The quiet crisis inside our homes: the neglect, loneliness and abuse of ageing parents, and what it will take to bring them back to the centre of family life.
SUNDAY SPECIAL
The question we would rather not ask
There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a house in the evening after the elderly have gone to their rooms. It is not the silence of rest. It is the silence of people who have stopped asking for things.
This page began with a question that none of us finds comfortable: how does a home built by a parent’s sacrifice become a place where that parent feels unwanted? The question is not abstract. It comes from a mosque where an old man with a bleeding nose spent the night because he had nowhere safer to go. It comes from a courtroom in Rawalpora where a son paid his mother’s maintenance in ten and twenty rupee notes. It comes from a village where a ten-year-old boy watched his father snap at his grandfather and, decades later, snapped at his own father in exactly the same words.
Old age is not a disease and it is not a failure. It is the one chapter of life that every person who is fortunate enough to live long will eventually enter. Yet across our valley and across the country, the people who carried us when we could not walk are increasingly being managed rather than honoured, tolerated rather than loved, and in the worst cases, humiliated or struck by the very children they raised.
Neglect rarely announces itself. It begins with a tone of voice. It grows through the unreturned phone call, the sigh at a repeated question, the decision that a parent’s opinion no longer needs to be sought. By the time it becomes a matter for neighbours, doctors or magistrates, the wound has usually been open for years.
The law has taken notice. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 makes abandonment a punishable offence, and Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita allows a parent who cannot maintain themselves to seek support from their children. Faith has spoken even more clearly. The Qur’an forbids so much as a word of irritation, “uff”, to an ageing parent. Every tradition that has shaped this region agrees on the duty. What has changed is not the duty. What has changed is us.
Migration, employment pressure, the collapse of the joint family and the pace of a life measured in promotions and notifications have all played a part. None of these is an excuse. Physical distance need not become emotional abandonment, and a busy life does not require an empty one for the people who made it possible.
To examine the problem from every side, we asked five contributors to respond: a doctor who has taken the late-night calls, an educationist who worries about the lesson children are learning, an advocate who has watched families reach the courtroom, a coordinator who works with the most vulnerable communities, and the moderator of this page, who opens the discussion. Their responses follow. Read them together. Then, before you turn the page, make the call you have been putting off.
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“Their changing behaviour may be a symptom, not a choice”
Peerzada Masarat Shah
Moderator of this page and Consulting Editor, Heaven Mail. She writes on society, family and how communities treat their most vulnerable members.
Old age does not arrive with a warning. It quietly enters a person’s life, taking away strength, slowing the steps, dimming the memory and sometimes changing the very personality of the person we once knew.
An elderly parent who was once decisive may become confused. Someone who spent a lifetime holding the family together may suddenly need help with the simplest things. A once-gentle father may become irritable; a mother who never complained may become anxious, withdrawn or deeply unhappy.
These are not always acts of stubbornness. Sometimes they are cries for help.
Cognitive decline brings loneliness, frustration, fear and a painful sense of purposelessness. When elderly people are left unattended, ignored or constantly scolded, that pain can turn into anger and, in some cases, aggression. And what do we do? We call them difficult. We call them a burden. We tell them they are becoming impossible to live with. Slowly, the people who once sacrificed everything for us begin to feel like strangers inside their own homes. This is where neglect becomes abuse.
India has millions of elderly people living with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, arthritis, cancer and kidney conditions. Yet illness is only one part of their struggle. The greater wound can be loneliness. Imagine spending decades being needed by everyone, then reaching an age when nobody seems to need your opinion. Imagine sitting in a room full of your own family and feeling invisible. Imagine calling your children again and again, not because you have something important to say, but because hearing their voice is the only thing that makes the day feel less empty.
We are quick to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day with flowers and social media posts. But love is not a photograph. Love is patience when they repeat the same question. Love is sitting beside them when they are afraid. Love is understanding that their changing behaviour may be a symptom, not a choice.
The elderly do not ask for the world. They ask for time. They ask for respect. They ask not to be treated as an inconvenience. Above all, they ask to feel that they still matter.
One day, if life is kind to us, we too will grow old. Our memories may betray us. Our hands may shake. On that day, what will we want from the generation we raised? The answer is painfully simple: the same care we once gave them. Abandoning the elderly is not merely a failure of family responsibility. It is a failure of humanity.
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“Abuse does not always leave a bruise”
Dr Faiz Fazili
Physician and writer. He has spent years attending medical emergencies in his neighbourhood, many of which, he says, cannot be diagnosed with a stethoscope.
It was late at night when the phone rang. “Doctor Sahib, please come quickly. An elderly mother has fainted.”
I have received many such calls. Sometimes it is a mother, sometimes a father. A medical emergency brings people running, but behind some of these emergencies lies another story: mental exhaustion, humiliation, loneliness, silent tears.
I remember one elderly neighbour particularly painfully. His nose was bleeding. He was old, vulnerable, and apparently had nowhere he felt secure enough to spend the night. He slept that night in a small mosque. An elderly father, after a lifetime of raising a family, spending the night in a mosque. What happens inside the mind of a man when his own home no longer feels like home? Perhaps he cried. Perhaps he did not. Many elderly parents learn to cry quietly.
A few months later, the same man suffered a heart attack. Neighbours rushed him to hospital. They stayed with him. They worried about him. His son did not come. Eventually the father died. Then came an irony that is almost impossible to absorb. The neighbours had to call the son, not because his father needed him, not because there was still time for a final conversation, but because the hospital could release the body only to the legal heir. He was absent when his father needed him alive and had to be summoned when his father was dead.
I do not know every circumstance behind that relationship. There may have been old wounds. But the scene leaves an uncomfortable question: how does a bond between parent and child deteriorate to the point where neighbours become the family’s emergency service?
When we hear the word abuse, we imagine hitting or pushing. But elderly abuse has many faces. It can be verbal, emotional, psychological, financial. Often it is simply neglect. “Why are you always complaining?” “You are becoming a burden.” “I don’t have time for you.” “You are useless now.” Repeated words become psychological wounds. Mocking a parent’s weakness, isolating them, controlling their money, making them feel guilty for needing help: all of it is abuse. A parent may have food, clothing and a roof and still be profoundly abandoned. Material provision cannot compensate for emotional rejection.
Picture an elderly mother sitting alone after everyone has gone to bed. She remembers holding her child through fever, waiting for him to return from school, praying for his examinations. Now she hesitates before asking that same child for a glass of water. “Perhaps I am troubling them.” “I should not ask.”
This is where neglect becomes dangerous. The elderly person internalises rejection. They stop asking, stop complaining, stop expecting. They become quiet, not because they are content, but because they have lost hope that speaking will change anything. Silence should never be mistaken for acceptance. Sometimes silence is surrender.
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“The first school of morality is the family, not the classroom”
Rayees Masroor
Educationist and columnist from Kupwara. He writes on values in education and the moral responsibilities that schooling alone cannot teach.
Let me begin with a real story. A boy of ten in a village grew up watching his father deal impatiently with his ageing grandfather. Whenever the old man repeated a question, needed help walking or complained of pain, his son responded with irritation. “I have already told you,” he would say, and leave him alone while the family got on with its own life. The boy watched silently and grew up believing that old age was an inconvenience.
Years later, the boy became a man and his father grew old. One evening the father asked his son to repeat something. The son lost his patience: “How many times do I have to tell you?” The father fell silent. The son did not realise he was simply returning a lesson he had learnt at home.
This is one of the most uncomfortable truths about parenting. Children may forget what we tell them, but they rarely forget what they see us do. As an educationist, I believe the first school of morality is the family. A child learns respect by witnessing respect, compassion by experiencing compassion. If children grow up watching their parents neglect, humiliate or abandon grandparents, they internalise the idea that ageing parents eventually become burdens. The cycle then moves silently from one generation to the next.
That is why abandoning elderly parents is not merely a family issue. It is a moral, social and educational one. We celebrate our children’s degrees and professional achievements, but what is the meaning of education if an educated person cannot speak patiently to an ageing mother? The National Education Policy 2020 lists empathy, courtesy, patience and respect for elders among the values education should cultivate. The real test of education is not what we know, but what kind of human beings we become.
Our religious responsibility is equally profound. The Qur’an commands believers to be kind to their parents and, particularly in old age, not even to say “uff” to them, but to speak to them with honour. The message goes beyond physical care. Cruelty begins with a tone of voice long before it becomes abandonment. Confucius made the same distinction: providing food is not enough; parents deserve genuine reverence. An elderly parent needs medicine and financial security, but also dignity, companionship and the feeling of still being valued.
Modern life has changed family structures. Migration, employment pressures and the decline of joint families have created real difficulties. Caring for parents does not always mean living under one roof. But physical distance should never become emotional abandonment. We must also acknowledge that not every parent-child relationship is healthy, and where there has been abuse, boundaries are necessary. Yet where parents have spent decades sacrificing for their children, old age should not become the stage at which those sacrifices are forgotten.
What concerns me most is the lesson today’s children are learning by watching us. If they see us treat our parents as burdens, on what moral foundation do we expect them to care for us? Perhaps the greatest inheritance we can leave is not property or a prestigious surname, but an example worth following.
They raised us. The question is whether, when they need us most, we will be there.
ماں باپ اور استاد سب ہیں خدا کی رحمت
ہے روک ٹوک ان کی حق میں تمہارے نعمت
(Altaf Hussain Hali)
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“An ageing parent should not have to go to court to prove they deserve dignity”
Adv Muneer Najar
Advocate practising in Kashmir. He has represented and observed families in maintenance and elder-protection matters.
Ageing is meant to be a phase marked by dignity, care and security. Parents who spend decades raising their children naturally expect that, in their later years, those children will stand by them. Yet for some, old age brings neglect, humiliation, conflict and, in the worst cases, physical abuse.
The law does not leave ageing parents entirely at the mercy of their children. Under Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, a parent unable to maintain themselves may seek maintenance from their children. For families governed by Muslim personal law, questions of residence, property and inheritance may also arise under the principles of Sharia. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 goes further: Section 24 makes the abandonment of a senior citizen by a person responsible for their care an offence punishable with imprisonment, fine or both.
These provisions carry a message. Caring for elderly parents is not simply a matter of morality or tradition. In appropriate circumstances, it is a legal responsibility.
A recent dispute from Rawalpora shows how painful such cases become. It involves ailing parents and three children: two daughters, one divorced and one unmarried, and an only son living in the same house. A maintenance proceeding was initiated on behalf of the mother. The son was directed to pay, and on two successive hearings he allegedly deposited the amount in ten and twenty rupee notes. The court read this as an attempt to humiliate his mother rather than comply with its direction, and ordered a day’s judicial custody along with instructions that the money be properly deposited and transferred. The matter has also been accompanied by allegations of physical violence against the parents and daughters.
The most heartbreaking detail is the mother’s response. Despite everything, she reportedly pleaded that no FIR be pursued against her son, saying that Allah would teach him a lesson in this world.
Her plea reflects a reality that goes beyond the courtroom. Parents tolerate extraordinary hardship when the person causing it is their own child. Fear, affection, social pressure and hope for reconciliation make elderly victims reluctant to act, even when the law is firmly on their side.
This is where law and conscience meet. Parents should not have to beg their children for food, shelter or medical care. Daughters, whether married, divorced or unmarried, carry responsibilities of their own and should not be expected to compensate for the neglect of a brother. But the larger principle is not sons versus daughters. It is responsibility, dignity and humanity. Every child must recognise the vulnerability of a parent who can no longer protect themselves physically, financially or emotionally.
A home built through a parent’s sacrifices should never become a place where that parent lives in fear of their own child. Courts can order maintenance and punish abandonment. But legal remedies are a second line of protection. The first must come from within the family. An ageing parent should not have to go to court to prove that they deserve dignity.
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Loneliness is not a tax on ageing. It is a signal calling us back
Basit Qureshi
District Srinagar Coordinator for Forest Rights Act and Livelihood, Tribal Affairs Department, Jammu and Kashmir. He works with communities where family support is often the only safety net.
The room at the end of the hall is quiet, but it is not empty. In it sits a mother who once turned bedsheets into pirate sails and scraped knees into badges of honour. Nearby rests a father whose fingers spent decades swinging a child toward the sky, teaching them to reach for things just beyond their grasp. Somewhere in the rush of careers and horizons, the tireless guardians of our youth became quiet observers of our adulthood.
The tragic truth of modern life is that in our haste to build the future, we leave behind the very people who gave us the foundation to stand. We give them silence where there was laughter, distance where there was warmth, and loneliness where there was endless sacrifice.
Yet this is not set in stone. Loneliness is not an inevitable tax on ageing. It is a signal calling us back to our senses.
Childhood is a world built almost entirely by the labour of parents and grandparents. Long before we understood the cost of a mortgage or the exhaustion of a late shift, our elders bore those burdens quietly. They chose less so that we could have more. They were our original believers, insisting we could be anything when the world told them otherwise.
When we are young, our parents seem immortal. The tragedy of modern loneliness stems from a persistent illusion: we keep treating them as if they need nothing from us, long after their world has narrowed. We mistake their quiet grace for absence of need. And many elders suffer in silence out of love. Having spent their lives shielding their children from hardship, they refuse to become a burden. They downplay their ailments and nod politely when we say we are busy. They accept loneliness because they still put our convenience before their comfort.
Bringing elders back into the centre of our lives is not a chore. It is an enrichment. When people age, society strips them of agency, treating them as children to be managed rather than elders to be revered. We reverse this by inviting their input. Ask your father how he survived a hard career transition. Ask your grandmother how she kept a marriage strong through lean years. Record their voices. By making them keepers of the family’s story, we restore their dignity and give ourselves a window into where we come from.
There is a particular medicine in the bond between grandparents and grandchildren. Children live in the present; elders reflect on the past. Together they meet in an unhurried space that middle-aged adults, forever chasing the future, rarely enter. For elders it restores vigour. For children it builds patience, empathy and respect for ageing before ageist habits take root.
The benefits flow both ways. In an anxious, hyper-digital world, time with someone who has survived decades of life’s storms is grounding. The final chapters of life also offer a window for reconciliation, for seeing our parents not as superheroes or disciplinarians but as people who did their best with what they had. And the way we treat them is the blueprint our own children will follow.
Time is a quiet thief. It slips away between “I should call” and “I’ll visit next weekend.” The hands that held ours on our first steps will not be here forever. Pick up the phone today. Visit this weekend. Ask the question you have been meaning to ask. Sit in the quiet with them and hold the hands that built your world. They gave us a childhood filled with love. The least, and the greatest, thing we can give them in return is a life where they never feel alone.
This special edition is part of our continuing coverage of ageing, family and dignity. Readers wishing to share their experiences may write to the editor.
