Dear Kiddos,
I hold a tendency to write in Tamil whenever I wish to write letters to you. It's not because I wanted you to learn Tamil but I wanted to deny you the opportunity to find faults at my English writing skills. Albeit due to some technical issues with Google-transliterate tool in my mobile device, I am impelled to write in English.
A few weeks from now, we are gonna see the blissful presence of two more babies in our family. Despite all sense of urge for gender-equality and neutrality, I think I am inclined to expect both the babies to be boys. At the least, one baby boy is a respite, I feel, misogynistically, perhaps. And I know very well that I am at odds with your expectations, for , all 3 of you girls would want to have 2 more younger sisters. A girl army, feels so complete to you.
However my writing this letter is not about that. Its about what role I might be expected to play a few decades later in your life. Perhaps it's about what not to expect of me.
I wish to talk about life of old aged. Its too early to think about this, let alone talking about this with you infants. However, I wanted to go on record about my current state of mind about this.Attitudes change, evolve but I have always felt complete by expressing myself. I am not the same now and what I was a decade back.
Joint living was a norm until a few decades back in Tamil family system wherein multiple couples, usually sibling families and parent-son families, live with their respective kids together in a single home. There is no denial that in few such cases, the younger generations were compelled to live together due to variety of reasons including running family owned business.
However in the recent decades, people get separated from their parents, move out of their respective locality , and live in crowded, centralized cities for want of appropriate economic opportunities, livelihood options , better standard of living etc. Nuclearisation of family happens thus. Older parents stay at home. Few of those elders are forced to stay aloof.
And the latest trend is the de-nuclearisation of family system. Herein, younger couples take their older parents with them not just because they wanted their company, give them moral support at their senile ages but also because the elders are the new-age baby sitters. This is pretty much the case in families where both the husband and wife are working.
While parents will be willing to own this new-age responsibility of baby-sitting their grand-children, I doubt if they would be comfortable enough doing that. While my parents will find themselves unfit in a city like Chennai where I am currently destined to live, I would become an outcast a generation later when you expect me to baby-sit in a foreign soil.
Dignified living demands that I live in a place of my choice with a life fulfilled with right mix of affection, love, care, trust, respect, financial independence, emotional inter-dependence, social support among others. Nobody can dictate me just because I grow older.
I wish to talk about life of old aged. Its too early to think about this, let alone talking about this with you infants. However, I wanted to go on record about my current state of mind about this.Attitudes change, evolve but I have always felt complete by expressing myself. I am not the same now and what I was a decade back.
Joint living was a norm until a few decades back in Tamil family system wherein multiple couples, usually sibling families and parent-son families, live with their respective kids together in a single home. There is no denial that in few such cases, the younger generations were compelled to live together due to variety of reasons including running family owned business.
However in the recent decades, people get separated from their parents, move out of their respective locality , and live in crowded, centralized cities for want of appropriate economic opportunities, livelihood options , better standard of living etc. Nuclearisation of family happens thus. Older parents stay at home. Few of those elders are forced to stay aloof.
And the latest trend is the de-nuclearisation of family system. Herein, younger couples take their older parents with them not just because they wanted their company, give them moral support at their senile ages but also because the elders are the new-age baby sitters. This is pretty much the case in families where both the husband and wife are working.
While parents will be willing to own this new-age responsibility of baby-sitting their grand-children, I doubt if they would be comfortable enough doing that. While my parents will find themselves unfit in a city like Chennai where I am currently destined to live, I would become an outcast a generation later when you expect me to baby-sit in a foreign soil.
Dignified living demands that I live in a place of my choice with a life fulfilled with right mix of affection, love, care, trust, respect, financial independence, emotional inter-dependence, social support among others. Nobody can dictate me just because I grow older.
