A Family Tree

One advantage of having an arranged marriage is that you don't marry just the one woman; you are married to her family too. Her extended family becomes your extended family too but the problem in this is that most Indian families are quite large with a confusing network of aunts, uncles, cousins & second cousins and trying to remember their names can be really perplexing.

I was the one who suggested that we both prepare a family-tree of our respective families including the various blood relations spread across the world but my fiancée was the one who prepared the list first. Her list was typical of a woman's. The relations were listed genealogically, catalogued with colour-coding for their offspring though, making it rather flashy though not so easy on the eyes. There were a number of cousins settled in the US of A which is quite the norm in middle-class south Indian families, each family having atleast a relative or two in the USA. As is the case with most South Indian Brahmins, the kith & kin who still lived in India were spread all over the country with nary a relation who could connect us to the small temple towns from where our families originated.

When I started making my list of aunts, uncles, cousins & second cousins, I realised how distant I had become from my relatives. Since both of my parents were part of a large brood, I had almost a dozen cousins on either side. If I had a tough time recalling their names, I found it even harder to keep abreast of their new jobs, the places they had moved to and the educational progress made by their kids. So, the list I prepared had quite a few blanks. I couldn’t remember the names of a few of the spouses of my cousins and I couldn’t even recall the names of half the kids in the family. I didn’t want to send such a list to my fiancée for that would have proven how careless I was in maintaining contact with relatives irrespective of the fact that I hadn’t seen a majority of them in the last decade or so. Believe me, if a girl even gets inkling that you are not a sentimental fool, or that you do not care a hoot about family and family values, you can kiss your romantic life goodbye. I certainly didn’t want her thinking so and I decided to do what any sensible man would do in such a situation – ask his mom.

The timing had to be right to avoid unnecessary questions or chides. My mom was executing her weekly cleaning of the refrigerator and I figured out she would be too preoccupied in that to question my ulterior motives.
“Mom, what is the name of Kittu uncle’s daughter-in-law?” Kittu is my father’s elder brother’s nickname.
“Which daughter-in-law?” asked my mom. Kittu uncle had two sons, both married, and having a son and a daughter each and I couldn’t recall both the daughter-in-laws’ names.
“Err, the elder one.” My mom put aside the half-a-cabbage she was holding and gave me a stare,
“Why are u asking?”
“Just wondering who all will attend the wedding.” I said. She went back to cleaning mumbling about return gifts for all of them. Two minutes later, she was staring at a bottle of ketchup that had a small quantity left over at the bottom. She wouldn’t buy a new bottle until this was finished & I wouldn’t finish that because it was old. So, the status quo over the ketchup had been continuing for the last couple of months. I figured out it would be a couple of months more before she disposed of it. I tried again,
“What’s the name of Uma’s husband?” Uma is my cousin, decades older than me, who lives in Chennai. My mom gave me another of her looks; saw the word document open on my desktop and asked,
“Are you making a list?” I decided to tell her a half-truth. So, I said,
“I’m making a list of people in the family for you to plan your gifts. I seem to have gotten a few names confused.” Ofcourse, even though I am sure she never believed that, I did get a few blanks filled in my family tree.

My next stratagem was so simple that I wonder why I didn’t come up with it earlier. I called up my aunts on the pretext of asking their travel arrangements for the wedding or asking their sons’ or daughters’ e-mail ids so as to forward the picasa album of my engagement. My home-alone aunts were only glad that they could find someone to talk to even though I’m not sure they remembered my name correctly. They gave me the names I wanted without my asking for them along with all the antics of their grandchildren, the careers of their sons’ or daughters and other assorted details of their families for the past couple of years and also liberally giving me marital advice while I helplessly looked at my watch suddenly sorry for the huge phone bills that would be due this month. But, at the end of it all, the family tree of mine was done. I mailed the list and made a silent vow, which I’m pretty sure that I won’t keep, to be in touch with my extended family more regularly.