Filter Coffee #241

On Bringing Up Parents

Bengaluru

FC 240 was widely appreciated. Ashvini Ranjan’s article on his Kumbh sojourn won him many accolades. In particular the sentence “where faith met kindness, where devotion transcended privilege.” struck a chord with many readers. Thank you, Ashvin.

Radhika Prasad: “What an interesting article. Contrary to your friend's experience, my experience was different and pleasant. As some local travellers said. "Madam, this is a yatra, not a trip." I stayed in the Kumbh area for 10 days. Every day, I walked through a sea of humanity to get to my akhada. In the immense crowd, there wasn't one misbehaviour or pull-push. Everyone went about their business of reaffirming their faith purposefully and seriously. What matters is the spirit of surrender with which you enter the city of Prayagraj.”

Lakshmi Raman: “I have been hearing accounts of their experience at the Kumbh Mela from various friends. Like Ashvin, they too said they felt the overall experience to be sublime, despite the crowds, the discomfort, the pocket being picked... Ashvin has put it so beautifully ‘...moments like these—where faith met kindness, where devotion transcended privilege.’”

Pavitra Ullal: “In Ashvini-ji's account... The joy that lit up the faces of these pilgrims remained elusive... YET when faith met kindness, where devotion transcended privilege, he rose from being just an observer to feeling blessed... Ashvini-ji too achieved in his own way what thousands had set out to realise... Many paths... same goal…”

Chitra S: “Loved The Kumbh story. I was really touched by “…where faith met kindness, where devotion transcended privilege”. So profound and moving. Would love to read about your Kabini adventure, and also hope to see a few clicks by your in-house photographer!”

S G Murali: “Happy holidays in the jungle Pras. When we saw a few tigers in Ranthambore we were very happy. Joy was vicarious when others in the group who went twice could not spot any tiger. The Kumbh write-up was too good. Crores of people have gone there based on simple faith that unites all of us.”

Subrata Mitra: “We have been to Kabini and stayed for a night in the forest lodge. This was included in our luxury train tour - Golden Chariot, starting from Bengaluru. This was a wonderful trip of comfort and luxury. Besides Kabini, we visited many famous tourist spots, for lifetime memory. This tour encouraged us to take another memorable luxury train tour on Palace on Wheels. Both are highly recommended.”

Safari at Kabini was where we had a good sighting. Here are a couple of the many pics my granddaughter took:

💭Bringing Up Parents

No, this is not about parenting or a lesson in bringing up children. It is about bringing up the parents, particularly the father.

I am sure senior readers would remember a comic series called “Bringing Up Father” created by George McManus in 1913, which tells the story of Irish-American Jiggs, a former bricklayer, and his wife, Maggie, an ex-laundress, who achieve sudden wealth and all the trappings associated with it. While Jiggs continues to socialize with his old neighbourhood friends down at Dinty Moorersquos tavern, the snobbish, social-climbing wife, Maggie and their beautiful daughter, Nora, constantly try to elevate him, against his will, to his new social position. Jiggs has a lazy son Ethelbert, a.k.a Sonny, who also tries to bring the father up to a certain social standard.

The comic strip ran for 87 years, from January 2, 1913, to May 28, 2000. You can see some of the clips here 🔗Bringing Up Father 1937 to get a sense of the ‘upbringing’ that Jiggs goes through. You can also have more fun from 🔗Bringing Up Father - Comic Book Plus.

The process of bringing up parents starts when the children start growing up and when they do not need the parents to handhold them as much as in their growth phase. Academic interaction depends on the level of education of the parents. My father was a lawyer and I developed a penchant for the legal profession. My mother had not gone past middle school and yet she possessed worldly wisdom that helped her navigate the choppy waters of familial needs and relationships.

I belonged to that generation which considered it an affront to question the parents. Abiding by their bidding was the norm. As I became a legal professional in my own right it was my father who made it known that his and my knowledge of law were different and he had something to learn from me! Later in life, when I interacted with law students of the 90s, I had a strong sense of deja vu and I realised that the kind of legal education I had, paled into insignificance when compared with the quality of legal education they had.

Though “Bringing Up Father” dates back to 1913, I don’t think any such thing happened in real life, at least to my knowledge, even when my wife and I became parents and the kids grew up. It was not a done thing yet to try and teach our parents a thing or two and tell them they were wrong. I would say that bringing up parents started in the early 90s and gained traction with each passing decade.

Parenting parents involves a kind of role reversal. Taking care of them and attending to their needs is given but telling them that they got it wrong or that their thinking is archaic can be challenging. The kind of involvement a grandmother of yesteryears had in the upbringing of a grandchild is hardly replicated. Native medicines, sage wisdom, discipline and other attributes are either not considered relevant or taken over by modern parenting techniques that get featured online. Not that advancement in parenting is bad but discarding some of the practices which have stood the test of time may seem a bit much and that’s when the parents of parents experience a sense of rejection.

When computers arrived on the scene in the early 80s, my daughter and son became adept at handling them. I remember buying the first edition of ‘Beanstalk” by HP which came with a tutorial offer. In-person training sessions were arranged somewhere in Bandra (now BKC) and that made me, my daughter and my son classmates. No prizes for guessing who failed and had to take home tuition from the kids.

Upbringing and bringing-up appear synonymous but they seem different to me. Readers may have a view. Upbringing has the dimension of character building and ‘bringing up’ is about nourishing growth though it may involve knowing what is good and bad. Jiggs was brought up as a miner whose sudden wealth required him to behave like an aristocrat not because he wanted to, but at the behest of his wife and children, who tried to reshape Jiggs’ upbringing, much to his discomfiture.

With each advancement comes an opportunity to learn and unlearn. I have read of a person who refuses to own a cell phone and rejects any suggestion that it is indispensable. His reasoning is simple. He believes cell phones subdue your ability to think and recall. I quite see the point. During the era of rotary dialling, also called landline, one made it a point to remember at least 10 different numbers. We could do a lot of mental math and at times use the calculator.

We remembered dates, and names & got to places remembering the names of the roads, and landmarks. Now we are taught how to use cell phones, Google Maps and apps too.

Going to the market was fun. Two or more elders agreed to walk together to the market with bags in hand and had the unique pleasure of choosing what they wanted but only after ‘feeling and touching’ and bargaining. The elders are told to sit at home and order virtually everything ‘online’. They are taught to use various apps.

Talking on the phone and meeting people in person had its thrills. Now, audio-visual facilities like Zoom and Teams have made it possible to have real-time interactions. Writing a letter and posting it was an entirely different experience. One would pour all their feelings into words that one wrote on a postcard or inland letter or airmail. When did you last buy postal stationery? Do you remember where the post box is in your area? Hmmm.

Parents who were active all day are now asked to do everything sitting at home and “go for a walk” is more like a medical prescription than a habit. It was such fun to keep track of the milkman, the newspaperman, the raddhiwala, and the house-helpers. The Bangalore Press Calendar was littered with various markings including loans given and recoveries made. I remember, distinctly, my grandmother using a piece of charcoal and drawing little vertical lines on the wall and wiping them off to make room for the next month’s accounting. Now you get a bill on WhatsApp and you do a UPI payment. Your phone is now a debit card.

I am a parent who has been taught many things by my children and now grandchildren too. I have either forgotten or am not able to use the old methods. The learning curve is always in ascendance and quite slippery at that. You learn today, forget tomorrow and re-learn. Is it possible to do things your way but also learn simple tasks that one might do mechanically using the cell phone? I see many an old person touching the screen with gnarled fingers and enjoying taking pictures. That reminds me of my Kodak camera with 8 or 12 exposure films. The suspense of finding out if I had a good shot agonised me as I sat on the bench of Phaneendra Studio, in Mysore waiting for the guy to come out of the dark room holding the washed film to light and my heart would sink if he said “tch tch tch”. Film was expensive and we wanted the snaps that we took to be priceless. Now we have no film, no cameras but a cell phone that does everything including photoshopping, a jargon I came across which means manipulating a photo.

We ate all kinds of food and rarely went to a doctor. At best a trip to our family doctor, Shamachar's clinic (see: 🔗FC 187), next to Phaneendra studio, who would dismiss us with his diagnosis of ‘indigestion & gas’ and give us a swig of the carminative mixture. Now we have a host of issues with the groceries. Now everything is organic and prices are also organic. Some apps snoop on you and track what you bought and when.

I don’t know where to stop. There are so many aspects of our lives that have either vanished or are in hibernation or have become simply a speck as we walk down Sunset Boulevard. I am sure the older readers will have much to say and share their experiences. The younger readers might have a thing or two to say. Happy to hear all of them. A few lines in a lighter vein:

• When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

• The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

• My grandkids believe I'm the oldest thing in the world. And after two or three hours with them, I believe it, too.

I am leaving for an 8-day trip to Japan on the 29th of March and it will be a challenge to post a blog on the 30th of March and again on the 6th of April when I will be on a flight back home. Is anyone up to writing a guest post? Looking forward to hearing from you. Ciao!