Call me old fashioned , out dated or crotchety but increasingly I am getting appalled at the lack of manners in today’s young people.

The other day we were chatting in C’s living room when I’m walked her millennial darling . The girl had just come home from a hard day at work and strolled in with headphones stuffed in her ears  and her thumbs busy on the phone . She just about looked up from here frenetic texting, held her mother’s gaze for a mere  second before marching off to her room down the corridor.

Hello! I wondered what happened to Hi aunty? After all I’d known this little one from the day she burped on my silk kurta as a colicky infant.

And I realised that this was not an aberration but par for the course. Youngsters these days are getting increasingly self centric and self centered and social graces like hello have long been given the good bye!

This kind of indifference is accepted even among those lower in the pecking order. With equality and respectful communication being the order of the day, servants are no longer called servants but helpers. No longer is it politically correct to address them by their first names/last names but they are called uncle or aunty or big brother (bhaiyya) or big sister (Didi)  even when they are all of 18 years old. But while we accord them respect, they don’t even address us as madam or memsahib. And as for a greeting of hello or Namaste – you can say Goodbye to Good Manners . They breeze past us with not so much as a nod of acknowledgement and plonk on your sofas with practiced ease.

My own daughters tell me I’m being archaic and feudal but I only feel if I accord them the equality of sitting on my sofas, surely they can say hello when they meet me isn’t it?

Do you think this is normal or am I over reacting ?

Sharing this post with Corinne on #MondayMusings