A few days ago, a professional acquaintance cancelled a meeting at the last minute to join the student protests in Mumbai. He has no children. Yet, what struck me was not his decision to stand with the students but his quiet admission that he wished he had possessed their courage much earlier in life. Watching them, he mentioned, was less about supporting a movement than about rediscovering the confidence to ask difficult questions.

Most of us instinctively believe that wisdom flows only in one direction, from the older generation to the younger. We speak of mentoring, coaching and guiding the young. The recent student protests, regardless of where one stands politically, are a reminder that every generation occasionally becomes both the teacher and the taught.

Every protest eventually becomes political. Democracies are designed that way. Yet, if we allow politics alone to define what we have witnessed, we risk overlooking something much larger. The significance of these events may not lie in who won a political contest but in what an entire generation has been trying to tell the rest of us about trust, communication, accountability and the future they hope to inherit.

The Cost Of OldGensplaining

We are familiar with the word mansplaining. Perhaps it is time to coin another expression: ‘OldGensplaining’.

It should describe the tendency of older generations to explain away the anxieties of younger people before taking the trouble to understand them. It is the confidence that experience automatically produces better judgement, that age entitles us to speak first and listen later.

OldGensplaining is not confined to families. Parents do it to........

© Free Press Journal