He crashed on the sofa beside her after the heavy lunch. He looked at her; she was lost in thought fixated on a view outside the window. He gently held her hand reassuringly and raised his eyebrows trying to find out what happened.

“I fought with my mom again”

“Haha. What now? Don’t tell me it’s one of your usual ideological fights.”

“No. Not entirely. She called yesterday morning while I was in office. It started out as a casual conversation. Then, she just sat down to narrate a story she’d heard about my aunt’s family issues.”

“Okay, and you didn’t like it?”

“Yeah. I mean, it is none of our business what happens in their family. I’m tired of her telling all these rumoured stories about our relatives and neighbours and her making borderline judgement about their lives and choices. I confronted her that she shouldn’t be bitching about others and it’s annoying”

“I can see that making her mad”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. And guess what, suddenly I was accused of being rude with her. She said I always end up finding faults in whatever she says or does, and I’m not even capable of having a friendly conversation with her. Can you imagine?”

“It’s okay. I’m sure it’s just at the spur of the moment. You shouldn’t let it bother you”

“Do you think our parents would be different people if they belonged to our generation?”

“What? You think its all because of generational gap?”

“Yeah. Not only that, I think the previous generation is relatively selfish than ours”

“Hahaha, if she hears this, this would make her madder”, he laughed.

“Listen, the women in previous generation, they never left their home compared to us. Like my mom, she never lived in a hostel. All her values and beliefs were from her family members and I think that made her a bit selfish. Our generation, we saw life through friends, college mates and colleagues. The access to various opinions, school of thoughts, views; their generation is not lucky to enjoy that exposure, and I think, that makes us more empathetic than them. Maybe if our parents belonged to our generation, I’m sure they would be different people.”

“Maybe. You know, this makes me wonder, what the next generation will feel about us?” he started laughing.

“Oh, Come on! I will be the coolest mom. Not sure about you though.” she joined in the laughter.

He then took her mobile phone from the table and handed it to her. She just growled to herself shaking her head that she’s not gonna call her mother. But somewhere she knew, she is faking her dissent so that he would continue convince her to do so, in his own cute way.

musings

Edit 1- This musing was never intended to demean the previous generation or glorify the current generation. Many in this generation (including me) are selfish and dumb in many aspects of life and there are truly selfless people from the earlier generation.

It’s just that, I’ve been trying to have conversation about the whole present migrant labourers situation lately in home/with relatives. It was then where I felt that our generation people seem more concerned (relatively) while the previous generation were if it affected them directly – which is a highly subjective personal opinion.