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                           “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers,

                           Even when their own child is the most disgusting

                           Little blisters you could ever imagine, they still

                           Think that he or she is wonderful.”

                                             -Roald Dahl, Matilda

                                              Parents play very different positions in different phase of life. For an infant, his parents is his priority, for an adolescent parents become a teacher (that’s the most decent term I could come up with) for an adult like mine, fresh out of home, parent become a crucial part of the support system as realization of their importance dawns upon us. For a well settled adult, parents become a responsibility, often with time a burden.

                                            It’s easy to forget eighteen years of your life spent under the intense care and protection of your parents because when you remember those days all you remember are memories of school, cousins and parties. All those sacrifices your parents did for you, all those curses they heard for your mistakes even the loan they had to take to get you educated are so easy to forget. What you can’t forget is the privacy they hindered, the curfew time they imposed in your house, the times they fell sick and you had extra work to do.

                                 “Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary,

                                  And so discredit need attach to impermanence.”

                                                          -Gregory Maguire (A lion among men)

                                       Parents of this era especially well educated parents move away as soon as their child settle down and become independent. Couples move back to their native place or live apart. Do they really want to do that? Do they not want to live with their children and grandchildren and enjoy the energy? It’s the fright of spoiling relationships, hurting their children that make them go away. Especially a single parent having already lost the comfort of the partner would always look forward to the joy of being with the loved ones alive. In these situations they move into a old age centres. True it is that they get all care and comfort but man doesn’t always need luxury but man always craves love and warmth. Will the comfort of the old age home keep your parents happy? Don’t they deserve to spend the last of their lives with the people they love?

                                     Maybe we could find a solution from both the ends of the problem. Parents are what you deserve and what you deserve are your parents, till the very end.