My theory of relatives!
Author :
inquisitiveguurl
Blog :Delirium- the madness saves me.
Date: 9/19/2011 11:52:00 AM
Relatives can sometimes be snoopy, irritating and judgmental. I have got loads of friends who have got lots of relatives in Mumbai and other cities and they keep visiting my friends’ houses almost every week. They cause schedules to go haywire, additional household work meant for the women and children and deadlines to return home. I always see my friends in a very sad mood when there is this exodus of relatives every month, and every week.
After seeing them, I often wonder how my situation is so different; I can barely count my relatives on my fingertips. They don’t visit us often and most don’t stay in Mumbai and a lot of them stay outside the country. They are a jovial lot, we always enjoy their company and infact, itch to visit them and treasure the time when they come to our house. Somehow they make sure that we aren’t inconvenienced in any way by their visit and don’t always pester us children with hackneyed, irritating questions of marriage, salaries and our lifestyle and coming home late.
I now realize that we are a few of the rarest of the rare cases.
I got thinking about how we all, Indians are so family oriented and like to spend so much time and make it a point to visit family members especially during festivals. Do we really think whether we are inconveniencing someone by staying in their house? No person with enough self-respect will ever tell you that please don’t come, this isn’t the right time etc. They would rather suffer you with a forced smile. Most of the families in Mumbai have rather small houses and sometimes just a 1 room and kitchen. If our entire family with 4-5 members decide to go and stay in their house, it’s going to be mighty problematic. But people don’t care!
Please people, leave the marriage talk alone!! I know most of the elderly aunties and retired uncles have lots of time on hand and marriage of the pretty, young and dear nieces and nephews is the prime thing on their minds, more than anything, more than career, more than what we really want. Please, give us a break! We know we have to get married , we know when the time will be correct, and when we meet the person! We cant just get married to anyone and everyone, just because we are 23. And we are only 23! Have some pity! We have just begun to enjoy our freedom and live up on our parties with friends and colleagues and really understand what we want from life and what we really want to do. I know soon at 30s our biological clocks are going to tick fast but committing for things like marriage isn’t a game for us to just finish off, like you think! It’s a serious business! The last say on this subject would be that you all should thank god that we aren’t Homosexuals!! Otherwise you’d have us ousted from our homes! We want to marry, but think for a while about our desires and what WE really wish to do in life. We have to care right now about our careers.
About salaries, please! We aren’t doing mainstream stuff like engineering, IT etc, we don’t earn 1 lakh per month, but give us time, this is a very early stage in our career. We are still settling in. We’ll take itme to earn big bucks, but we are getting there. Till then, kindly don’t compare.
Seems like I have been ranting. Because of somewhat nicer relatives that I have got, what I have written doesn’t apply really to them. This is what I have felt about some family friends and a few odd people I know ( I am being honest now!) Memories of a recent outing with my aunt from US with other relatives and the great time we had still lingers in my mind. The conversations, the harmless jibes, Marathi songs that we sung and learnt, the games….it was a fantastic trip.
Till date, there are so many things that I have learnt about life from my relatives. The importance given to education, to aspire to do great things and become big, the unflinching support from them for our unconventional career options, the values that will stay with us throughout our lives and moreover, to be warm and good people, are the things I have imbibed from them. Not all things can be learnt from parents, you need a bigger circle of people from whom you can learn, observe, and who will be there in good times and bad.
Just a few things that I wanted to say about my theory of relatives!