The habit of helping to look after one’s grandchildren is only present in members of the human race. No other known animal on the planet seems to have this particular trend. Strangely also, the tradition of grandparents playing an important role in the birth and upbringing of grand-children seems to be a universal trend among humans.

All of us know grandparents as symbols of wisdom; they speak from experience and tell us how to go to where they have been. They may not be up to date in matters of science and other branches of knowledge but they would have been through the ‘school of hard knocks.’ It is grandparents who tell us that though money and other symbols of wealth are nice to have, the real values in life are of the non-material kind. They themselves had probably discovered this through a lifetime of pain and sorrow.

It is very unfortunate today that, as part of the modern life-style, we are losing contacts with our grandparents. It is just not wise at all, but it is happening all around us, that after five million years of evolution, we are now discarding some of the most beautiful aspects of being a human. Pushing grand-parents out of the scene is one of them. Many of them are being exiled in old people’s homes, where being deprived of something useful to do and of being loved and wanted, they waste away to early ends. One can only hope and pray that the trend will be reversed, if not for the sake of our grand-parents for the sake of the wisdom they have to offer all of us.