no gesture would be adequate

यदाशक्ति प्रदानेन स्नापनाच्छादनेन च।

न सुप्रतिकरं तत्तु मात्रा पित्रा च यत्कृतम्॥

दीक्षितीये

yadāśakti pradānena snāpanācchādanena ca|

na supratikaraṁ tattu mātrā pitrā ca yatkṛtam||

dīkṣitīye

While highlighting and praising the importance of offerings to the departed parents by way of Shraddham or periodic memorial offerings, almost all great authorities advise that such elders should be remembered with utmost gratitude by providing bath, water to drink and meals and clothes to persons who is being invited as guest representing the pitrus. It is aslo advised that one should apply bis best energies and all possible resources in honouring the elders by remembering them periodically.

But even that authoritative instruction from Vaidyanatha Deekshita is qualified by this introspection.

"Will it be adequate expression of gratitude and will it be sufficient repayment for all that the father and mother have done to us in the process of making us what we are, just by providing water,bath and clothes on the memorial day ?"

It is not the idea that the memory should not be worshipped in the best way possible. But we need not take any sort of pride in performing such acts. Remembering the elders with gratitude and paying respect to them on some particular day is a very insignificant gesture when we think of what all things our father and mother have done to us during their lifetime.

Of course, we remember their value only after it is too late.

And it is another tragic fact that most of us care very little to give even a semblance of happiness to our parents when they are alive.

After all, a man or woman is born in this world without any capacity to do anything, without even the capacity to just keep alive. The kids of goat or calves just stand on their legs and run around moments after they are delivered. A human baby cannot even open its eyes or breathe properly when it is born. If the father and mother and other loving ones did not care, will the child survive at all ?