was finished, increasing my frustration and stress. I tried to be obvious about it by fidgeting around in the chair and repeatedly looking at my watch, but the hints were ignored, if received at all.

As I left however, I thought about the contrast in the attitude to time and money. I could not get over how each barber counted the scissors, to make sure that they were not ripped off by paying for more than they had given. The trust in the artisans character, as well as his skill, were - well noticeably absent.

Every Dirham was valued, but even more important was their attitude to time! For them, time was elastic - it seemed to stretch out - an endless river serenely flowing by various spots to pause and to contemplate. Life was lived at a slower rhythm, where even mundane people and events were given the time required.

On the other hand I am always in a hurry - but to go where? To do what? I rush from one place to the other, from one task to the next - but why? 

 

That day I finished all my tasks in a blur of movement, prioritising, organising and aligning to ensure that minimum time was wasted. But why? After this hustle and bustle of my morning errands was finished and I drove back at the speed limit - I reached home and hit a wall. I hurried back home - to do what? Saving the five minutes here and the ten minutes there, getting stressed about the traffic and the slow pace of work, landed up with me having more time to sit and do nothing.

I have been brainwashed into thinking that time is money, time is short - but is it really? Maybe for the Steve Jobs and the Einsteins, but is it the same for people like you and me? Is it mandatory that every day has to be started by jumping out of bed and then measuring how successful it has been by thinking about all that was achieved. Minutes and hours of every day have to march by like soldiers going off to war - each with meaning and purpose as they pass by to their inevitable demise.

Multitasking is the norm - we listen to music while excercising, TV while eating. We catch up with family and friends while driving, and even when we are with family and friends we catch up on emails and work on our smart phones.

What if we changed that paradigm to - life is currency? It is earned by savouring every moment - appreciating the now, rather than stressing about the next moment. That wealth is measured by moments of joy one takes in just being; by the happiness of savouring your favorite food or the time spent with your loved ones; by standing and looking at a busy road or an artisan at work. Literally by pausing to smell the flowers, savouring the sunshine on your skin or letting the smell of a bakery lure one into an unplanned breakfast - what then?

It all sounds so great and good, but does not last. The lure of real money is like a sirens song - too seductive

But what if life does not have to be a raging storm driven river? What if it is a languid stream that one floats on, as it takes us serendipitously to unexpected places? Would it be so bad?

Death takes us all ...

The first email I saw on that first day of my working week - was a link to a Facebook post. The post reminded us of a deceased friend's 50th birthday, and it was on a FB group created by his loving (and grieving) wife. That prompted me to click on the link and then one thing led to another and I was soon browsing the photos and videos that she had so painstakingly archived on the site. As I scanned through their memories, a deep sense of melancholy took root. My stomach felt like I had just finished a huge and unwelcome breakfast - heavy and acidic.

I was going through the photographic memories of a friend, who at the time was extremely close to me - akin to a brother! Through the three years of our internship in AFF we shadowed each other constantly. He moved to Dubai before me and then left Dubai to return to India. From that day on the siblings of time, geography and careers wedged their insidious presence between us, and we drifted away from each other. Browsing through the photos dredged up memories of days past, of smiling faces of our younger selves, of friends who had walked in and out of ones life - and the sense of despondency grew.

What happened to us? What happened to our friendships and our bonds? To our dreams and aspirations? How much of where we are, was a result of choice and how much just chance? As I saw my friends beaming smiling face, I wondered as to the emotions that would have been roiling beneath. I could still recall the tone of his voice in my mind and even after a gap of a quarter century recall quite a few of our conversations. I remembered his brimming confidence and his gentle ribbing at my reticence to recognize my own merits. The silly bets we used to place, the good and torrid times we went through and the perspective that he provided me at a time when one was sorely needed. We often pitched ourselves against each other, without ever being competitive. We gloried in each other's successes and felt in equal measure the pain of the others missteps.

And as tears started to well up - I took a deep breath and steeled my mind, to turn to the refuge of the mundane tasks that lay before me. As I started my working day by going through my list of action items, the grip of my friends spectral hands on my brain eased. And as those memories started to submerge into my unconscious mind, I began to feel normal again.

But then in a twist that only our subconscious can provide, I suddenly recollected a conversation just a few days earlier, with my father's friend. He was visiting his son in Dubai and we had this conversation at his son's house where he was hosting a dinner. He and my father have known each other all their lives, which translates to a period stretching over eight decades. He was in a retrospective mood, probably looking at his children and grandchildren all grown up. At that age, most material desires had been wrung out of us - eked out by the inexorable force of the piled up years, compounded by the slow erosion of our reducing physicality.

And as we talked our conversation somehow drifted to all the deceased people we both knew(including my mother). He started to recall their names, which he reeled off like a prayer. It was a much practiced litany of names that if interrupted, needed to be restarted from the beginning. As he evoked each name in rapid succession, their faces flashed by in front of my eyes like a photo montage, some in black and white and some in color, depending on how long it had been since they had passed on. It was forlorn and fascinating at the same time.

Most of those faces that flashed by, in my mind's eye, were remembered only through the lens of my childhood memories. Grainy images of impossibly tall men and stern faced women, seen from a child's diminutive perspective - of authority figures who used to scold or rebuke us as children, when we created a nuisance. Those memories were of days past, when adults showed displeasure in abundance and were spartan with their praise! But I realized that those images were monochromatic and one-dimensional, almost like cardboard cut out figures. All of them had lived their lives much as we do - they loved, laughed and cried, had the same pressures and stresses and derived happiness from the similar stimuli. 

 

I felt the same sense of melancholy at the time, a sense of imminent mortality and the futility of our brief span here. Despair at the fragility of our earthly bonds. Death takes us all eventually - it is truly the great equalizer. It dictates what we take with us when we go (nothing), but does not dictate what we leave behind - the memories that outlive us in the minds of those we touched.