Wedding Meet

I had met all my cousins during the wedding last week. We all grew up together, but now we are all far apart, some of them are geographically far apart, while some of us who live in the city just meet only in family functions. None of us in this world would like to sacrifice our relations and friends. When calamity occurs we all need shoulders to rest, hand to wipe the tears. We feel they are the most priced possession and so should we not go a long way to save them.


During the cousins meet last week, we were bantering but then suddenly we delved deeper in a serious conversation. How many of you can draw your family tree both sides, maternal and paternal? When was the last time you met your first cousin? When was the last time you met the cousin who lives in the same city? Well when we started to asking such questions, we all became uncomfortable and tensed. We decided to ask ourselves the question.

Why do relationships fade after sometime or after a generation?

Well this is a good question and people have asked the same before and they have tried to pull people together and keep relationship going, but only a few of them remain intact.

We live in a very dynamic world today and there is change happening at the blink of the eye. Our lives are filled with changes and movement. Most of the younger generation has moved out of the city to either the Silicon valley in India or in US in search of job. Migration has left the nest and our lives empty. Grandparents see their kids on webcams, but the ache in the heart can never be wiped out. Ask those people who make in “$”, what is that they miss in life? With hands in their heart and tears rolling down their cheek their reply would be their family and relatives. Money can’t buy certain things in life.

Villages that once used to be family hangouts are deserted. Old houses and lands that carried history and memories have been sold long back by baby boomers. This happened in the past 20-30 years. Sons have settled in US or elsewhere and baby boomers want to move closer to their families and have pushed them to sell everything and move on with life. They visit their native place once a year or when the astrologer says they have to visit their family deity. It is sad that grandparents have to narrate bed time stories about their halcyon days and about the traditional lifestyle and their village life. Tradition, culture and history is re-written in the city, but nothing can replace the original.

People have moved on and relations are all scattered everywhere. Mother’s brother lives in Delhi and father’s brothers live in Pune. We get to see our cousins once in 3 years. If they are in high school forget it, they must be working hard 24/7 fulfilling their parents dream to get into IIT. All cousins making the usual trips to the native village during summer holidays has stopped and there is no opportunity for the next generation to come together. We have lost touch with our roots.

Gone are those days when fathers had 3 brothers and 2 sisters, while mothers had a bigger family. For every function or occasion imagine the crowd that comes from the maternal and paternal side. With single or just 2 kids today, we seldom get time to call them and enquire the well-being of just the 1 sibling. Living a joint family gave kids an opportunity to learn the art of tolerance, give and take. With fissioning nuclear families tolerance, forgiveness, and feeling of togetherness has taken hit.

Weddings in those days used to be a 4 day affair and people travel for that occasion to meet up with relatives and catch-up with the loved ones. Cousins would be there a week before the wedding to take care of the arrangements. Today’s weddings are just a one day affair and some of them happening in New York and San Francisco only the parents of the bride and the groom get to go for the wedding. We’ve again lost touch with our roots. The cousins’ gang that used to throng our house a week before the wedding is all gone. Where are they? We don’t know.

We’ve all mastered the art of learning and earning, but we’ve lost to understand the value of relations and the essence of life. We don’t have time to make a trip to our native village anymore. There is so much of peace and prosperity welcoming us, but we are living a cramped life mentally and physically in the city.

Well all this is on one side, some families carry feud to the next generation. Jealousy, gripes, hard feelings with their cousins don’t fail to reach the next generation and hence value of relations gets diluted. Forgiveness and tolerance can only be found in the dictionary.

Leave alone cousins fighting over a piece of property, today sons and daughters born for the same mother and father fight over property and money and sacrifice relationship for money. Capitalism and greed for wealth has come down to the individual. I have seen people not attend the funeral of their father because he had partitioned a little more for his brother.

What is the cumulative result?
· We’ve drifted apart mentally, physically and emotionally
· Values and traditions have been replaced with money
· Tolerance and forgiveness can only be found in a dictionary
· Unity and togetherness is absent
· Roots are withering
· We run into our cousins without actually knowing them
· We live a shallow life with a narrow mind – cancerous life

We are here in dire straits looking at each other and pondering over this question. Well life is ours and we need to make it happy. If you decide money is happiness then you are headed for a serious collision, but if you prefer relations and friends over money then you will get to live this life happily. You know how to keep this link growing and the roots alive.

Let us wake up Yuppies to leave something for the next generation.