I am an avid story
listener. Where there is a story being told, I will sit down immediately and
switch my mobile to silent. Be it the
movies, or my Naniammi reminiscing or my father enthralling me with one of his
adventures or my Ammi sharing her life’s experiences, or even an elderly
customer of mine who at times likes to share his some unique civil work
experiences. No matter how much I am pressed for time, if someone begins
sharing something with me I just sit down.
Not just stories with learning
or a moral in the end. I will enjoy any tale. Be it a cute childhood memory, or
a story of achievement against odds or just a funny incident people would like
to mention to lighten the day.
I am big believer in
learning from each and everyone’s life’s experiences, especially from my
father’s. I am also all the time probing the elderly in my immediate family and
extended family for stories of their childhood and the childhood of my parents.
How did they used to live? How did they share such limited resources with so
many of them? What games they used to play? There is just so much to learn from
them apart from the fact the elderly feel delighted that someone is there to
listen to their stories, or just sit with them and spend time with them.
Now days I see
youngsters when they visit their relatives and grandparents back home in India,
they have the customary greetings of Assalamu alaikum and then they just move to
a corner of the house, fish out their smart phones or PSP and are just
engrossed in it. They are so much more engaged in chatting, facebooking,
whatsapping, tweeting, with people not even on the same continent. And they are
completely ignorant of the treasure trove of stories and wisdom the elderly
sitting in front of them holds within his/her memories and heart, willing to
pour it completely into you at the instance you just move your ear closer to
them.
Very soon this wisdom,
which is the very core essence of value building in our families, will fade
away. This is wisdom which is essential for inculcating good behavior in
children, good values, good etiquettes, even before they start going to school.
As the elderly leave us for their heavenly abode, so will their wisdom leave us
and our future will be severely malnourished. There are two issues which come
to my mind for my fear that our future will be deprived
- 1. Our generation is "born with the silver spoon generation"
As time passes by so
does the generations. Our present generation, I would say are consisting of
majority of us being born with a silver spoon in the mouth, if not golden or
platinum. As we progress our future generations will be far greater pampered. And
Thank to Almighty Allah and thanks to our parents, who despite not having such
privileged childhoods themselves have strived and worked hard to give us this
comfortable and protected lives. We learnt so much from them and from the
generation before them, from their stories, from their experiences, because
they had to struggle and had to face the odds in life. But we, what have we had
to do which is even comparable to even one day in their lives? And what wisdom
are we going to pass to our future generations. What are our struggles our
achievements?
Plus even we ourselves
are so busy in our lives and workplaces that we no longer spend time with our
parents and the other elderly in our family. If I had to use todays jargon, we
do not have time to download this wisdom into our system then how can we upload
the same or what will we upload in to the servers of our future generations?
And the hard disks of wisdom will soon become extinct. Then how will our
children learn compassion, sharing, picking themselves up after failure and to
celebrate life. What are we going to pass on?
That is if we are able
to talk to our children at all, which brings tom me to the second issue I want
to raise
- 2. Are we able to talk to our children?
We are very busy, in
our offices, in our kitty parties, in our business, in our so called ‘social
life’. From a very young age we want our children not to be a disturbance/intrusion
to us. So when they come to us after we have returned from a busy day at office,
we hand them a smartphone or some other electronic gadget. When we have guests
in our house, we put the kids in front of the TV. So as they grow up, they are
more comfortable with their gadgets rather than speaking to us. Try talking to
any teenager today. It’s difficult to get them to open up, even much harder
than policemen trying to extract information from suspects. “What are you
doing?” – “Something”. “Where are you going?” – “Somewhere”. “How was your day?
” – “OK”.
Not only our children,
even us for that matter. We go out for dinners with our partners or friends or
spouses but half the time each individual is engrossed in his/her mobile. There
is no sharing of ideas or experiences. Everybody feels bored by the time the
meal arrives. But when we look back to our parent’s generations, and when they
used to sit down for a meal with their friends & relatives, the food would
get over but not the conversations. They would share their achievements,
struggles, problems to even the most embarrassing situations and have jolly
good laugh about it.
But now days we do not
share achievements, lest the other person gets jealous, we do not share
failures lest everyone makes fun of us. When we are not comfortable sharing
amongst our own age group, then how will we share experiences with our kids and
how will we teach them not to make the same mistakes that we have made.
My Naniammi passed away on 17th December 2014, couple of days back. May Allah grant her the highest place in Jannah – Ameen!. Personally, I can’t help but keep remembering every single time I have sat down with her to listen to stories of her childhood and also the childhood of my parents. I hold all these stories very dearly in my heart and keep recalling them, lest it might fade away in the clutter I hold in my mind. For when I share these stories with my children, Insha Allah, it will be the best stories.
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| My dearest Naniammi |
