The Nostalgia of Values: Popular Depictions of Care Crisis towards Ageing Parents in India

Introduction

The constant reiteration in the media about a ‘precious past’ calls for an introspection into the cultural need served by such reiteration. Family solidarity is frequently projected as a cherished cultural value of the past. This study, through the lens of nostalgia generated by popular Hindi films, aims at unpacking the notion of values such as family unity which is often portrayed as the most cherished cultural value of the past. The study finds that, though cinematic depictions generate nostalgia around erstwhile predominant values, care, respect and intergenerational harmony are allegedly dwindling in contemporary times; the centripetal force of the nostalgia is not bold enough to prevent the formation of new forms of intergenerational socialities and arrangements of caregiving facilities, which may generate different definitions of care from that of past.

It is alleged that with the modernization of society, ‘modern’ values and habits replace old traditions in a society, and ‘modern’ is typically considered as synonymous with ‘Western’ values. According to such theorization, sentimentalities and attachments to social groups is an impediment to the process of modernizing. To become ‘modern’ is to, as (mis)understood by modernization theorists, adopt a rational, individualistic orientation to life and relinquish all that was otherwise. Neoliberalism, an ideological cog in the process of modernization, ushers in changes in the cultural spheres of life and it has also brought India at par with many of the traits identified with that of a modernizing society; for instance, the rationalization of family system via market logics and reduced intervention of the state at various other fronts (Stewart, 2011). Nevertheless, the state’s role is evident to the extent it sets up a discourse via its policy enactments that it is the family which is the natural caregiving unit for the elderly. So, for example, the concern over the absence of physical presence of caregivers, especially women or the daughter-in-laws, is articulated in the National Policy for Older Persons (NPOP) (GOI, 1999). A similar discourse around the lack of caregivers at home is also reflected in anthropological works like Cohen’s (1998) who alerts us to the dominant constructs of the ‘bad family’ ¹ which typically place the blame for lack of caring for the elders in the family on the figure of the uncaring, cunning and ‘modern’ working daughter-in-law. The divisions between what constitutes ‘traditional’ (read good) and ‘modern’ (read bad) family in contemporary times find repetition in the media. The collaborative and harmonious family life predicated upon the physical presence of different generations is presumed by the media and is made to appear precious in contemporary discourse around family values. Such a nostalgia seems important in the context of the ‘breakdown of the joint family’ discourse. Without delving into already messy sociological arguments around the breakdown of the family, it suffices here to say that debates remain inconclusive about the exact nature of what the Indian family was and what has become of it in recent times. However, some studies have highlighted the resilience in the prevailing form of a spirit of ‘jointness’ in Indian families in the context of alleged erosion of Indian values by Western values (Shah, 1998).

Against the backdrop of various scholarly works and juridical articulation of care for ageing parents around family and parental care in India, it becomes meaningful to explore the popular cinematic representations of the same and explore the reasons behind the generation of a certain kind of nostalgia through films. Nostalgia assumes a temporality and within this temporal space, one may observe the continuous portrayal of a binary of values. Thus, nostalgia generated by films remains a contested domain. The endeavour for a curious mind would be to search for potentialities of alternate perceptions of care, transcending binaries embedded within the nostalgic frame constructed by the media. Our inquiry must begin at this point.

This study picks up verbal and photographic cues and themes from films and advertisements showed on national television post 1990s, a time in history which generated discussions around India’s transition from a relatively ‘closed’ economy to a neoliberal, ‘open’ market economy. Only Hindi films have been selected for analysis as they continue to yield ‘dominance in terms of revenues and reception’ and the Hindi film industry is considered to be the biggest cinema industry and the oldest too (Gehlawat, 2010, p. xii). Advertisements are a vital part of this study because they are powerful communicators of a certain vision of social reality which is a ‘profitable’ version of that reality. It is interesting to see what values are portrayed as important in the ads and how they impact they society. Advertisements and movies, collectively termed as films in the study, paint a certain vision of the Indian family which glorifies selfless care for the parents. Such media representations are laid out against the backdrop of recent reports around lack of care and abuse of the aged. Such juxtaposition makes one wonder if there are causal links between the two, that is, if certain real life situations engender certain types of discourse around care. However, most of these films generated nostalgia that seems to suggest the existence of a singular culture of veneration of older persons. ² The nostalgia does not leave scope for diversities in the way care is practiced among different communities. However, one important factor to note here is that most of the cinematic depictions cater to middle- or upper-middle class sensibilities, as if to certify that it is this section of the society which feels the pangs of separation from familial care more intensely than the lower class, people who naturally live in difficult conditions. One of the direction in which our society’s autopoietic mechanism steers itself to combat the (depicted) value degradation is by taking recourse to the culture industry in India which in turn capitalizes on the commonsensical notions about degradation of family values as repackages ‘…in a fashion so seductive that the ideological nature of representations, even if obvious, gets sidelined’ (Chaudhuri, 2010, p. 382). ³

The idea of the family is crucial in this study and only those films have been chosen which address the family as a whole ⁴ and which portray skewed care exchanges within families. The films portray a general trend towards a society where children cease to look after their parents and ageing parents are perceived merely as repositories of wealth. The society within the celluloid frame reminisces a value-rich past where willingness to care for parents was unconditional. The family, within this frame, is represented as a commonsensically understood harmonious unit and if otherwise, a conscious attempt is made to bring it back notionally to its pristine form, which is more of an idea or memory than a concrete reality. ⁵ Nevertheless, a critical reader should bear in mind, in tune with Nora (1996), that memories are based on ‘vague, telescoping reminiscences, on hazy general impressions or specific symbolic details. [And as such] it is vulnerable to transferences, screen memories, censorings and projections of all kinds’ (1996, p. 6). These films engage in similar projection of changing values within families. What is it that the films want to accomplish by showcasing certain kinds of ‘screen memories’ or nostalgia? ⁶

Nostalgia and Social Order

Scholars, who have written around nostalgia as a domain of social inquiry, have recognized the vague and controversial quality of it. On the one hand, it can be the clearest conception of what was in earlier times, more as a reference point for the present, but on the other hand, it is an effervescent concept which can barely be deconstructed for empirical explanations. The word traces its root from the Greek words nostos (home) and algia (pain). The term ‘nostalgia’ was formulated by the Swiss doctor Johannes Hofer in 1688 when he diagnosed the cause of an incurable illness in a student to be an acute yearning for home. Biological explanations of nostalgia had pathologized it and loss of appetite and weight became the bodily codes through which the onset of nostalgia was apprehended. In the early twentieth century, nostalgia was understood as a psychological condition under whose influence people could commit crimes (Draaisma, 2013). However, Draaisma eloquently demonstrates in The Nostalgia Factory that over the years, nostalgia was stripped off its medical connotation and became associated with a diffused feeling of longingness. Time is the ‘nostalgia factory’, he opines. According to him, people are prone to express nostalgia when growing old with the realization that they no longer reside in the pastures of their younger days. This is the point where treasured memories spring up which eventually lead to a comparison of contemporary times with earlier times. This becomes something inevitable for everyone he opines. However, it is not the personal experience which is of concern here but rather the generation of societal or collective nostalgia experienced in times of alleged stressful affective ties within family as is depicted in the films.

While one cannot claim with certainty if and what form of predominant family system was most common in the pre-neoliberal India, ⁷ the existence of a closely knit family is often reflected and reiterated in the popular visuals. By showing what a family is not in contemporary times, the films make a statement of what it probably was and must be. It can be argued that nostalgia or remembrance

…restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again. (Agamben, 1999, p. 267)

Generating hope towards such possibility ensures a continuous striving for the achievement of social order. A culture of respect towards the elderly and surrendering to the authority of the eldest member symbolically (at least) is highlighted as an important trait of the ‘ideal’ family (see Uberoi, 2003). It is through such cinematic depictions that nostalgia of a certain kind of value is generated and one can sense the past, mostly in the domain of imagination. It is this nostalgia that sells or appeals to people largely because it speaks of resolution of conflictual values and in the process, the imagination is rendered a reality touch.

In the ‘reel’ life, family is often highlighted as a composite unit where the happiness of other members should matter most. The indomitable father must be revered as he embodies the selfless giver, who always acts in the interest of the family, and who though not the only breadwinner of the family, yields a power which must not be meddled with, in order to prevent the disintegration of the family. This can be seen in the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Johar & Johar, 2001) whose subtitle stood out more starkly than the title itself ‘…It’s all about loving your parents’ which implies that if one does not, then one is not virtuous. Anjali (Kajol), the daughter-in-law of Yashvardhan (Amitabh Bachchan), does not fail to include her in-laws in the early morning prayers. In fact, in the place of God’s idol, the larger-than-life photograph of her in-laws is revealed to the audience to highlight their god-like stature in their lives. Anjali and Raj (Shahrukh Khan), who reside in London, begin their day by connecting to the parents by taking imaginative blessings from them. Raj, the son who is not adarsh (ideal) in the eyes of his father because he chose to marry against his wishes, remains a dedicated son who at every instance thinks of his father with a lot of fondness yet helpless as he cannot return home. The vacuum created in the lives of Raj and Anjali due to their inability to reside with their parents makes even the daughter-in-law to crave for being accepted and blessed. ⁸ She feels fortunate when she gets the opportunity to touch the feet of her father-in-law under the pretext of picking up a book which had accidently fallen from his hand. There is a clever move by the director to valorize intergenerational harmony by incorporating the rebellious lovers ‘…into the governing ideology of the khandaan’ (Gopal, 2012, p. 20). In analyzing this film, Gopal (2012) posits that a ‘reconciliation of the hero and the patriarch’ is essential for neutralizing the effects of exercising individual desire and agency. Parampara, whose compound meaning translates to traditions and honour of the family, assumes a resignification in films of the 1990s. In this way, familial expectations and individual interests are expected to attain an equilibrium point for familial order (and subsequent social order) to be made possible. However, the daughter-in-law in many instances is believed to occupy the median point of a conflictual situation between fulfilment of familial duties and pursuit of individual interests.

‘Giving a Knife to a Monkey’: Educated Women Ruin the Family System

Sociologists of urban studies in India like K.M. Kapadia, through their data, have challenged the existence of a causal link between women’s education and subsequent breakdown of family. Such studies shatter the common perception that educating women engenders a change in their orientation towards life, as they feel emboldened to pursue their own interests, are able to bargain better their stake in decision making in various spheres of life and destabilize the intergenerational hierarchies and authority system (Patel, 2005). Even though such changes could contrarily be seen as a form of women empowerment, the dichotomy between ‘career’ and ‘care’ in the lives of women is exaggerated in the series of sociological literature around ageing in India in the 1970s and 1980s, which Cohen (1998) discusses. These works generate a sense that career-oriented women are self-centred—not befitting the role of an ‘ideal’ Hindu wife (who should be a carer before anything else). Attributing changes in the family to Westernization continued through the 1990s, a period of heightened cultural exchanges between the West ⁹ and India. Imprecise conclusions enter the popular consciousness and circulate in the media and also get legitimized through policy discourse. The following excerpt from the NPOP (GOI, 1999) highlights the assumption that women have for long been the primary caregivers and since it is no longer the case in contemporary times, the concern around care for the elderly arises.

There exists an implicit blame on the woman for her failure to undertake the role of an adarsh bahu (ideal daughter-in-law) who would keep the care work at home above everything else. Such an understanding also coincides with the social fact of abuse by daughter-in-laws. According to a recent survey in 12 cities in the country, ¹⁰ 23 per cent of the elderly in India are abused on a daily basis and that the daughter-in-law precedes the son in perpetrating violence towards their elderly parents. Out of those interviewed, it has been observed that 90 per cent live with their families. Disrespect, neglect and verbal abuse are the primary forms of abuse. Abuse seems to be symptomatic of a situation of value crisis and the daughter-in-law comes across as the protagonist. Let us now turn towards understanding the role of the ideal daughter-in-law, critique her but also remind ourselves the gendered assumptions about care in which it is the woman who is naturally expected to be more caring. The politics of nostalgia often refuses to challenge the status quo because it is functional for certain sections of the society; for example, for the perpetuity of the patriarchal order. In Baghban (Chopra & Chopra, 2003), there is only a tangential reference to the practical difficulties that could be faced by working couples with regard to looking after them. A film attempting to disentangle the nuances of dilemma and stress faced by a caregiver is yet to be made in the context of ageing parents and the dilemma remains negatively construed as a lack of desire to care.

The qualities of an adarsh bahu entail all those that Reena, played by actress Divya Dutta in the movie Baghban (Chopra & Chopra, 2003), is not and Anjali in Kabhi Khushi… is. Reena is reluctant to take up the responsibility of care of her in-laws as she claims that she is a working woman herself and will not be able to deal with their nakhre (tantrums). The narrative of ‘burden’ of elderly, unproductive parents portrayed in movies is dominant and to reduce the burden, the four children of Raj (Amitabh Bachchan) and Pooja (Hema Malini) decide to separate the couple and keep them on rotation with a different son every month. Conflict of priorities and lifestyles increases intergenerational conflicts. The film shows how the expression of love of a parent towards the child often gets misinterpreted and that the daughter-in-law plays a role in engendering antagonistic family relations. For instance, when Pooja goes to her son’s office to wish on his birthday with a box of his favourite sweet dish, the son and his wife think that she came with the purpose of tattling against the daughter-in-law. The angered daughter-in-law felt that Pooja by wishing him first, spoilt her plans of a surprise birthday celebration for her husband. The children as depicted in the movie fail to understand that the mother has her own way of demonstrating love for her children. The affectionate voice of the mother is shut by the children’s overdetermination of the mother’s intention (of visiting the son). The film strikes a sentimental chord when Pooja repents that her show of affection became the fault for creating an unpleasant situation at home mujhe kahan pata tha meri mamta mera jurm ban jayega (my show of affection will become my offence). The movie highlights that taking care of the elderly parents often entails looking after small demands by the parents, which can appear so trivial that they get completely sidelined and cause hurt to the parents. When Raj’s spectacles break and he is unable to read the letter sent by his beloved wife, he requests his son to repair it. The son, who is well off, claimed that he did not have adequate money at that time to repair it and would do it sometime later, thus casualizing the whole affair. However, the movie also has moments which reassert the correctness of decisions and the magnanimous nature of elders in the family when the grandchildren speak up for their grandparents. People, in not very primary roles in the movie, like the hotel manager, Mr Desai, play an instrumental role in reifying the position of the elderly couple by requesting them to stay on as guests of honour, since they were one of the oldest customers of the hotel. The missing adoration and veneration from their sons and daughter-in-laws is reproduced by unexpected characters or fictive kin, and in this way, it ignites in the audience the sense of responsibility towards ageing people in the society at large and not just in one’s family.

The film capitalizes on symbolic gestures and practices that are used in daily lives. For example, the middle chair at the dining table is for the head of the family. In Baghban, the director in subtle ways reinforces this belief when Aloke, Raj’s adopted son, offers him the seat as he believed Raj to be the head of the family even though he was not an earning member. This gesture of respect makes Raj reminisce a similar episode where Reena, categorically prevents Raj from sitting on the middle chair because it belonged to her husband, who was technically the head of the family. Thus, in the film, it is the ‘modern’ working wife who shatters any possibility of intergenerational harmony. At this juncture, one may want to observe how the ideal of farz (duty) grapples with alleged forces of change which challenge the rubric of the ‘ideal’, Indian family system. ¹¹

A Paradigmatic Shift of Care? The Changing Idea of Farz (Duty)

Relationships are depicted in ‘reel’ life as the focal points of values. The vitality of relationships is drawn from values cherished by a social group. Sociologists have demonstrated the socially rooted nature of values. Mukherjee, one of the early scholars on sociology of values, opines that values ‘offer easy, stable and effective guidance to him through life, in spite of conflicting biological and social needs or goals and severe interpersonal tensions’ (Mukherjee, 2005, p. 23). Much in tune with Durkheimian notion of collective conscience, Mukherjee opines that values are a kind of moral codes imposed upon individuals’ impulsive actions. The Latin word valere which means ‘to be worth’, was given a cultural definition for the first time by Parsons for whom values were the realm of ideas and not objects (Spates, 1983). Parsons’ pattern variables provided a framework of values for people to determine their cause of actions—for instance, whether to engage in affective actions or affectively neutral behaviour. The ‘modern’ society, Parsons argues, is distinguished from the ‘traditional’ societies on the basis of preference of one kind of values. Western values of affective-neutrality, individualism and self-oriented social interactions (in the tune of Parsons) are depicted, in the films discussed in this study, as corroding Indian values. ¹²

Films such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun? (1994) were made at a time when the fear of the breakdown of erstwhile bonds and traditions loomed large. ¹³ Immediately after the 1990s, the narratives in Hindi cinema stressed the importance of a joint family, which almost qualifies as an ‘imagined community’, Uberoi (2003) would argue. Movies such as those mentioned above and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (Chopra & Chopra, 1995) reassert the valued Indian tradition that individual choice ought to be subsumed by interests of the family. In both the films, the lovers, Prem and Nisha in the former and Raj and Simran in the latter, would not go against the wishes of the family. Prem (Salman Khan) and Nisha (Madhuri Dixit) sacrifice their love so that Prem’s elder brother (Monish Behl), who has lost his wife, can resettle back in his life with the newborn baby. Nisha sings to Prem over phone mai pyar ki yadein dil se mita dungi…mai farz ki khatir sab kuch bhula dungi (I will relinquish personal love for duty’s sake) and willingly submits to becoming the bride of Prem’s elder brother who was married to Nisha’s elder sister. Prem is sad yet feels indebted for Nisha’s sacrifice. In the end, the family realizes the extreme ‘goodness’ and nobility of their sacrifice, and farz is almost fetishized by all the stakeholders in the film.

Dilwale… makes immediate remarks on Indian youth being Westernized. It juxtaposes a European culture which extols the values of independent living, unencumbered by parental responsibilities with Indian virtues of elderly respect and dutifully assuming the care for the parents. The film is a battleground of values in which exogenous forces seem to erode, but the clash must be resolved in favour of our cherished traditions. Raj (Shahrukh), despite being prodded by Simran (Kajol) and her mother to elope and set up their individual lives, refuses to do so. He had all the temptations of pursuing his personal interests, but the audience is told that without the blessing of the elders, an individual’s life will be meaningless. This film captures the essence of an aspirational new India (of the 1990s) and offers a commentary on middle-class anxieties translated as a tussle between and adaption of divergent value systems in the context of a non-Indian culture. Even though Simran and her family reside amidst a European culture, she waits for her father’s approval to allow her to travel with her friends. This is in contrast to the very friendly relationship between father and son (Raj). The film highlights our distant (stemming from respecting age hierarchy) and less friendly relations with parents or seniors; when Raj errs in keeping up to the cultural norms, he (and the audience subsequently) is reminded by an enraged Simran’s father (Amrish Puri) that being respectful (read as opposite of friendly and casual) towards elders is an essence of being Indian and is one’s farz (duty). Such depiction of values, crystallized through melodramatic gestures and dialogues, aims to reconstruct the lost ‘ideal’ family in the ideal society. This ‘ideal’ family reiterates the scriptural notion of a family:

O family members! May you live together amicably and as equals for the sake of your common goals like the spokes of a wheel which are all equal and converge at the core. Do not cause conflicts amongst you and separate. By talking with civility and showing respect for one another, by rendering assistance to one another and having tender, warm feelings for one another, proceed along the road of prosperity. (from Atharva Veda cited in Chekki, 1996)

It follows from here that naturally sending away one’s parents to old-age homes is alien to our culture. However, one may ask if old age homes are only symptomatic of a pathological society? Could they not be seen as an adaptive mechanism to deal with changes in our society?

Anthropological works like Lamb’s (2000, 2013) highlight that old people in the Western countries, unlike in India, find it awkward to reside with their children after retirement. She also explores the peculiar conundrum that many of the older generation parents in India experience in contemporary times. They are unable to fix the cause of their loneliness they often experience bereft of the company of close kin, on to a particular person. Most of them accept their own role in sending their children to distant places to seek education or otherwise and later when left by themselves, they often reluctantly submit to whatever decisions taken by their children in order to avoid unpleasant situations at home. One such decision is relocating to old-age home due to lack of familial care and gradual deterioration of health. However, this is far from being an easy option because such homes are stigmatized in our culture, and only few relocate willingly. However, an alternative vision of ageing in old-age homes does exist in films. Lago Raho Munnabhai (Chopra & Hirani, 2006) is one such ‘crevice’ ¹⁴ in the cinescape which offers an alternate possibility of ageing in contemporary society. Nostalgia, in this case, does not grope in the normative discourse of the ‘bad family’ which casts away elders into shelter homes. In this film, nostalgia presents a hybridized exercise of protecting choice and agency of elders in the context in which there are no caregiver kin. The film takes an optimistic look at ageing in such homes. In the movie, there is an acceptance that elderly people are left to fend for themselves without any caregivers. In the Second Innings House, the elderly can make themselves happy by not ‘wasting’ the rest of their lives by brooding over their losses and failures. The movie subtly empowers the elderly by stating that they need not be dependent on another person’s care. One of the widowers gets married to his childhood crush, a move which would cause raising an eyebrow by many people in our country.

The film reminds us, through the caring figure of Jahnvi (Vidya Balan), that our society is not a lost case. The film fights ageism by showing ‘friendly relations’ (opposite of hierarchical relations) and selfless affection between the two generations. The suggestion in this movie is that if people outside one’s own kin-group can be so caring towards elderly, then can one’s own children not treat their parents with care? The movie also teaches a lesson to all those who evade responsibility of their parents (and older persons leading lonesome lives in shelter homes), when Murliprasad (Sanjay Dutt) beats up and compels the son of one of the elderly residents to be present at the latter’s birthday celebration at the Second Innings House. Even though very reluctantly, the son agrees to surprise his father with a birthday cake and an ‘expensive’ gift; the movie urges us to think that what our parents want from us is not obedience but small gestures of care and most importantly their time. Spending time with one’s parents is portrayed in the media as a rare experience. However, the audience is told that one can become ‘a complete man’ like one in the Raymond ad (2011) ¹⁵ by taking out time from his busy schedule to bond with the elderly at an old-age home. The ad interestingly juxtaposes the two contradictory values: one is based on personal consumption (owning a Raymond suit) and the other is a philanthropic act (visiting an old-age home). The ad hints towards a state of ‘becoming’ in both cases, which is much ‘desired’ in our society—a model consumer living up to his social class position and a selfless model social worker. The Janus-faced desire, one portrayed as the desire to possess social status symbols and the other as desire to engage in social service work, creates the perfect modern day man who, despite being immersed in daily tribulations of life, is virtuous enough to enliven the solitary lives of the elderly at shelter homes. One day ‘the complete man’ finds one of the elderly men, teary-eyed over the photograph of his son and family. He connects the old man to his son and his family through Skype. All of them, including the grandchildren, sing for the man as it was his birthday. This, for the elderly man, ‘feels like heaven’ or feels as good as the heavenly touch of the suit. One may question the problematic comparison of a material commodity with values of affection and care. However, in a contemporary consumerist society, talking through the language of commodities, humanitarian feelings are understood better by comparing them to the satisfaction that is derived through consumption of a desired product. The use value of a consumer product becomes a measuring rod for a human value.

While a ‘complete man’ upholds values of affection and duty towards the rejected and lonely elderly in the society, the new-age woman (or the erstwhile evil daughter-in-law) is also a transformed character. This is depicted in the Havells fan ad (2013). A young couple visits an old-age home not to admit their parents there but to ‘borrow’ an elderly couple who could fill the void due to the absence of parents in their lives. Of the ‘modern’ couple, it is the wife who says kya hum yahan se ek mom aur dad le jaa sakte hain? (can we take away a mom and dad from the home?) and gives us the sense of hope that our society, in future, would eventually step backwards into the ‘golden past’. The inevitable reversal of the kalyug is highlighted through the tagline of the advertisement hawa badlegi, that winds of change will undo all that is wrong with the contemporary society. ¹⁶ Thus, farz ceases to be a script to be enacted out of normative forces but assumes a more dialogical and reflexive form in an ever-changing society such that it engenders newer ways of conceptualizing intergenerational harmony. Also, farz reasserts itself as an extension of caring feelings towards the society at large. Thus, can it be argued that certain depictions on the screen generate a new way of thinking about care?

Cinematic Images as Possible Agents of Social Change

In What do Pictures Want?, anthropologist W.J.T. Mitchel problematizes the nature of images ¹⁷ as passive. Images are not just beholders of power. Interestingly, he opines, they are powerless because they showcase the absence of something. Cinematic images create a sense of unease by precipitating a ‘sense of lack and craving by giving us the apparent presence of something and taking it away in the same gesture’ (Mitchel, 2005, p. 80). The films that have been discussed so far, accentuate a lack, better understood as a crisis of values of caregiving. The image left in our minds is that of the unfortunate consequences of a modern society that must be rectified in real life. It has been argued in this study that images are also harbingers of new values and ‘active players’ in ‘world making’ and not just ‘world mirroring’ (2005, p. 105). Let us take an example of the film Crazy Cukkad Family (Jha & Menon, 2015). It illustrates property-related intra and intergenerational antagonism. The four siblings who have had no contacts among themselves in the past few years return to their father’s home in expectation of a share of their father’s huge property after they hear that their father is in coma. The film highlights the ‘frailty of human bonds’ (Bauman, 2006) and selfish motives of children. It is the servant, in whose name the old man had made the will, whose good nature is highlighted when he uninhibitedly renounces the property to the old man’s children. However, the servant lays down a condition that they visit their elderly parents twice a year. Such prescribed filial piety, as favoured in the film, is reminiscent of the ‘Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People Law’ that was passed in China in 2013, that legally pronounced the frequent visiting of parents by their children as desirable. In India, the Maintenance of Parents and Welfare of Senior Citizens Act (GOI, 2007) falls short of such an imagination that legally binds children to frequently visit their parents. Nevertheless, the desirability of maintaining family ties is highlighted in the film. ¹⁸

Films such as Crazy Cukkad Family allege the gradual liquefaction of bonds related to care in the contemporary times in India. In India, the personal, physical experience of caring as a reciprocal moment is increasingly getting mediated through another being, professional agencies or even through the Internet. Castells (2010) remarks that one of the parameters of the transition to a new society is the changing ‘relations of experience’ (2010, p. 376). Some of these experiences are increasingly mediated through virtual spaces. Parents and grandparents in contemporary times make use of this technology to stay connected with their children. Such changes are not problematic until the time one chooses to ignore the pathologies in the form of extreme neglect and even abuse of elderly people. With the rise in the cases of elderly neglect in our country, one must reinterpret what values are being prioritized in the society. India is at a peculiar phase of value transformation where any alternate practice of caring is not received widely. This happens because in the West, people age knowing that after retirement they will live independently of their children. The lifeworld of the ageing parents is structured in this way and they do not face sudden trauma of loneliness. In India, the ageing parent expect to be taken care of by their children and are unable to express dilemmas when faced with complete isolation (Lamb, 2000). The state and society is unprepared to provide forms of proxy care. Very few care homes have the basic infrastructural facilities needed for a decent living.

At the crossroads, one could anxiously pause to ponder whether the society is leading to an ‘undesirable’ destination where there are not enough caring beings towards the elders. Values, definitions of care of the older generation, are gradually assimilating with the newer generation standards. Loneliness and feelings of neglect are mitigated by entertainment and intimacy of a different kind which the elderly themselves did not understand initially but are gradually getting accustomed to. Grandparenting can often happen over the Internet; affiliations among elderly from similar backgrounds are formed through chat-sites for the elderly, like Verdurez, and often the elderly instead of sighing heavy heartedly for being left alone, immerse into alleys of their childhood through the Internet. ‘To me, the internet was the Chowpatty beach of my teens, which I would keep coming back to for similar sights, to mingle with a familiar crowd’, says one elderly man (Shobha, December 2013). Internet and virtual life assumes something more than a mere entertainment. Virtual engagements become the experience of care-giving and receiving. Thus, technology becomes the mediator in forging affective relations among real, potential and fictive kin. In this way, it provides a sense of empowerment to the elderly. ¹⁹ The woh kya daur tha! (Olden days were beautiful) narrative is being replenished through new modes of socialities facilitated in one way, by the Internet.

Conclusion: Nostalgia, Dialectics of Values and the Road Not Taken

The cinematic representations articulate the lack of care in Indian families today, by generating nostalgia for a bygone era. Nostalgia becomes a powerful tool in the hands of the image makers. The cultural need for nostalgia of values depends on three functions that values fulfil. First, values have an ideological function of sustaining the existing (hierarchical) social system. Second, values are related to traditional practices and a call for change would generate unease. Third, values, in dialogue with social reality, sense pathology and increase their own viscosity as a counter-mechanism of resistance to change. Films discussed in this study catalyze these functions. However, besides prescribing what ‘good’ care is, films leave open possibilities of alternate forms of care and new modes of social participation of the elderly. Clash of interests that the younger generation faces, in the instrumental pursuit of wealth, prestige and power in which they feel care for elderly as burdensome, will eventually battle out and ‘[o]nly a middle way through fusion or synthesis of opposite values and principles can achieve better and more enduring social balance and harmony at the next higher stage or dimension of social experience’ (Mukherjee, 2005, p. 71). Society is witnessing a change in value orientation, in which extra-familial agents of care try to fill the gap left by the absence of physical family caregivers. Metamorphosing values bridge the projected difference between ideas of ‘tradition’ and ‘modern’ and depict their dialectical contiguity, and nostalgia appears as regenerative, hinting at newer possibilities.