At a recent event organized by Help Age India in Delhi, Sharmila Tagore spoke about how children need to be more sensitive towards their elderly parents and why her being away from the screen did not mean a sabbatical from cinema.

She said, “I may not have been acting, but I was speaking about cinema on different forums. You don’t have to be at the pinnacle of your career – but at every stage, if you can speak up and make your presence felt, that’s what makes the difference.”

The veteran actress added, “Elderly people should not think, ‘Oh! My kids are not in the country, and I am alone.’ They should create their support system with their friends. I have my own life beyond my family, and my children have their own. These are the negotiations we make. Say, I’m having a cataract operation, I don’t need my son next to me, right? If it’s a life-threatening operation, then perhaps he should be there. And kids, never push an elderly person to do what they don’t want to do. Elders have a mind of their own, so just support them. It is quite easy to do that. Don’t overprotect elders either. Stop hovering around them, ‘Are you alright?’ and all that. That perhaps is not necessary.”

Broaching on the topic of the content shown on TV today, Sharmila said that she doesn’t really approve of them. “I am a member of the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC), and I feel that the content TV is offering today is quite regressive. Most TV serials portray women as women’s worst enemies, and that is so unfortunate. The government does keep a tab on this, and then it finally comes to us. Sometimes, we call the show makers, asking them to tweak or remove certain objectionable portions. But, producers mostly refuse to budge as commerce often overrides logic,” Sharmila explained.

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"We have to re-look at how we see age. We look at age as a burden or decline. We have to reframe old age as a time when there are new things to learn. Now that I am working less, this is an opportunity for me to do many things that I haven't done before - to learn more things, to look at the future optimistically, these tech things that some of us shy away from"