Three continuous days of serious overexposure to in-laws was enough to have me praying to be back at home – a most unusual sensation while on holiday. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with in-laws in general or even with these in-laws in particular: some of them are even quite nice people. It’s just that I’m not the sort of person who enjoys being surrounded by 25 people at any point in time time and certainly not for three days at a stretch.
We stopped at Cal and deposited The Aunt safely at home on 14th. We had a late lunch and an early dinner at the family home and – since I spent the entire time in my grubby jeans – it was not too uncomfortable. The only incidence of any astonishment was when a cousin-sister-in-law observed with horror that I was intending to mix fish curry into my rice-dal-potato mixture and indignantly snatched the latter off my plate and admonished me in an extremely no-nonsense way that I should do no such thing. She then proceeded to dump fresh rice on my plate and pointed out that I hadn’t scraped the curry together in an acceptably appreciative manner. Under her eagle eye I quietly mopped up every last molecule of curry and proceeded to swallow the fish without diluting it with dal and potato.
The holiday in Darjeeling and Pelling was a welcome interlude – more on that in another blog.
Then, on 21st, well before breakfast, our train pulled in and we were back in Calcutta. On this day a real ordeal awaited me: a Family Gathering. Diwali had not been enough of an excuse to lure people to this dreaded event, so Amit’s birthday was thrown in as an added attraction for the occasion. This was something people would find hard to avoid, because he is virtually the apple of The Aunt’s eye – and everybody listens to The Aunt. Soon after breakfast (which was at 11.30 a.m.), the house began to be flooded with visitors.
Amit’s father had ten siblings, so things were pretty complicated for me. All the father’s brothers could be addressed as uncle (kaka) and their wives as auntie (kaki); but this would not hold for the father’s sisters and their spouses! Elder first cousins would be addressed as dada and didi, usually with the first name pre-pended; younger first cousins would be addressed by name and, if much younger, using the least formal manner of address. But. Age gaps between generations tended to blur and relationships shifted depending on who was speaking. So I had to be constantly on my toes to figure out not only whom I was speaking to, but also whom they were speaking about. I mean, if I was speaking to an uncle and he referred to “babloo” I needed to know whether this was a sibling of his, a nephew, a son, or a grandson; and if he were a son or nephew, whether he was younger than me or older; and then I had to figure out who that person was and how I should respond to a simple question like “where is babloo?”
After eight-and-a-half years of marriage, I could hardly say, “who???”
To make matters worse, not all who came were directly related to Amit’s father. Some were relatives of cousins-by-marriage. Some were off-spring without parents, wives without husbands (and vice versa) and sons of fathers who had been excommunicated from the family and who were, therefore, to be ignored. At one point, a Senior Member of the family looked grimly at a young girl sitting close to me. “Who’s she,” he hissed at me suspiciously. Since I was entirely clueless, I ignored the question, but later on I learnt that she was – hold your breath – the daughter of the brother (or was it sister) of the wife of the son of The Aunt. In short, a cousin’s niece by marriage. I trembled to not know of such a close connection!
Things were *not* simplified by Amit. Whenever I looked for him, he had disappeared into a cozy nook with a favourite uncle or cousin, leaving me to fend for myself. People would walk up to me and say, “remember me?” and I would smile blankly and say “of course! How could I forget?” and not have a clue who they might be and whether I should ask after their spouse (or had I already spoke to him/her; or were they unmarried; or had the spouse died recently, or, worse still, years ago?), their children, or their parents! At one point I cornered Amit and asked him about two women who had walked in together and here’s what he told me: “They’re married to two brothers who are the sons of one of my father’s four sisters. The brothers’ names are X and Y and you will meet them tomorrow. I don’t know the wives’ names, I don’t know which brother each wife belongs to, and I don’t know which are their children, their names or ages, or what they do.” Very helpful.
When I did meet the brothers the next day (without their wives) it turned out that my other half did not even know which brother was which!
I was further gratified to be present when The Aunt roundly scolded my father-in-law for not recognizing people and entirely dismissed his somewhat school-boyish plea that he did not do it on purpose. “It’s well-known that you don’t recognize people. Why, you didn’t so much as greet ABC!” she said with great annoyance. “Who is ABC?” replied my father-in-law in some bewilderment, and on being further admonished promised to make it up by talking extra to him the next time.
One thing was simplified: the business of touching feet. Amit said that he touches nobody’s feet except for The Aunt’s. Great! When we got married I had gone around touching everybody’s feet – even one of the servants who looked quite well-dressed! At that time, everyone laughed, but I would not be excused for making any mistakes this time round.
There’s a subtle protocol to touching feet in a crowd: you go from senior-most to junior-most and stop when you reach your peers. Imagine me getting through that maze of protocol without offending half a dozen people! So as the elders from various branches of the family filed in and took their places, the youngsters from all other branches of the family went from person to person, bending and touching and bending and touching. When the eldest surviving sibling appeared, even all the old people queued up in front of her. And I sat and watched in stony silence. Amit had tactfully disappeared again, damn him!
Then, the next day, things took a dramatic turn. You see, it was bhai phota, otherwise known as bhai dooj. To those not in the know, this is a festival that comes two days after diwali and involves sisters praying for their brothers and getting gifts from them in return. To the accompaniment of many sweets and a fantastic meal prepared by the sisters for their beloved brothers. Accordingly, at the ungodly hour of 9.30 a.m. before I’d had a bath and shed my thoroughly disreputable nightclothes for some glamorous day clothes, the house was crawling with brothers. One of these – for complicated linealogical reasons that you don’t want to know about – was the brother of Amit’s mother, who is not – shall we say – on very good terms with Amit’s father. This alone made him an extremely Important Personage.
To begin with, I could not be relied upon to recognize this Important Personage despite having visited his house eight years ago, so the Aunt took care to “introduce” me to him. As I approached him, this Important Personage straightened himself in his seat in a way that clearly indicated he was expecting to have his feet touched; and I just casually strolled past him nodding politely. Well, it would have created a total ruckus if I had given in to the body language and stooped in front of him (of all people!) when I hadn’t done so for any of the respected elders hitherto. And it would have seriously put my beloved father-in-law’s nose out of joint as he told me later that he had had every intention of calling us and warning us to do no such thing for this particular person! Phew.
The festival rolled on along its way and I took refuge in the kitchen, where, even after I was decently attired in the new salwar-kameez gifted to me by the Aunt, I slaved over the hot stove happy to be away from the Diplomacy, Protocol, and Polite Conversation of the living room. This act of abject cowardice was misinterpreted as dutiful-daughter-in-law conduct and earned me brownie points with all who noticed!
Afterwards, I hung around while the senior members were being waited upon at the dining table. The younger lot were still being blessed and exchanging gifts and as I (luckily) had no brothers in this milieu (brothers-in-law, apparently, don’t count, though cousin brothers do), I was spared that ritual. I was happy to lounge in the background of the kitchen, occasionally moving a dish from point X to point Y, or turning on the microwave to heat something.
When there are many guests for a meal in this household, there’s no question of everyone eating together. Meals are served in batches; the elders and the men and children are waited upon by the younger women; every item is dished up in plates or individual tiny bowls and seconds are ladled out as required. The meal proceeds in several courses with rice as a staple from start through to desert. In this case it started with ghee, dal, and fish cutlet, proceeded through chilli fish, mustard fish, coconut prawn, on to a dry masala chicken, and was followed by rice pudding, sweet curd, and sweet tomato chutney. Eight courses in all – and all homemade that very day!
While the guests tackled the fish, my favourite cousin sister who always supervised the cooking and the serving suddenly disappeared to take her place in the second round of the blessing ritual, instructing me to proceed with the serving. This was catastrophic! Half a dozen Senior Family Members chomping on fish and she expected me to oversee the next several courses? Me, with my broken Bengali and total lack of the formal form of address? Me, with only The Aunt to guide and advise? ME???
I must have done alright, because the Important Personage went so far as to praise the “serving”. Huh? If you eat at someone’s house, you praise the food, the décor, their clothes and appearance – who praises the “serving”?
Anyway, shortly before 3 p.m. the rituals were over and the last batch of lunch was in progress. The last batch included Amit and me (and, by the way, the interchangeable brothers). The previous batch, including the Important Personage, sat in the living room, replete, dozing lightly but refusing to go lie down in one of the many bedrooms. Now as the clock crept around to 3 p.m. Amit’s eyes were holding a silent but urgent conversation with The Aunt. His father was to come by at 3 p.m. and the Important Personage, far from retiring to a bedroom behind a closed door, was entirely present in the living room, thoroughly visible from the front door. It was – he explained to me later – a potentially explosive situation. Who knew what would happen were they to set eyes upon each other? I was deeply involved in the several layers of fish and had no processing power to spare for these delicate family dynamics, so I missed the early signals altogether. But even I could not miss it when Amit almost jumped out of his chair staring at a message on his cell phone. “He’s reached,” he shouted to The Aunt, abandoning the silent methodology. The Aunt, galvanized into action, swept hurriedly to the door and could be seen whispering through the metal grille. I did – at least – notice that it was strange that she did not let him in but sent him away without so much as opening the door!
There was a release in tension so palpable that even the dead fish on my plate noticed it and went limp with relief.
All of which is why I say: give me nuclear any day!
Filed under: humour, personal | Tagged: anecdote, family, humour, personal
