By Sai Prasath
On Fathers, Forwards, and the Need to Be Seen
I have been living away from home on and off since 2010, the first time I stepped away for my undergraduate studies. In the years since, I’ve grown in my parents’ absence—my mind widening with new ideas, perspectives, and friendships. But only recently have I begun to realize that while I was evolving away from home, so were they, in quieter and less visible ways.
One morning during a recent trip home, my wife and I were having coffee when I noticed my father doing something peculiar. At around 7 AM, he sent a good morning forward on one of our many WhatsApp family groups. Nothing unusual there. But this time, he had added a thoughtful note to it. No one responded. He became visibly unsettled, sipping his coffee with hesitation, furrowing his brow. He walked up to my mother and asked her if his message had any typos or if the meaning wasn’t clear. It was only when someone finally reacted with a thumbs-up emoji that he relaxed. His face softened and his eyebrows relaxed. He resumed sipping his coffee and returned to his morning scroll of Instagram reels. The tension had passed.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that moment. Why was it so important for his message to be acknowledged? What was he really seeking? And why did something that seemed so trivial to me have such a huge emotional impact on him?
As I sat with those questions, I realized that this wasn’t about messaging etiquette. It was about relevance. And he wasn’t alone.
Just days earlier, my grandfather had posted a similar lament in that very group. He was disheartened by the lack of engagement with the stories he shared—recollections from his youth, family lore, flashes of a time that we, the younger generation, would never know firsthand. He wasn’t angry, just disappointed. He was hoping someone would listen, respond, remember.
There’s a certain generation of men who once stood as the unquestioned heads of families, the breadwinners, the decision makers. Today, they are in a limbo of semi-retirement or full withdrawal from work life, staring into the digital abyss, waiting for someone to say, “Hey, I see you” or “Yes, I remember that time and feeling. Hard relate!”.
On WhatsApp, these “uncles” perform. They forward articles without checking facts, they send reels, they drop hot takes. They spark debates over cricket and politics, engage in petty discussions over duplicate forwards or factual corrections. At first glance, it all feels irritating. But underneath all that drama is something very human, a need to feel visible. A need to still matter.
Decades ago, our families used to gather often. Three generations under one roof, or at least in the same city. Weddings, birthdays, religious festivals, casual Sunday lunches; these were spaces where the older men told stories, offered unsolicited wisdom, debated over filter coffee, and felt valued. In the last couple of decades that have gone by, as families fragmented and children moved to different cities or continents, those moments have become fewer and rare. Now, the family WhatsApp group has become the only shared space. And in that narrow corridor, these men are still trying to matter, fighting against time taking away the relevancy of thoughts and attention spans of a younger audience, who just don’t seem to be able to afford the luxury of time to these old-timers.
I’ll start by admitting that I was one of the eye-rollers. Along with my cousins and our spouses, I have muted the group, skimmed the messages, rolled my eyes at the forwarded messages, the unsolicited gyaan, and the political rants. At one point, someone even suggested creating a separate group, free from “family politics.”
But after that morning with my father, something shifted in me. I started to see his messages not as spam but as signals. An invitation to talk.
And so, I began to engage, just a little. Instead of just double-tapping his instagram messages without even reading them at times like I used to or replying with a lazy “Nice”, I asked questions. I offered my thoughts. I replied with more than a thumbs-up. And each time, he responded with a flurry of emojis. There was no dramatic transformation. But I could tell it meant something. To him. And to me.
The behavior isn’t limited to my father or grandfather. It extends across our family group, great-uncles arguing over who shared a message first, asserting authority based on age, fact-checking each other with questionable sources. But all of it, I now believe, is just performance for attention. A way of saying: I’m still here. Don’t forget me.
This generation of Indian men was raised to believe they would always be relevant—even after retirement. Their worth was tethered to their role as provider, and as patriarch. But nobody told them how to be still. Nobody prepared them for a world where relevance is earned differently, or sometimes not at all.
From my perspective or the perspective of people my age, this new silence in their lives might look like peace. A relief from responsibility they started shouldering years ago. But from theirs, it probably feels like exile. They are now often left unread and feel misread. They don’t want to dominate but they also don’t want to disappear.
Our relationships with our parents change in adulthood, more so after marriage. As men, especially, we rarely talk about the slow emotional drift that occurs. We leave home, we build new ones, and we assume that WhatsApp forwards are enough to maintain the bridge. But they aren’t.
So I’ve started making more space. Not because I have to. Not out of pity. But because I can. Because I want to believe that somewhere down the line, when my own messages are left unread, someone will still try to read between the lines.
For now, the best I can do is not double-tap but press reply.
And write something that I actually mean.