Retired from Responsibility, Promoted to Delight

There is a small miracle that happens in every Indian family, though nobody puts it in the newspaper. A grandchild, dressed for a school birthday celebration, travels in a car. The father drives with the seriousness of a pilot. The mother sits in the back seat, running the entire day in her head, including the return gifts. And dadaji holds the child on his lap, the one seat in the vehicle with no duties attached. Nana and nani, watching on a video call, laugh together and feel as light as balloons.

People who study the senses tell us that thinkers once ranked them like students in a class. Sight and hearing were the toppers and touch was made to sit on the last bench. But the last bench has had the final laugh. On a video call, the toppers can only look and listen and they do it very well. Touch, meanwhile, was holding the child. Examination marks are one thing and a warm lap is quite another. Each one takes a different sweet from the same box and dadaji's sweet is the one that does not melt through a screen.

Every grandparent has been through this morning from the other side. There was the ironed uniform, the lunchbox that would not close and the sock that had vanished overnight, as though it had gone on its own holiday. That was the sowing. A farmer who waters his field in the summer heat does not feel poetic. He thinks about water and about the pump. Years later he sits under the tree and tastes the fruit and only then does the labour become sweet.

But the sweetness does not fall from the sky. Behind every calm car ride lie years in which parents set their own wishes aside: the holiday not taken, the evening not spent with friends, the ambition folded away like a good saree waiting for an occasion that never came. Patience was the daily wage and it was paid in full. A farmer knows the rule. A field left unwatered gives no fruit and it would be unreasonable to sit under bare branches and complain about the mangoes.

Responsibility, it turns out, never really disappears. It is only transferred, like a family recipe and with each handover someone is finally allowed to sit down and eat. The parents carry the day today. Dadaji, nana and nani carry the memory, which is lighter and comes with better snacks. Nobody has been dismissed. The elders have simply been moved from the sowing department to the shade, which every farmer will agree is the finest posting in the entire field.

Love may be unconditional, but the deepest satisfaction in another person's success belongs to those who took part in it, through care and steady presence. Growing older, by itself, does not guarantee a sweet harvest. Nor does parenthood create an automatic claim on the lives, savings or achievements of grown children. Gratitude cannot be demanded like an overdue instalment and affection should never be turned into a lifelong repayment schedule.

Sometimes a small screen is enough to show the whole harvest. And sometimes the greatest luxury of growing older is to sit in the shade, smile at the fruit and let the next generation get on with its gardening.

After all, the designation has changed. The responsibilities have been handed over. The new assignment is to enjoy the view.