On an international flight recently, I noticed a woman constantly moving between Business Class and Premium Economy to check on her elderly father. My immediate judgement was harsh — how selfish, travelling Business while her father sits behind. Later, while waiting outside the lavatory, I overheard her gently requesting him to take her seat and sleep comfortably for a while. Soon we started talking.
She had recently lost her mother and was taking her father back with her to London after a lot of emotional convincing. The tickets were booked last minute and luckily they got seats on the same flight she was already booked on. But here’s what struck me — they could easily afford Business Class, yet her father outright refused anything above Economy. In fact, she laughed and said she was relieved Economy was full, because only then did he reluctantly agree to Premium Economy.
And that made me think about an entire generation of Indian retirees.
People who spent 40 years saving every rupee, sacrificing comfort, delaying holidays, switching off ACs after an hour, and convincing themselves that comfort is indulgence. Even after building wealth, they remain emotionally stuck in survival mode. They protect the principal, spend only the interest, postpone medical procedures, and continue living cautiously so their children inherit more someday.
Maybe that is the real tragedy of the Indian middle class — they mastered earning, saving, sacrificing and providing… but somewhere along the way, forgot how to comfortably receive.
Maybe the saddest irony of our parents’ generation is that they spent their whole lives earning a comfortable life, yet feel guilty actually living it. At some point, survival became such a habit that comfort started feeling like excess. But a life spent only preserving money, and never enjoying what it was meant for, is an incomplete reward for decades of hard work. One should live the life one has earned — with a little more comfort, a little less guilt, and before time quietly passes by.
Or am I again judging too early like in the craft. Maybe that’s the difference in Indian parents v/s others.
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