My daughter has a friend whose extended family goes off once a year on vacation. “Together,” marvelled my daughter, who has grown up seeing members of her parents’ clans behave like combustible elements when left in the same space for even a few hours, leave alone a few days. When, a couple of weeks ago, 70 constituents of her friend’s tribe headed for Goa, my child wistfully wondered, “How much fun that must be.”
I tried to imagine 70 of my kinsfolk together and was overcome by a distressing sense of claustrophobia. Would I remember which brother-in-law I was allowed to chat with, and whether my wife was talking, or not, to her cousin? What if I congratulated a nephew for getting divorced and commiserated with another who had recently remarried? Would I recall the cousin who’d had surgery that was okay to talk about, and the in-law whose use of Botox was an open secret but discussed only behind her back?
What of taboo topics and family scandals? The child who failed (you can be sure some family elder would blame it on “drugs and girls”), the one who topped class (“cheating, it’s to be expected”), the one who got admission through graft (the ability to pay rather than the bribe being the point of astonishment)? The uncle who lost a job, the cousin who was laid off, and the nephew who got a particularly lucrative assignment? Would someone allude to the adopted sibling? Would a grandparent declare a gender war by insisting that granddaughters should know how to cook? Would the clandestine fortifying of spirits by means alcoholic during the day win condemnation or approval?
I tried to imagine us together, not least my aunts – the one who gets up early to do yoga and insists on the whole household joining her, which sets off my other aunt who likes her drink more than most and her pungent view on “yoga-shoga” after a night out on the tiles – and shuddered. What nature of conversation would ensue between the grand-aunt spreading the gospel of the Art of Living and the trigger-happy one who likes to practice her pot-shots with a Beretta she carries in her clutch as a safety blanket? I attempted to picture us as a happy clique exchanging funny stories and posing for family pictures, but remained more convinced of the likelihood of flak from remembered insults, innuendoes and derision being dredged up. “We might not be a curmudgeonly lot,” an uncle had famously explained, “but no one can accuse us of being friendly either.”
I can envisage the injuries and swearing we would likely trade as easily as abuse, any offences easily taken, any apologies unwillingly rendered, and quailed at the likelihood of any such gathering. “I wish we could go somewhere too,” my daughter continued to lament, and I imagined all the places I’d like to send my ancestors and descendants travelling to — separately, naturally. And yet, most families do, if not annually, at least intermittently plan similar rendezvous over anniversaries, birthdays or special events, and live to tell the tale. “I guess we’re just not fated to be a family pack,” I told my daughter, explaining that we were, any of us, unlikely to come together in a room without resorting to violence. As for those wimps who do holiday together, I’d take my own clan over theirs any time, name-calling and all.
