(Inspired by the past few weeks spent with various family)

- Skype. Google Chat. MagicJack. Whatever it may be, old people love to be on the internet on a daily basis to talk to their children who stay in "foreign". Phone calls are so 20th century.

- Talk to each other when they meet, and on the phone, about their various health issues. This has always happened - just that the phone calls now also involve updating each other about the aforementioned conversations with their foreign kids.

- Old people love to renovate their houses. They will keep complaining how it is such a pain and they're too ill, but they love constant renovation work.

- Old people get religion. The older they are, the more religious they get. Most passive types also turn full religious around their retirement age. Yours truly's dad, for instance, has become the President of the local temple association.

What else?

Well in the case of my dad he got religion only for a brief span of time - between the death of my mother and the birth of my nephew. As soon as the grandkid arrived to fill in the void, he has time for little else. His time allotted to prayer seems to have gone down from at least 5 hours a day to around 20 minutes. Which is just as well because I found it very upsetting to see my generally happy go lucky dad praying and listening to bhajan CDs almost all the time.

To contribute: shake their fists angrily and yell at the TV. My dad does this all the time when he's watching news.

HathyaSaiBaba wrote:
To contribute: shake their fists angrily and yell at the TV. My dad does this all the time when he's watching news.

In the case of my dad, especially when some sports journalist types is dissing Sachin Tendulkar. That's the only news that Dad gets worked up about anymore.

As for religion, he sort of worried me a little bit when I'd come home in the evening and he'd be listening to the Art of Living channel on Worldspace and it took me a while to figure out that the reason he was listening was because Sri Sri Ravi's voice puts him to sleep. Now, its a part of his evening nap routine.

talk about the next one in line to get married and possible matches. Can we ever manage to get away from this shit?

Not living with them helps, but not by much evidently.

As the next one in line to get married, I'll say that you can run but you can never hide. The only way thing in my favour is the fact that i'm not some engineering mba and work in a field that is terribly unstable. Also the fact that it's not a job profile that you can easily pin down and explain.

To add to your list: Old people like to go online and put their son's profile on tamilmatrimony.com. They would plead with you to look at profiles that they think have a glimmer of hope of getting their useless son hitched and when you refuse to look at them, out comes one of the grandmothers telling you how you ought to get married because they are likely to die very soon. You want to say you don't give a fuck but it doesn't quite work out like that, does it?

They like to watch a lot of TV and if you're in my house, you would probably find yourself watching one religious channel after the other. Everything goes, Art of Living, ganpati visarjans, dandiyas, even reiki sessions. Entertainment for my folks means watching the ganga aarthi at haridwar or rishikesh every evening and then the mythological serials one after the other. They take a break from all that by watching a couple of soaps and old mgr-shivaji songs and films in the afternoon and turn it off when stuff gets slightly violent or when they realise that what they're watching isn't old enough for their liking.

They love things like worldspace where they can just turn on a carnatic/light music channel and listen to any random shit that gets played. If they're in the mood they'll even start identifying ragams and talams and worse still, start singing along.

They love to sing. At weddings and functions, they would make sure to select the oldest mami in the hall and make her sing a song and it always has to be one of the 4-5 greatest hits of carnatic music.

Some of them would be very cynical about swamigals (godmen) when they speak to you in private but of course, when they get to a place like sringeri or puttaparthi, they will go head over heels in love with them and take off their shirts and do "shashtanga namaskarams" (where you lie down and bow in front of the man) and expect you to do the same.

Kikuchiyo wrote:

Some of them would be very cynical about swamigals (godmen) when they speak to you in private but of course, when they get to a place like sringeri or puttaparthi, they will go head over heels in love with them and take off their shirts and do "shashtanga namaskarams" (where you lie down and bow in front of the man) and expect you to do the same.

This shit happens way too often in my household. Although it doesn't really stop with religion or holy peeps. My folks watch this one particular soap on Asianet (among other fuckall reality shows and such). They watch the show without missing a single episode, Mon to Fri, 7:00 to 7:30 and then bitch about how consistently shitty the show is, from 7:30 to 8:00.

Well this is something a very specific old person does so I'm not sure it qualifies but what the hell. This asinine uncle of mine mimes when he talks. He could be telling you about something but he'll also be showing you; practically re-enacting stuff right before your eyes. He also fancies himself a huge aficionado of carnatic classical music and at a recent wedding could be seen playing "air nadaswaram". To the casual observer it looked like he was giving a blowjob to a ghost.

PowerDog wrote:
Kikuchiyo wrote:

Some of them would be very cynical about swamigals (godmen) when they speak to you in private but of course, when they get to a place like sringeri or puttaparthi, they will go head over heels in love with them and take off their shirts and do "shashtanga namaskarams" (where you lie down and bow in front of the man) and expect you to do the same.

This shit happens way too often in my household. Although it doesn't really stop with religion or holy peeps. My folks watch this one particular soap on Asianet (among other fuckall reality shows and such). They watch the show without missing a single episode, Mon to Fri, 7:00 to 7:30 and then bitch about how consistently shitty the show is, from 7:30 to 8:00.

Haha the asianet 7:00pm primetime. My grandparents used love watching the soaps that used to air at that time. I remember there being quite a bit a crying involved.

In my case, the elder folk have always made sure they inform me of relatives and cousins I don't even remember, tell me how tall I've grown, and ask me when I'll be join my brother in going 'phoren' as well (and throw in some talks about grand life plans as well). Glad I'm seen as generally untrustworthy and I'm not the one who everyone in the family confides stuff to though, that post goes to my elder sibling =P

And oh yeah, they've never gotten over how bad my Tamil is.

old people have ranting. they rant about the deterioration of society, in general and "the youngsters these days", specifically. while ranting is not specifically the forte of old people, they do it in the most insipid and uninspiring way.

old people are less interesting than what they used to be. case in point: my dad. twenty years ago, he'd get me to listen to dire straits. now, he's trying to get me to listen to shlokas.

old people are technologically retarded. sure, they can mail, chat and send messages but they don't cope with new technologies very well. also, they handle their electronics like it's going to detonate any time soon.

@ sabman: my sympathies. i don't believe it is possible to get away from it.

Old people love turning things off. Lights, fans, computers, flush tanks - you name it they turn them off like they'd go bankrupt if they didn't do it that very second. You're fucked if you leave the light on and go to the next room for more than 2 seconds.

old people love attending functions, doesnt really matter if its arranged by someone who is related to them by 600 degrees of separation and they have never met or met probably only once. The idea of attending the function is to let people know how you are blissfully fucking around in your old age gossiping about your neighbours , friends and relatives at the same time letting people know that your children are going completely to seed and lack any kind of affection towards parents , older relatives or just old people in general.

Srikanth Panaman wrote:
Old people love turning things off. Lights, fans, computers, flush tanks - you name it they turn them off like they'd go bankrupt if they didn't do it that very second. You're fucked if you leave the light on and go to the next room for more than 2 seconds.
Tell me about it. My father does that every time for the fan in the computer nook. Somehow keeping the television on for more than 8 hours a day or letting the water continuously run during a very slow-paced shaving routine is exempt from these resource saving measures.

MOAR