CHENNAI: As the sun sank into the rough grey sea hemmed at the horizon by dusky cotton clouds, it was as if nature was acting out a metaphor to describe how Priya’s heart felt as the last of her daughter’s clothes and idlipodi and garam masala packets were being strapped into the unusually pregnant suitcase. Usually, these suitcases come home lean and mean, and when they leave, they look incredibly fat and well-fed! They typically belong to children, who have to take flight to study or work in another city (read away from parents) and have now come home for a holiday.
Now that the holiday season has come to an end, all the parties, binge-eating/watching have to give way to work and studies before the brand new January energy slowly wanes into a complacent February. This means Priya’s daughter will also have to get back to college after the winter break. This also means Priya’s empty-nester syndrome will be back to haunt her mind space. She had “diagnosed herself” with this syndrome six months back, when her daughter left for college, and probably thought the winter-holiday homecoming will cure her of that. But alas, birds come to the nest in winter, only to fly out to smell the flowers in spring.
This brings us back to what she is feeling as the suitcase is zipped up tight. Her recent entry into the empty-nester squad means she is privy to varying voices of angst. “I would avoid going to my son’s room for weeks so that I do not start crying”; “I am unable to cope with my daughter being away. I am happy for her, but miss her”; “I have joined a runners’ group to keep myself from thinking about my son who is in college in a different city.” “Our lives have revolved around the children so much. All our lives we have only thought about their school, tuitions, picking them and dropping them to football and music classes, making their dabbas, taking them out for movie treats. How can we not get affected when they leave home?”
Well, first we need to understand the nest can only hold the children till they are old enough to fly. Once they take flight, we cannot rue that they have flown off the nest. But isn’t that a clinical reasoning that comes without the trappings of emotion? What is with the parents’ sudden feeling of loneliness? Are they suddenly at a loss of not knowing what to do with their parenting talent that they had built over the years, unleashing one precious layer after another onto their children at every stage?
And then, when they do come to the nest, it is almost always to hang around with other birds of their age (read friends), leaving the parents in a perpetual thirst for filial attention. Parents then are disappointed that their babies have a life of their own. Hey, have we parents (yes, I am including myself in this category) forgotten what we were at that age? Many of us do not want to let go, and keep trying to latch on to at least one wing using emotions and tears.
True, these are pacifying words. But, I would like to end with a line from Munshi Premchand’s Hindi short story, Budhi Kaaki: “Just like a short spell of rain increases the heat manifold, a small portion of food for a starving person stokes the craving further.”
Self-explanatory, I hope!