ChintaMany is driven by two things. Worries in the first place and curiosity coming in the second place. When getting tired of worrying about worries, he turns his attention to curiosity to relax the frayed nerves. Curiosity time took him on a visit to the realm of science & technology and the subject it picked up was on bridges. Dismissing further suggestions from his curiosity, he chose the Chenab rail bridge to let his minder on the world's highest railway arch bridge. Looking down from it, he stared at the 359 meters drop to the flowing river and from the river bed. From the ground up, he knew it stood 35 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower. Its span length of 1,315 meters and includes a 785 m arch span. A bridge bridging the gap with steely determination.
Built to withstand extreme wind speeds up to 266 km/h and engineered to withstand major earthquakes up to magnitude 8, blast loads equivalent to 40 t of TNT, function in extreme cold down to -20°C with an estimated service life of 120 years. Along with other major engineering structures it completes the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) for operating train services across the region to connect people and trade.
The arch span of 785m and the longevity of 120 years under severe service conditions, set him to think about the bridge of a different kind. He repurposed his curiosity to explore the characteristics of this bridge built with human emotion and, if fortunate, having the possibility of serving generations up to 120 years during the constructor’s lifetime.
Grandparents have been acting as the bridge between their children and grandchildren, spanning over the generation gap. The bridge on the Chenab might be the tallest engineering marvel but looks ordinary when compared with any grandparents’ biological marvel.
This biological bridge conjured up by the grandparents is built with emotion and is by far better than the one constructed with cold, feelingless iron over the river Chenab. Water flows under the Chenab bridge while feelings of love and care engulf the bridge itself. ChintaMany imagined that at the most 3 sets of grandparent-grandchildren combination will be using this bridge. The question of how is it possible was deftly answered by him, “Considering the parents of Mother and Father of the child,ren the head count of grandparents increases thereby improving the probability!”
The bridge of the grandparents has its positives and headaches. With the free pass a grand child gets from grandparents, the child finds itself in the world (universe might sound a bit cliche) of toys, books, dresses. The grandparents are ever ready to fire this time-tested missile, whenever the grandchild finds itself in lukewarm or hot water – “at that age while toting a lighter schoolbag what did you manage to do, better than this? The truth that the parents might have done better just got devalued to come out in support of the grandchild.
On becoming a parent, the same
child which enjoyed many grandparental parachuted bail-outs and having had a
free run during the academic years, straps this “now” child in a rollercoaster.
For this ‘now’ child, the after-school hour timetable becomes longer than the
school schedule. Here is where, the ‘now’ grandparents chose to step in to give
a breather. "Don't rob the childhood in order to catch up with the buses
you had missed. You plodded through a lighter curriculum. Standing on the
shore, you cannot judge the depth of an ocean and likewise don’t try to fathom what
a child thinks!"
This “now” child on becoming a parent, after enjoying as many free runs as the grandparents allowed, now tries to secure the child in a warp drive zipping onwards on the academic travel. The child finds the coaching classes and competitive exams take more hours than a day has and wonders whether to borrow or write it off. When off key academic performances and overstaying in the realm of Smart devices disturb the parent, the grandparents provide an umbrage – “Cool your jets. In your times neither you nor these devices were smart. Don't rob on the silk too much, static charge might sting!" This safety net of a Kevlar vest and an Iron dome defense very effectively takes care of the bullets and drone attacks launched by the parent.
For this child of the warp drive fame, it is change of guard time. On becoming a parent, invoking amnesia the parent subjects the child to a regimen of academic processes. This quarter-master sergeant turned parent gets out ranked by the child’s grandparents wielding over ruling batons. The grandparents metamorphose and swoop in like a transformer character to help the child in distress. “Don’t you people know that times have drastically changed from your textbooks to the ‘now’ books? What you struggled to understand in college, now they do it in 5th or 6th grade. Help the child to grasp and cope up without pouring out your vintage gripe”
For good measure the
grandparents asked. " Will not the present ‘now’ become the later and
carry this forward? Do you want that the later should become the now, starting
an unending cycle!" The child did not grasp the grandparents’ convoluted
philosophy, but it appeared that they are intent on keeping the bridge passing
overhead of a generation, without bumps for a smooth drive. The child
wondered to which parents’ side of grandparents this philosophy will get attributed
to?”
Grandparenthood could happen at
the age of 55-60. If this being the case, ChintaMany felt the need to work out the
math to find out whether this emotional bridge will last 120 years as he had
thought earlier. Losing further interest in the curiosity, he picked up the
worry where did he go wrong?
Are the grandparents trying to correct
how they had dealt with their children? If
feelings belong only to that person, can someone else scrutinise it? Is an
emotion valid only if someone allows it to be shown? Who can judge the act of a
loving someone, without demanding anything in return, as beneficial or not? Don’t
they have the child’s mental wellbeing also in mind?
Are the parents trying to
implement what they had been subjected to? Or the overly concerned parents appear
to act tough to secure the child’s future?
Whether the “now” children will
ever think of following a different approach? Who would know, what this ‘subjected’
child thinks?
Iterating everything in his
mind, ChintaMany came to the conclusion that it is best to leave it to the
grandparents and the parents who think and act with the best interest of the
child in mind., hoping the child would make the best use of both!
