Parents लोग

Pre-script - The parents were living with me for the past few months. And now they have returned to their home. And I am missing them terribly. And because I am a grown-up adult who talks with them almost every day, I decided to write about it and not tell them directly. Very mature.For the longest time, I have seen my parents in different roles. Someone's sibling, someone's caregiver, someone else's advisor, someone else's son/daughter, someone's friend and as our parents. As I grow older, I often wonder who are they as people. What do they do in their free time now? What do they talk about? Do they still worry about us as much as they used to? Especially now: that their children have moved to a place of functional adulthood. (I mean presumptuous of me to think that we have been the only focus of their life :P)So as I mentioned earlier, they were visiting me. Just the 3 of us in the house. No travel, no relatives visiting, nothing much happening around really. Just the mundane. Day after day. Regular, routine life.One day when I returned home from work, I saw my father sitting with the food processor and cleaning and fixing it using some tissue wipes and a cleaning spray. He was so engrossed and engaged in doing that. It made me smile. It also has become an enduring memory of him.Whereas my aai (mother) would sit engrossed with the daily newspaper crossword and solve it studiously night after night. Before going to sleep. Once I looked up at her from my late night work meeting and there she was hunched in a corner on the couch, scratching her head over 10 across and 18 down.Parents are so weird. I have seen mine spend their life being parents to me. And it's only now that they are behaving like regular people around us (their kids!). Also, I am missing them a lot!!!!!!