Kishore Singh: What goes around

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Soon after we were married, and my sister-in-law was coming to visit along with her children, I found there were misgivings on both sides. My feelings of trepidation were based on my wife's anxiety on how I would entertain a relative by law easily given to hysterics; nor did she know how her sister might react to my (I hoped) suave ways, when the most she'd done with her other brothers-in-law was shout them into submission.

At any rate, the relationship didn't start off on the happiest note, and we never quite qualified as friends. In fact, as more of my in-laws passed through our home, it was clear that any civility shown to each other was based on the need to maintain a minimal decorum. No one cried over the lost opportunity.

At least part of the blame lay in the English language. I referred to them "" merely in jest, let it be understood "" as "country cousins", but clearly the country cousins had no sense of humour. And when my wife let it slip that we referred to the whole in-law conglomerate as the Country Cousins, whatever little affection there might have been, was laid forever to rest.

It didn't stop their forays into the capital, however. "You've got the country cousins coming up next week," they'd call to say, sarcastically. If we took them out shopping, they'd simper, "Oh, we country cousins can't afford such posh places." If the food at a restaurant wasn't to their choice, they'd sneer in mock humility, "What do we country cousins know about such fancy food, right?"

And so the years passed in mutual abuse, but clearly the reference (in jest, may I remind you again) must have rankled because my sister-in-law, not given to forgiving even perceived slights in any hurry, ensured that first one child, then the other, headed off overseas "" the one to work, the other for reasons entailed by striking up an NRI marriage. "Call them country cousins, will you?" she crowed over the phone to my wife.

Interestingly, if my sister-in-law packed off her heirs to the West, my wife's brothers, distanced by more than just the physical distance between the cities in which we lived, packed up their bags and followed suit. First the younger set forth and, although he hated the land of opportunity, stuck it out in pioneering spirit. A green card followed, and when he came back to visit his parents, he brought with him stories of chasing discounts and bagging bargains. "Just like country cousins," he smirked at me, before I had even thought it "" though he was right, of course.

When my wife's elder brother followed on a posting, my wife and I heaved a sigh of relief. At least a half of our relatives were now in lands too distant for them to make frequent forays to Delhi.

We couldn't have been more wrong "" not only did they "pass through" the city with alarming frequency, they also expected to be met at the airport at odd times of the night, and should anything occur to spoil their stay in the city hotels (where they'd taken to checking-in instead of sleeping over at our apartment), they thought nothing of telling us how the city "" and the country "" sucked.

Still, though, distance is healing, and so somewhat foolishly we agreed to have my wife's niece and nephew come and stay with us because their mother had some work in another city. We were prepared to laugh at their accents, but what caught us straight on the jaw was the little one's remark as he walked into our home. "Are these," he asked his mother, looking at us, "our country cousins?"