The bonus packet for Deepavali has finally arrived, time for better clothes for the kids, two dresses instead of one, the anklet that I was asking for, the new frock that my sister needed for the dance rehearsals, the classes that the little one had to be enrolled into, time for all this.
But the same old ordinary saree for my mom and for my dad a shirt stitched from the cloth given as gift by someone. And many more unknown stories and sacrifices.
So that we live a better life, get better guidance, seek those opportunities that they never had.
How familiar all this sounds to so many of us in the present generation? Today, most of my sisters are housewives out of choice. How many of our mothers could do that? They managed home and office in an Indian environment. Unlike in developed countries, where working mothers have a lot of facilities.
Our mothers have done much more without half as much help from appliances and with better emotional balancing. During all those festivals they had to slog it out in the kitchen, striking the perfect balance between office and being an Indian wife and a mother.
There definitely was never a time when festivals were not celebrated the way they had to be for lack of time or exhaustion. Navaratri, Karadai Nombu, Varalakshmi Vraddham, Karthigai, and, of course, Pongal and Deepavali. The poris, tengozhals and sweets made during the weekends.
Any opportunity of a holiday was invested in going to the wedding of a dear one. The very concept of holidays does not exist in our country. In foreign lands, it is, however, a different story. They will go for their planned holiday even if it means they might find themselves jobless on their return!
Now our parents are ageing and happy that we are settled, the loan on the house has been finally paid off, now they can buy that costly saree, but there were times when they would have wished for some place to go to… some place where they could spend sometime in solitude.
Would they not want to have seen Munnar?
They deserved better
Now we sit on the lap of luxury
But so many Munnars have passed them by…
But talk to them about this and they will just brush it aside, “All that doesn’t matter, raja, as long as you do well in your lives.”
And some of us are harsh enough to let our parents be put up in old age homes because we find they are a burden. But visit any old age home, you will find it filled with photos of their loved ones who no longer want them. Of course, there are parents who opt to stay in these homes as they are unable to adapt to the foreign environs in spite of repeated requests from their children to come there, and their tribe is also growing.
Is it still difficult for you to figure out what you should gift them? Gift them your time, your love and, of course,
a trip to Munnar…. What do you say?
Kanakadhara Subramanian
Manikanaka@yahoo.com
