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With the weather pleasant and after a good session of tennis I just felt like walking back home. The straight route was on the busy main road of the town. So I took a winding and longer but quiet road to make my on-road time as pleasant as possible. The time was 7:30 pm, when I came to a narrow alley onto which one of the town schools premises ends. I was just wondering at the unearthly hour when I found a conglomeration of students of all heights and ages in the school ground. And of all the wildest things I could imagine, they started singing a prayer in unison.
God Bless Mummy
God Bless Daddy
Help me always
To keep them happy
This struck a chord or two in my imaginative juices. One was the good old days when I used to join in the chorus of my class mates before starting classes in the morning and the other, the present relevance of this particular prayer in our day-to-day life.
The first two lines stand good whichever times of age or era one could speak of, as they are mere wishes without any human intervention. The next two lines are the ones that bothered me. They embody the efforts that the progeny should make and take to keep the happiness of their families intact.
The fact that I did some research on the recent increase in the number and trends in old age homes and orphanages for my own reasons immediately put this line of thought into perspective. The growth in the exodus of people seeking job opportunities to places across the globe directly impacts the lives of the parents of the job goer. It is not unusual that we see a steep rise in the number of old age homes and watch movies like Baghban when parents are tagged as unwanted, a burden on the social lives an obligation in our daily lives.
A sudden doubt stopped my thoughts delving deeper. Do any of these students actually know what they mean by this prayer or are they just going through the motions the way they got used to the present education system? I was in no mood to get the answer for that question as I knew that I wouldn’t, even if I wanted to at that moment. So I just went ahead homebound. And more than anything else, the reason of enjoying the quietness tugged me along and leave the thought-chugging at that.
P.S: There are so many other reasons that affect the lives of many a family but the bottom-line of a good chunk of children neglecting their parents' care remains a blatant fact.
2 comments:
found u while i was blog hopping :)
i guess the kids really do want to keep their parents happy, as long as they don't have to sacrifice their happiness for it. when the parents become dependant on the kids its loads of tension on both parties and it usually ends up in old age homes. sometimes u have to destroy someone elses dreams to realise ur own. i guess
@nivedita: guess the vice versa scenario... how many sacrifices parents would have done to keep their kids happy?
"sometimes u have to destroy someone elses dreams to realise ur own"
not necessary at all... if one can understand the mutual interests of the all the parties concerned.
may be the generation prefers the shorter and easier way in their desperation to succeed in life at any cost and hence the ending up of a party in old age homes. i guess
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