Why Elderly Parents in India Say "I'm Fine" When They Are Not : and What NRI Children Can Do About It
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By PAGE Editor
You have been calling every Sunday for three years. Your mother always sounds the same. Cheerful, grateful, a little tired. She asks about the children. She tells you the news from the building. She says she is fine. You say you are fine. You hang up.
Then you visit in December and realise she has lost eight kilos since the last time you were there. The doctor's report she shows you offhandedly mentions a condition that has been managed for four months. The domestic helper mentions, without any sense of urgency, that she has not been eating properly since around August.
August was four months ago. You spoke to her every Sunday.
Why this happens : it is not about deception
The gap between what elderly parents in India say on the phone and what is actually happening at home is one of the most consistent frustrations NRI families describe. And the most important thing to understand about it is that it is not dishonesty.
Your mother saying she is fine when she is not is an act of love. The generation of Indians now in their 70s and 80s was formed by a specific set of values: children's lives should not be burdened by parental problems; one manages one's own difficulties quietly; causing worry is something to be ashamed of, not a right to be exercised. She has been performing "fine" for decades, for her own parents, for her siblings, for her neighbours. Performing it for you on a Sunday call is not deception. It is the most natural thing in the world.
The practical result of this is that the NRI family is working with systematically incomplete information. The picture that arrives through the weekly call is the curated version, the version your parent chooses to present. The real picture is what happens in the hours between calls.
What parents actually hide : and the patterns to watch for
Understanding what gets hidden most often helps you know where to look.
Health complaints. Chest tightness that comes and goes. A knee that has been worse for a few months. A fall that happened but did not result in injury. Digestive problems. A bout of dizziness. These are exactly the things your parent will minimise or omit because each one, individually, seems manageable and not worth worrying you about.
Medication non-compliance. A parent who is managing twelve tablets a day at specific times, many with food and water requirements, will sometimes struggle with the regimen without saying so. They stop one because it makes them feel nauseous. They halve the dose because they read something. They run out and do not reorder immediately. None of this reaches you on the Sunday call.
Functional decline. Things that have quietly become harder, climbing the stairs, cooking a proper meal, managing the bathroom safely at night. Your parent adjusts. They simplify what they cook. They hold the wall going up the stairs. They do not mention any of this because each adaptation feels like managing, not struggling.
Emotional state. Loneliness, anxiety, low mood, these are the least likely to be named directly. A parent who is struggling emotionally will often describe their week in terms of activities and tasks. The emotional layer stays private.
What a video call can and cannot show you
The weekly video call is your primary window, and it is a limited one. There are specific things it can reveal if you know what to look for, and specific things it cannot show you regardless of how carefully you look.
What the call can reveal: Weight changes visible over months. Difficulty remembering recent events mentioned in previous calls. Changes in environment visible in the background, a cluttered space that used to be tidy, dishes that suggest meals are being skipped. A parent who seems genuinely energised versus one who is going through the motions of the call.
What the call cannot show you: Whether your parent ate properly today. Whether the medication was taken correctly this morning. Whether they are sleeping. Whether they left the house this week. What their walking looks like on the way to the bathroom at night. What they said to the domestic helper when the call ended.
The call tells you your parent's face and their words. It does not tell you their life.
How to ask questions that get past the "I'm fine"
The standard Sunday call follows a script that both sides have learned, how are you, how are the children, what did you eat, is the weather okay. This script produces "I'm fine" as naturally as a question produces an answer.
Different questions produce different information.
Instead of "how are you feeling?" try "what did you have for lunch today?" Instead of "are you managing okay?" try "when did you last go out?" Instead of "how is your knee?" try "what have you been doing for the pain?" Specific, concrete questions are harder to deflect with a general reassurance.
Look for inconsistencies across calls. A parent who says they have been eating well but whose background reveals unwashed dishes, who says they have been going out but cannot name where, who says the knee is fine but mentions a different solution to the pain than they mentioned last month, these small inconsistencies are often more informative than any direct question.
Why professional daily presence catches what phone calls miss
There is a structural solution to the structural problem. The information gap exists because you are not there. A professional who is there, present in the home daily, building a relationship with your parent over weeks and months, sees the real picture.
A Care Counsellor who visits your parent every morning knows whether they ate yesterday. Knows whether the medication was taken. Notices that your parent is moving differently than they were last week, or that they mentioned chest tightness in passing while they were making tea together. Knows what "fine" means for this specific person on a good day versus what it masks on a difficult one.
This is not surveillance. It is the daily presence that used to exist naturally in a joint family, someone nearby, someone who notices, someone who reports back not with a clinical summary but with genuine knowledge of how your parent is actually doing.
Samarth's home elder care services are built around exactly this kind of daily professional presence : Care Counsellors who know your parent by name, by habit, by history, and who communicate structured updates to the NRI family so that the picture you have is the real one, not the curated one.
What to do this week
On your next call, ask two or three specific questions rather than the general ones. Write down what your parent says and check it against what they said three weeks ago. Ask whoever sees your parent most regularly in India, a sibling, a neighbour, the domestic helper, what they have actually observed, not what your parent reports.
If the gap between what your parent says and what others observe is significant, that gap is the thing to address. The most direct way to close it is professional daily presence : someone who sees your parent every day and who you trust to tell you what is actually happening.
To understand what that looks like for your parent's specific situation, you can reach out to Samarth.
The Sunday call matters. But the question is what happens on the days you do not call, in the hours after you hang up, in the week that the domestic helper does not notice and the neighbour does not check. That is where the actual picture forms, and right now, you are probably not seeing it.
Frequently asked questions
My parent is very independent and proud. How do I bring up the fact that I think they are hiding things without offending them? Do not frame it as hiding or as a failure of openness. Frame it as wanting to know more because you care. "I want to understand your week better, not just know that you are okay" is different in tone from "I think you are not telling me everything." Start with specific questions about daily life rather than health, and let the health picture emerge from there.
How do I know if the domestic helper is giving me accurate information? Domestic helpers are generally reliable reporters of concrete observable facts, what was eaten, whether your parent went out, whether anything unusual happened. They are less reliable interpreters of what those facts mean medically. Build a habit of asking specific questions of the helper on a separate call, not relying on your parent to relay what the helper has said.
My sibling in India says everything is fine. But when I visited, I saw something different. Who is right? Both of you. Your sibling sees your parent regularly but in a normalised way, they have adjusted to gradual changes that a visitor notices sharply. Your observations on a periodic visit, particularly if you took notes on the previous one, are often more accurate than a sibling's day-to-day assessment precisely because you have a longer comparison point. Both perspectives are useful; neither is the complete picture.
Is it worth arranging professional care if my parent seems stable? The point of professional daily presence is not only to respond to instability. It is to catch the things that lead to instability before they do, the eight-kilo weight loss that happens quietly over four months, the medication that has been skipped for three weeks, the fall that happened and was not mentioned. Stability that is visible on a Sunday call is not the same as stability that is confirmed by someone who sees your parent every day.
My parent specifically says they do not want anyone in the house. How do I handle this? This is one of the most common objections and one of the most manageable with the right approach. Starting with one or two visits per week, framing the Care Counsellor as someone who helps with specific tasks rather than as a "carer," and allowing the relationship to develop gradually over several weeks changes the dynamic significantly. A parent who resists a stranger in their home often responds very differently to a familiar person they have come to know and trust.
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