The disappearing wisdom of grandmother’s tales.

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 17^th 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. 

My dearest Naniammi