For many, the coronavirus outbreak has meant a lot of handwashing — and handwringing. With many senior folks either dismissing it as ‘just another flu’ or sticking with the ‘que sera sera (whatever will be will be) attitude, millennials are trying everything from chidings, emotional blackmail, hunger strikes and even some Twitter-shaming.

Journalist Ishaan Tharoor called his parliamentarian father a “lackadaisical boomer”. He tweeted: “@ShashiTharoor insists on going to Parliament with hordes of other people pressed together in close quarters even as Indian government enacts significant measures to begin imposing social distancing. This is nuts. It’s not only dangerous for him, but his whole household, including my elderly grandmother.”

Shashi Tharoor gamely tweeted that he had been put in a spot by his son.

Many millennials with stubborn parents or grandparents expressed frustration that neither threats, nor blackmail had worked. One tweeted about how she had tried to scare her parents to death, while another spoke about how her father, an avid WhatsApp user, was convinced that chicken soup would cure the disease. Venting on social media, frustrated millennials appeared to be at the end of their tether, some even wondering if they should continue living with them or keep them isolated.

One even mentioned how he was “cool” because his father had broken a leg making social distancing easy to implement. Syed Taahir from Karnataka gave up after his daylong hunger strike didn’t work. “My father continues to go out to pray during namaz and my mother has still not discontinued the domestic help’s services though she knows that she works at several homes and could potentially infect her,” he said.

Chennai-based civil services aspirant Priya Kathiravan managed to convince her 68-year-old father and 60-year-old mother to restrict their activities to some extent, but they refused to use masks or sanitisers. Their stubbornness has driven her up the wall. “They are going out to get daily provisions like milk or groceries. So, I asked them to at least use masks and sanitisers to protect themselves, but they just laughed off the suggestion,” she said. Priya is even more frustrated because she went to 10 or 15 medical shops before she managed to get the sanitisers.

Phone calls twice a day by Delhi-based Sameer (name changed) to his parents in Nagpur have not managed to curb their social life. They ignore him to attend relatives’ functions, socialise with their neighbours and go for walks he groaned. “Maybe we need a training course for the elderly,” he joked.

