Relatives and the importance of keeping in touch….

I hated the word relative always from the age of 15 maybe a bit earlier. In those days relationships meant constant bickering, fights for no reason, mistrust, and brawls on silly things which actually led families apart. Most of the time I would either shut myself in a room or plug my headphones or just run.

I kept running till recently my wife announced, let’s make a trip to Cal, our kids need to meet up with their cousins, nieces, jhetus, kakimas. Mama dadu etc (these are Bengali words – in English all male is uncle and femaie is aunties). Since Sikkim was thrown in and I would get to eat all varieties of fish and sweets I gave in.

I never valued relationships beyond my immediate ones – my wife and kids and my parents and at the max my wife’s parents. Yes, if anybody needs help I am there but never made an effort. This time I made an effort and met up with few of them after 15 year. It was nice to see them, each of them have kids who are going to engineering college, somebody finishing graduation, somebody finding a job. It almost felt like a movie which was running and suddenly the power went off and the power came after 15 years.

In the return flight we got chatting and my wife was telling about what each one of her relative had gone thru and how the relationships exist or don’t exist between each of these couples. It was amazing….the story was not very different in most of the households – lot of struggle, few bitter experience, fights / misunderstanding between couples – relatives, most kids are out of their nest …building their own but still trying to keep in touch with their past.

As the plane touched down, I realized that no relationship is perfect but it’s important to be connected and be in touch with your extended family. The importance of bonding / sharing / spending time with our own people is drastically coming down for our kids. We as parents focus more on the kids going for piano-basketball-ballet class than just sitting and gossiping with their cousins.

Maybe these trips it will help the kids to be a bit more grounded than being the super efficient, focused nerds which they will anyway become!! Sigh!