The Filial Evolution

“Hey Dad. Dad..DAD! Can you get off the phone and talk?” “Please take those earphones off.”

This is something that I end up saying to my father on multiple occasions thanks to user-friendly and addictive apps like Whatsapp, and their barrage of videos and picture forwards. A typical Sunday evening, that was initially occupied by little coffee time quarrels and discussions on topics ranging from the neighbour aunty’s weekday activities to the debilitating government, have now been replaced by adults sitting around sipping coffee in silence as they pour over their mobile phone screens and the maximally detritus content that fill them.

Ironic right? A millenial(of sorts!) like me should complain about something like that. Well, that is what it has come to. Who would have ever thought a day would come where i would reprimand my parents like one would their teenage children.

I didn’t.

Growing up I heard a lot of , “Get off the phone!”, “How long do you talk?”, “Why do you sit in front of the computer so long? What do you keep doing?”. Now I feel like chuckling a bit to myself, as I sometimes have to reiterate these rants.

Educating one’s parents on present day trends, technology, fashion trends, twitter, and in short to become the teacher to the teacher, is a tough task. How many of us have lost our patience on multiple occasions when we had to explain to them how to use an app, or explain a hashtag (#techlessonsforparents #toughlife #adulting) etc. It is tough, when you have to be patient and the only way to achieve it is to treat them both as an adult with pride, and patience you would show a child. To make it worse, you can’t scold or whack them (though a little payback for all those ladle whooping would be karma), and that becomes a real test of humanity. I believe it even gives me good training to be a parent. Let’s face it, all of us have, if not underlying, but apparent issues with parents. They hit us, they were too strict, they were not there, they did not give us freedom and so on and so forth. Yet, at that moment, when that spark of impatience which alights from all that underlying angst emerges, we have to keep our cool and be patient with them. REALLY! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

I have caught myself at times having to scold my parents to their rooms, or call a timeout in middle of their silly little quarrels. It really makes me think, how did this happen? When did I, the rebellious troublesome teenager, take on this role? If you are a grown adult, who does/did live with your parent, you know what I am talking about. This evolution, however, seems quite immutable over time. The toughie is here; no matter how old you grow, no matter how childish your parents may grow, to them, you are still that teensy weensy kid they put a diaper on.

What a conundrum!

Most Indians, grow up with very slight camaraderie with their fathers, and only some are able to break that chain of emotional distance, but somehow it does tend to cycle. SO for me, growing up, realising my father is not just this towering, enigmatic human being, and my mother is not the righteous and always correct governing body; tends to get you knotted, between the child in you, and the adulting faculties that one develops with their own life’s tangent. The feelings we try to grapple with is when we see our parents, these people who defined our lives for over two decades, without the filters, and as the individuals, as the adults they are. Yet, they are not the same adults like you and me, they are different. They have lived it, a lot more if it. And now they are hanging up their shoes and looking to us for all that they provided us when we were growing up.

This , when I realised, frankly scared the bejeezus out of me, and truthfully still does. From being the child who looked to my parents for emotional and physical and financial support, now they look to me for the same. Do I hate it? No. Do I like it? I am not sure. Yet, I know that I like being there, somehow it makes me feel like an adult in their eyes, with the added pleasure of being able to boss them around a bit for a change. How many of us had that moment when our dad’s had that first drink with us like an equal or came to you for that financial advice, and actually taking it.

You can’t deny it felt good.

When I look at my parents, and then look at myself, I see that they were learning to figure themselves out, as I am now. They got married, they had my brother and me, they tried disciplining us in the way they understood- confiscated my phone so that I would listen to them, when they didn’t buy me my laptop without a two year wait and whole lot of negotiation-and basically learning on the job, no manual and their own hoevring parents over their heads. Phew!! I see that they were adulting, like you and me. It makes me look at them in a new light, may be, just maybe, I could give them a break about all the things about them that made me unhappy, the way they did when I was driving them up the roof? If they haven’t, why can’t I? That way, I can atleast be the bigger man or woman. They may not have got a lot from their parents, they may not have had the attention, the money, the love…and maybe they didn’t even realise it. But now I do. How many of us ask them, “what did you wish you had growing up?” “ were you loved?” “were you abused?”. We are so afraid of talking about delicate matters, and those wounds remain scarred and sealed, and passed on almost with the same penetrance as genes. I was brought up liberally, with privilege that 90% of the world doesn’t have the advantage of having, so why not cycle that!

As I sit here, sipping my coffee, looking up from my screen at intervals at my not-so-perfect, maybe even partially wonky family, I think, I owe it to them, to be the parent they never had. A parent that loved them, that complimented them,was patient with them, and also taught them some mobile phone etiquette! We all want to have perfect parents, and maybe I can be the perfect parent to an adult who actually will understand my effort to be one. Undoubtedly it isn’t going to be easy. Maybe as easy as it is to bring up a 60 year old moody teenager. Yet, I know that at the end of the day, when I sit across my family, having my coffee, and talking about the world, our thoughts, our views, and our lives, that most often than not, we forget to share with our family, I know I will be a happier individual for trying.