I cannot get over this picture. Photography is such a beautiful art. This one is by Henri Cartier Bresson.
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I cannot get over this picture. Photography is such a beautiful art. This one is by Henri Cartier Bresson.
Family Matters
No, this post is not going to be about Mistry's book. It's going to be a random chronicle of observations made on a recent trip to Lucknow (where mum hails from) and Arrah (town in Bihar) where Dad hails from – all being done so that I write something on this blog at the least! It’s not been updated for the longest time.
So though all of my parents’ siblings no longer stay in Lucknow and Arrah (save for one) I have quite some distant family living there. Besides my grandparents and the house in which my dad grew up in is still there in Arrah. So essentially, I was swamped in family and family matters :).
Firstly, trip was overall a LOT of fun! I met tons of relatives and received lots of compliments (:D) and a lot of five hundred and one rupees and hundred and one rupees! So even managed to make a neat haul :D Apart from that, I've realised I genuinely enjoy meeting family. There is ALWAYS so much family gossip! I really understand now why serials like Kyunki Saas were such a major hit. There are also really nice stories about how things were back in some age, how "papa was when he was your age" stories! I also got to see some lovely black and white photographs of grandmas and great grandpas when they were young.
Secondly, I've realised that there's a whole lot of truth to the statement that marriages form the bedrock of society. They also form the core of family gossip. Every, EVERY meeting with some old family friend or member, involved some marriage gupshup. About how X is marrying Y against her family's wishes, about how good or bad the hospitality was at A's wedding, about how B never got invited to his own sister's daughter's wedding because of some fallout.
I also realized that dowry is very very much prevalent in Indian society, irrespective of whether there is a law preventing the same or not. It’s terribly disgusting and abhorrent but is yet a sad reality. So there was a lot of talk about how the boy’s family made the girl’s family give a dowry which comprised, inter alia, 12 lakh rupees, an AC, a car etc etc. An old servant at my grandparent’s place was explaining how the ‘system’ works. Basically, marriages reduce the girl’s family to nothing. It does not matter what the complexion of the groom is, the bride however must be ‘milky white’. If not, pay an additional lakh as ‘compensation’. The man who was telling us, had his generator (a very very essential device in a city where out of 24 hours there is no electricity for roughly 20 hours) lifted away by the groom’s family when they had come visiting. This in addition to the lakhs of money he had already paid. He also told us which profession is valued most in the ‘marriage market’. So it’s the IAS, IPS and the IFS officers who fetch the most dowries in the market. A P.O. (a Probational Officer or some such thing) in a bank is next. While privatization and liberalization arrived in India in the 90s, they haven’t percolated to the marriage market yet. Hence, males in the private sector fetch lesser dowry than the aforementioned. Therefore an engineer is valued lesser than a PO. Lawyers (and here he looked at me with a rueful smile) are at the bottom of the market (here my mum hastily intoned, “In our days, only they did law who could not do anything else”). My grandmother also told me about near relations, who were getting their daughter married. The girl met most of the criteria, except she was a tad too short. So ‘compensation’ was required. The family didn’t have so much money. The brother of the bride then offered to marry the sister of the groom (it’s called ‘gulat’ or some such thing), as that would result in a cancelling of most of the dowry amount…!
Hearing so many stories every day of a six day visit can certainly boggle the mind. Such stories really makes it clear how difficult it is to remove practise of such well-entrenched ‘customs’, legalizing something or ‘illegalising’ something is indeed only the first step. Moving on to lighter things, I saw a wide array of animals on the trip...! My grandparents’s house (I guess I could call it my ancestral house) is HUGE and is extremely open with courtyards in the centre etc. Consequently our house is in a lot of ways a place to take an afternoon siesta or to spend the night in for many varied animals. And I tend to be scared of anything which moves (except most human beings :D) (I use this line too often, I know!). Therefore it was a horrendous time for me when I chanced upon a mongoose (yes), many monkeys (I know), mice, rats (I saw my first rat there right after I read the word ‘rodent’ in some novel!) and baby rats !! Baby rats are the size of a deflated balloon and look like that too. They’re all pink with tiny limbs and one must be careful to not step on them. I felt extremely spooked out after I saw them, I will be frank enough to say that the sight of them made me feel squishy and weird. Sigh. Oh I obviously saw the traditional cow and elephant on the street, and even a camel!
Altogether, nice trip, but I’m glad to be home :) Now before I ramble too much, I’m abruptly ending this post now! I will try to write something better later! I think the holidays have dulled my senses and made my brain cells umm not work :D
Oh random part (if it can get more random) of the post –
1. I’m excited about Vikram Seth’s sequel to A Suitable Boy.
2. THREE of my FIRST cousins are getting married (yay) – but ALL in November, when I will be in law school! I really really want to attend all of them (I have been wanting to go to a family wedding for ages now, the last I attended was back in ’97), however we can only miss three classes in each subject (making that 12 classes in all as there are 4 subjects in each trimester) in a trimester without losing marks :( And the weddings and receptions are all in different places. One wedding is in Udaipur, another in Chennai, another in Chandigarh, and two receptions are in Delhi, and one in Udaipur. And a second cousin might get married too! The wedding will be in delhi, and the reception mostly in Pune! I cannot get over the unfairness of it all:( Apparently, it’s awesome mahurat in November :D However if I had my way, all weddings would be in February when we have hols!
So though all of my parents’ siblings no longer stay in Lucknow and Arrah (save for one) I have quite some distant family living there. Besides my grandparents and the house in which my dad grew up in is still there in Arrah. So essentially, I was swamped in family and family matters :).
Firstly, trip was overall a LOT of fun! I met tons of relatives and received lots of compliments (:D) and a lot of five hundred and one rupees and hundred and one rupees! So even managed to make a neat haul :D Apart from that, I've realised I genuinely enjoy meeting family. There is ALWAYS so much family gossip! I really understand now why serials like Kyunki Saas were such a major hit. There are also really nice stories about how things were back in some age, how "papa was when he was your age" stories! I also got to see some lovely black and white photographs of grandmas and great grandpas when they were young.
Secondly, I've realised that there's a whole lot of truth to the statement that marriages form the bedrock of society. They also form the core of family gossip. Every, EVERY meeting with some old family friend or member, involved some marriage gupshup. About how X is marrying Y against her family's wishes, about how good or bad the hospitality was at A's wedding, about how B never got invited to his own sister's daughter's wedding because of some fallout.
I also realized that dowry is very very much prevalent in Indian society, irrespective of whether there is a law preventing the same or not. It’s terribly disgusting and abhorrent but is yet a sad reality. So there was a lot of talk about how the boy’s family made the girl’s family give a dowry which comprised, inter alia, 12 lakh rupees, an AC, a car etc etc. An old servant at my grandparent’s place was explaining how the ‘system’ works. Basically, marriages reduce the girl’s family to nothing. It does not matter what the complexion of the groom is, the bride however must be ‘milky white’. If not, pay an additional lakh as ‘compensation’. The man who was telling us, had his generator (a very very essential device in a city where out of 24 hours there is no electricity for roughly 20 hours) lifted away by the groom’s family when they had come visiting. This in addition to the lakhs of money he had already paid. He also told us which profession is valued most in the ‘marriage market’. So it’s the IAS, IPS and the IFS officers who fetch the most dowries in the market. A P.O. (a Probational Officer or some such thing) in a bank is next. While privatization and liberalization arrived in India in the 90s, they haven’t percolated to the marriage market yet. Hence, males in the private sector fetch lesser dowry than the aforementioned. Therefore an engineer is valued lesser than a PO. Lawyers (and here he looked at me with a rueful smile) are at the bottom of the market (here my mum hastily intoned, “In our days, only they did law who could not do anything else”). My grandmother also told me about near relations, who were getting their daughter married. The girl met most of the criteria, except she was a tad too short. So ‘compensation’ was required. The family didn’t have so much money. The brother of the bride then offered to marry the sister of the groom (it’s called ‘gulat’ or some such thing), as that would result in a cancelling of most of the dowry amount…!
Hearing so many stories every day of a six day visit can certainly boggle the mind. Such stories really makes it clear how difficult it is to remove practise of such well-entrenched ‘customs’, legalizing something or ‘illegalising’ something is indeed only the first step. Moving on to lighter things, I saw a wide array of animals on the trip...! My grandparents’s house (I guess I could call it my ancestral house) is HUGE and is extremely open with courtyards in the centre etc. Consequently our house is in a lot of ways a place to take an afternoon siesta or to spend the night in for many varied animals. And I tend to be scared of anything which moves (except most human beings :D) (I use this line too often, I know!). Therefore it was a horrendous time for me when I chanced upon a mongoose (yes), many monkeys (I know), mice, rats (I saw my first rat there right after I read the word ‘rodent’ in some novel!) and baby rats !! Baby rats are the size of a deflated balloon and look like that too. They’re all pink with tiny limbs and one must be careful to not step on them. I felt extremely spooked out after I saw them, I will be frank enough to say that the sight of them made me feel squishy and weird. Sigh. Oh I obviously saw the traditional cow and elephant on the street, and even a camel!
Altogether, nice trip, but I’m glad to be home :) Now before I ramble too much, I’m abruptly ending this post now! I will try to write something better later! I think the holidays have dulled my senses and made my brain cells umm not work :D
Oh random part (if it can get more random) of the post –
1. I’m excited about Vikram Seth’s sequel to A Suitable Boy.
2. THREE of my FIRST cousins are getting married (yay) – but ALL in November, when I will be in law school! I really really want to attend all of them (I have been wanting to go to a family wedding for ages now, the last I attended was back in ’97), however we can only miss three classes in each subject (making that 12 classes in all as there are 4 subjects in each trimester) in a trimester without losing marks :( And the weddings and receptions are all in different places. One wedding is in Udaipur, another in Chennai, another in Chandigarh, and two receptions are in Delhi, and one in Udaipur. And a second cousin might get married too! The wedding will be in delhi, and the reception mostly in Pune! I cannot get over the unfairness of it all:( Apparently, it’s awesome mahurat in November :D However if I had my way, all weddings would be in February when we have hols!
