As soon as we saw the article in our newspapers, we clicked a picture and sent it to our son. There was no need to add, “When are you visiting next?” because the article said it for us: “According to recent research, if you want your elderly parents to live longer, make sure you visit them often and don’t let them slip into loneliness.”

Of course, we got no response to that article. I’m sure the young man tossed the photograph aside, and scoffed, “Elderly when it suits them, huh? They don’t seem to think the years are catching up when I’m chasing behind them at the Global Village and Dubai Mall ...!”

I understand. Because we had the same problem with our parents.

For a very long time, we refused to see them as “seniors” or “elderly”. With their robust constitutions and resilience, they seemed to weather every storm that came into their lives. That special combination in their youth of fresh air, simple but adequate food (no excesses for them), and hard physical labour had toughened them up, and we were convinced they would live forever.

Besides, if we are to believe that latest research, they had one more thing to ensure their longevity: Their offsprings — the three of us — were constantly underfoot.

Actually, I think our parents probably had a bit too much of us and our children, especially since we insisted on making their birthdays and anniversaries special by descending on them en masse.

It is to their credit that they weathered the storms we brought into their lives pretty graciously.

As we entered the house — generally unexpectedly — we would announce, “You relax, we’re going to do everything!” and we took their wide-eyed stares at the sight of us on the doorstep as expressions of happy surprise. It didn’t enter our self-centred heads that they were knocked speechless by the way we barged in and took control without so much as a “by your leave” or a stray inquiry about what they had planned with their friends and neighbours or siblings for their big day.

We just took it for granted that there was nothing more important for them than our presence — and we proceeded to appropriate our old rooms, scoop up all the sewing patterns and music books or the carefully sorted out seeds and flower bulbs they had arranged there, and shove them under a bed as we made ourselves comfortable.

And, as if we had entered a time machine in those rooms, we also got back into old equations with each other. Thus, squabbles broke out between the three of us middle-aged adults ... and then, perhaps to make us cease and desist or to distract us, actual fisticuffs took place between our children — the cousins who were meeting somewhat reluctantly and discovering new equations between themselves.

As for “We’re going to do everything ...” we sure intended to, but we got bogged down with all that brawling; and if the old people hadn’t plodded into the kitchen and started breaking a dozen-plus eggs to whip up a quick dish of scrambled eggs, the dozen-plus of us would have been scrambling around for a meal. (You can imagine what the addition of hunger would have done for all the hostility brewing among us ...)

Luckily for us, despite all that mayhem, our parents lived to a ripe old age, and thereby gave us a chance to acknowledge their advancing years.

And luckily for them, we realised that if we wanted our parents to be happy with our presence, we needed to visit them one-child/one-family at a time, because we suspected that they were always happy to see their children walk in the door — and they were always happy to see them leave as well!

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.