BRIEF CASE: For Love Of The Old

In a country overwhelmingly youthful and where urban culture places premium on youth, my sister, only in her 20s, has always displayed an inscrutable affinity for the 'elderly'.
Customarily in India, the family and other elders are met with either obsequious deference or appalling neglect.
Mona does nothing of the sort. Her interactions with my grandparents or parents' superannuated aunts and uncles would often begin with sweet talk.But somewhere along the way she would enter a universe privy only to her and the gang of the old.
During those moments she betrayed not a hint of being burdened by social obligation. Instead, she considered this schmoozing positively fruitful. Visits to our maternal grandparents in Gujarat would get me feverishly mad as Mona charmingly set up lunch appointments over the phone with our network of mostly old relatives in obscure suburbs of Ahmedabad. I would accompany her like a child being dragged against her will and be subjected to my sister's effortless banter that had everyone scrambling for more. Mona is like tonic for the withering oldies. Even half-bent grannies sit up to share a joke with her.
One day, bemused at Mona's social routines with family geriatrics, yours truly asked her what made her hang out with the forgettable folks. After all, having passed their prime, surely they had little interesting stuff going on in their lives.
That the old might have a past that had elements of scandal, rebellion, lust and promiscuity also seemed very unlikely to me as in their present condition they looked perfectly in tune with conservative social mores.
Mona shook her head in vehement objection. She recalled a conversation with an elderly aunt to make her point. She narrated stories of veteran aunts and uncles — some alive, others dead — that had me chuckling. It sounded like a picaresque account of escapades and peccadilloes that left me gaping in disbelief.
Then, in the manner of a final revelation Mona said: "You know, just because they seem like tame, life-chastened folks does not mean they were not prodigals, wastrels or small-time sizzling divas in their own time". I haven't warmed up even today to chatting up with family fogies, but every time one is around any of them, one remembers the conversation with Mona and a naughty grin spreads within.