Sons and Parents

D.H Lawrence perhaps would have written about Sons and Parents instead of Sons and Lovers if he had read about this man in Singapore who reportedly paid his sick parents RM4,994 to move out of his flat. The man was said to have even made the parents sign documents , promising not to return to the flat. Treating ailing parents miserably perhaps is not something new. A Jataka tale tells of a man, Vasitthaka who takes his ailing father out to the cemetery, digs a hole with the intention of breaking his head with a spade but is brought to his senses by his young son. The latter who has gone with him to the cemetery has dug another similar hole and when asked why he has done that, replied:

I too, when thou art aged, father mine,

Will treat my father as thou treatest thine;
Following the custom of the family
                                               Deep in a pit I too will bury thee..

This tale is food for thought, isn't it?