A close friend of my parents retired from work yesterday, after twenty-eight years in the Reserve Bank of India. When she came home to visit my parents, she was feeling quite senti. It is like a daughter leaving her home after marriage….
My parents retied from the same bank a few years ago. When they left, between them, they had worked for an incredible seventy three years in the bank. GASP !
My father joined the bank soon after his post graduation studies, steadily rising within the organization, sometimes refusing promotions too for the sake of stability. My mother started work at the age of eighteen, completing her graduation as she went along. She wanted to stop working when she got married. That didn’t happen. Post marriage, she says there are atleast four instances when she wanted to leave her job and stay at home…. Needless to say, that did not happen either.
My parents, typically my mother, did not think of their job as a career. It was the means to a steady income at the end of the month, essential to raise the family. Most women of her generation went to work out of necessity; I doubt if she ever thought about her ‘self-esteem’ or ‘independence’.
These were long before terms such as ‘job satisfaction’ became the vogue. I don’t imagine my parents went through mid-life or quarter life or any other such crisis. If they did, then I didn’t know about it….. I expect they were not aware that it is possible to go through such crisis in one’s life….. Thinking back, I realize they had larger worries and preoccupations…. They just went through life, doing what was expected out of them….
I came across this article where a sixty-year old father sympathizes with his son’s generation for facing all kinds of problems that his own peers never had to. I was touched…..
When I joined work, six years ago, I was already planning for my retirement. At the age of thirty! As it happened, I stopped working full-time (for various personal reasons) long before thirty…. I was not satisfied with my job….. I am now seeking meaning in my work…. I have still not found it…..
No wonder my parents cannot understand what I am griping about….
Hats off to them !