My Family... Part 5

Others…

I haven’t been blessed with as many cousins as everyone seems to have (my mother was an only child.) Perhaps this is a blessing, as some of my relatives are definitely… odd is the kindest term I can use.

One of my favourite cousins, is unfortunately also one of the odd ones. He was pretty normal, a little violent perhaps (ask my sister, they were eternal enemies before I was born), but pretty normal nonetheless. Then one day, the fellow decides to become a vegetarian. We were all understandably confused, everyone in my family is a vegetarian after all, I sometimes eat an egg, but I’m the anomaly. On further enquiries as to his new-found intentions, we found that he had decided to go the whole hog (Unintentional pun!). He had decided to stop eating

a) Omelettes

b) Cakes (they contain egg)

c) Ice-creams (he had read somewhere that they use some part of a buffalo as a gelling agent)

At this, I politely enquired as to whether he was going to stop drinking milk as well, lest he deny some poor calf it’s rightful meal. At the earnest request of his mother, he conceded that he would, in fact, drink milk. My comments about his fondness for coffee were not appreciated…

My cousin also turned religious overnight. He frowns upon any Western influence in any of our lives. He visits a temple everyday, and goes to classes to learn the Vedic scriptures. It is the earnest wish of many of my female cousins that he end up marrying a woman who wears tight, low-rise jeans (or preferably a mini-skirt), wears liberal make-up, and is preferably of a different religion, or even better, an atheist…

Another on my list of unnatural relatives is a particular aunt of mine on my mother’s side. Perhaps I should call her a second aunt, for her son and daughter are my second cousins. Or perhaps she’s my aunt twice removed or something like that? Nah, that sounds stupid. Getting back to the subject at hand however, the woman bears a startling resemblance to a town crier. Perhaps she was one in her previous incarnation, I can just imagine her beating a drum shouting ‘Hear ye! Hear ye!’

Yep, she’s one brilliant rumour monger. If there’s any story you want to spread, such that it reaches the lowest of beggars on the street to the Prime Minister (Well, that’s a but difficult, but I’m sure she’d be able to reach a Cabinet minister), all you have to do is give her a call. She doesn’t like me too much, I’m afraid, for I’m a rather closed mouth chap, and she has to try really hard to pry any information off me. In fact most of our conversations (thankfully, not too many of them happen!) are one sided ones. She asks me questions with regard to those things she deems are absolutely vital for her to know, and gets pretty mad when I give mono-syllabic replies. For some reason, the rest of my family finds this rather funny…

Well, I could go on and on… but time’s running short, I could for instance talk about the wonderful blessings my grandmother’s brother gives (he’s jealous of my sister’s and my brilliant achievements!), which generally go on the lines of “Do try and pass your exams, dear children…” and we dutifully say, “Yes, uncle…” or an uncle who’s really fond of christening people with strange names, (a toothless wrinkled up old man was unfortunate enough to be named ‘Jumping Jango’) or even an uncle whose snores rattle the glass on the window… but I can’t. Time and tide wait for no man, y’know… and I'm a little bored of the topic already!

Here’s to hoping that anyone mentioned above who happens to be reading this takes it well… Cheers!

My Family, Part Four...

My bro-in Law…

Privately, I am of the opinion that he thinks the rest of his wife’s family are complete bonkers. To be fair, he’s not completely wrong. He doesn’t say anything about it (nice guy!) but the occasional odd glance he gives us says it all, so does the nervous laughter when my father cracks a joke.

He likes playing cricket and tennis, and cheats at card games…

How to get on his good side… I’m not really sure, have to ask my sister, she always manages to get him to do what she wants!

My dog…

Perhaps the least complicated members of the family and the very epitome of ‘Simple mind, simple pleasures.’ Embarrassingly friendly to strangers and other dogs, if anything were to stop a burglar from entering the house, it most certainly won’t be him…

How to get on his good side… Hmm, you don’t have to do anything actually. A pat on the head might help, but anything more than that and he’ll end up dogging your footsteps. Heh, sorry, do continue reading, no more puns…

My family, Part 3

My sister…

When we were small, it was her dearest wish that I call her ‘Akka’ which is a honorific used when addressing an elder sister (She is six years elder to me). Now, at this time, my sister and I were twelve and six respectively. Six years, as everybody knows, is a pre-adolescent age characterized by rebellion against authority and disregard for norms. Naturally, I refused to call her that. She was bitterly disappointed. As a consequence, our childhood was a long series of quarrels (which she usually won, I am ashamed to say, and in my defense I plead, ‘She was bigger than me then’…) interspersed with brief periods of peace when we were hungry or asleep. Despite the intense pressure, I am proud to say that I held out, and have never addressed her ‘akka’ to this day…

My sister has a wonderful imagination, as evidenced by her fondness for the game House-house (this was in the same time period as above), where she took care of kids (dolls), cleaned the house and cooked food (tiny balls of atta, artistically fashioned into small chappati discs.) However, even after she married, she likes to cook. That doesn’t mean we (my bro-in-law and I) like to eat her cooking though, for the food is often full of surprises... and not good ones either. Now that she has had a baby, we hope that she realizes the importance of my bro-in-law being alive and well, he is the bread earner of the family after all, and leaves the cooking to more capable hands…

My sister takes after my mother in terms of height. As a consequence, she is rather… vertically challenged. Her height is a sore point with her (she doesn’t like being referred to as ‘short’), but since she unfortunately takes after my father in terms of temper, it means one can’t tease her too much about it…

How to get on her good side… Shower the baby with praise, and criticize Priety Zinta’s dance in Salaam Namaste, something she says is impossible to do in the later stages of pregnancy.

My Family, Part 2

My mother…

A very sweet woman, a stay-at-home mom who takes care of the kids. (Although the little birdies have now flown the coop.) She is admittedly on the short side, the wedding photo of my parents is an inside joke among the rest of the family, including the extended one, for she just about comes to his chest when both stand at their full height. A terror to the local vegetable sellers, she drives such a hard bargain that it’s a miracle they keep coming back. I’ve seen impressionable young lads driven to tears after ten minutes of debate with my mother as to why exactly they ought to knock off the price. She occasionally feels sorry for them, and brings them inside for a glass of buttermilk, but manages to get them to stick to the price in any case…

My mother has this rather annoying fixation about long hair and beards. For that reason alone, I think she would be rather pleased if I were to join the army, where I would get a buzz cut, and the sergeant would reprimand me if my cheeks weren’t smooth. At least, that’s what I see them do in the movies…

Another hobby of my mother’s that I dislike intensely is watching TV soaps. I never really find any point to those things, they’re usually about families suffering one problem after another, bad guys try to destroy them financially, the younger son is a drug addict (the elder one’s in prison), the daughter suffers from a bad marriage, the father’s a drunkard and the protagonist (usually one of those modern working women with an iron will) tries to keep the family together… so, GIRL POWER! All in all, that’s fine, I’m a strong believer in the freedom of expression and the freedom to do-what-you-like-in-your-leisure-time, except that my mother gets so moved by the story that she gets into the aforementioned protagonist’s shoes and sometimes forgets to get out of them. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard her quoting lines from the soaps from time to time…

My mom’s also an excellent cook, and has a fondness for a game called Pallanguzhi, also known as Bantumi, a popular game often found on mobile phones.

How to get on her good side… Agree with what she says, with tactful comments inserted at pauses…

My Family, Part 1

There should be a book written about my family. Certainly, it would be rather short, for most of them live normal, boring lives, and it probably wouldn’t sell very well, but it would be a goodround characters ranging from one end of the spectrum to the other. (I personally don’t like the term, but my Literature professor insists that it’s the official term for characters that develop during the story, as opposed to a flat character) But I digress, let me start off with the head of the family, my father...
book, for it would contain all the elements of a good drama, a good plot, tragedy, humour, jealousy, betrayal, a dash of romance, and lots of

One of the tallest persons I know, he is an associate dean at a business and law school. A control freak if I ever saw one, his admittedly short temper doesn’t help him any in his job. It’s my personal belief that his employees are downright terrified of him, especially the secretaries who work there. I understand their perspective I suppose (most are rather short, perhaps five feet max), so he must look like a ten foot tall ogre, with an insatiable appetite for perfection. It does break my heart sometimes to see them scurry out of his way as he takes long strides down the corridors of power, but such behaviour does have it’s perks. My family and I get royal treatment whenever we visit him at the office, though it gets embarrassing after a while to keep refusing (or in my case, accepting) endless offers of drinks and biscuits…

He has an unusual fondness for video games however, especially one called Lunar Ball and another called Battle City (where he likes to be the yellow bot)

How to get on his good side, hmm… Nope, sorry… you can’t. So don’t even try.

More to come later...