Sir,

What is happening in society today should be viewed in a larger perspective of the restlessness and confusion that has gripped the youth and the chaos in society is due to relieve their pent up energy that is bursting forth without direction.

It is bound to exhaust itself before certain normality is established. It takes time and the name of the game is patience. The nearest comparison can be Sagara Manthana. The present stage is the emergence of poison before the elixir of life is produced. It devolves round we elders to be more sensitive with the youth and refrain from criticising them. We had our time and now it belongs to the new generation.

The earlier concept of the filial bond expecting the youths to look after elders has no longer a validity. Now it is nuclear family that is the norm. If I were to take the example of Mysuru, in most of the households elders are staying alone as the children have gone abroad. Concurrently, living in old age home is not an anathema and has become an aspect of life that elders should accept it with grace without putting emotional pressure on children.

Occasional meeting with children and grand-children should be a celebration time. In this connection I am fond of quoting Khalil Gibran who has expressed this very evocatively in the following paras:

Your children are not your children

 They are sons and daughters of life longing for itself

They come through you and not from you.

Though they are with you, they do not belong to you

You may give them your love but not your thoughts

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies and not their souls,

For their souls dwell in a house of tomorrow 

Which you cannot visit not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you

For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

– H.R. Bapu Satyanarayana, Mysuru, 1.2.2020

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