You are earning so much good karma,” everyone would tell the middle-aged woman when they heard she was nursing her terminally ill mother-in-law. The Mumbai-based educationist had nursed her mother for five years until she died, taking care of feeding her and changing her diapers. “But when will I enjoy this good karma?” She had wondered to herself. She had become the primary breadwinner for her family of five at 20 and later, for her own family of three.  
The praise, she noticed, flowed more freely from those who could share her load, but found ways to wriggle out of it—they lived out of the city, in another country, or children were growing up and needed them, or they simply couldn’t “do it as well as you can”.

Some heavy-lifting millennials have volunteered for is the autopsy of Indian style of parenting. The ensuing dissection, labelling and healing has been a relief to every person who thought they were alone. If you’ve had a sinking suspicion that you may have been groomed to look after your parent as s/he grows old, you are probably right. Let’s coin it the Shravan-bal syndrome.