Old letters - 2
A few weathered scraps of paper with faded ink - I didn't expect them to reveal so much. I found out how my parents' marriage was arranged, what my grandfather thought of the prospective bride and her family (not fair / not dark and well-mannered, very respectable family with an eminent scholar as a patriarch but not well-to-do). I found out more fleshed out versions of family secrets or uncomfortable topics that I'd had the faintest inklings of from overhearing my parents' conversations or my mother and aunt's late night gossip when they thought I was fast asleep on an adjoining bed. What I found in those letters , about family connections, was also humbling; it forced me to re-examine some strong opinions and assumptions.
You know how when you look at trees, they seem to each be standing on their own little piece of ground, unconnected. Growing up, that's how I saw our extended family (outside my parents' siblings) - aunts or uncles who would turn up suddenly or that we had a duty to visit, almost strangers who very predictably exclaimed "she's grown so much!" or swore that I looked exactly like my mother or my father's youngest sister. There would be bearded, grown up cousins who presumed a familiarity simply because I happened to be Aju kaku's daughter. As a shy person, I did not enjoy these encounters. I begged off family weddings. "Oh but everyone will ask about you!" my parents would say. I interpreted that to mean "what will people say!" and I couldn't care less.
Now, when I look at trees, I see what I didn't before..I didn't know before that underground, out of sight, trees are connected through dense fungal networks that they use to share resources, to communicate, to care for each other. Only now, when it's too late, I realize how closely first, second, even third cousins used to be connected, how distance hadn't loosened their bonds, how my refusal to go to weddings and meet everybody saddenned my father. (My great grandfather and his brothers had lived with their families on the same property, their houses were called the "eastern house", the "southern house" and so on. My grandfather had been the youngest of four brothers and had lost his mother early in life. His older brothers' wives were his default mothers and very loving ones from all accounts.) It wasn't about "what will people say", it was about cousins who had been close in childhood, who shared fond memories of times gone by, meeting each other after decades, their eyes lighting up at the sight of an old, familiar face, excitedly saying "where is your daughter? I want to see her!" And then the disappointment, "oh...she didn't come?"
When I think about my previous post about my rich uncle and how everyone "groveled", I wonder whether I was looking through the harsh, cold eyes of a clueless teen. Now that I have read so many old letters, I wonder if I saw just the deference and missed the warmth. When I was growing up, our standard of living was so impossibly far from that of my rich relatives, that in my mind, I defined our entire relationship by that external standard. And yet, as the old letters told me, it was this uncle and his family who had arranged my parents' marriage, hosted the wedding parties for both my dad and his sister and eagerly shopped for the weddings. It was in their house, that my dad's brother Biju lived for a time during his illness and was so well taken care of that he developed a glow of health just before his death. It was this uncle who writes about another relative, "ask him not to worry about money, he should get all the treatment he needs". Many relatives found jobs in his business when they fell on hard times. True, my rich relatives lived in a huge house and had enormous wealth, but even the handful of letters in my possession bears witness to the fact that they were not just generous with their house and money, but also their time, enthusiasm and affection for the extended family.
In the old days in East Bengal, where my father's family is from, everybody's home (বাড়ি) was in a village. If they happened to live in a city for work, they would refer to the place they lived in as a house (বাসা), not home. People from home (not just relatives, even neighbours) visiting the city (for medical treatment or shopping or, longer term, to study) just showed up, expecting to be given a meal of rice and dal and a spot to lay out a sleeping mat. They might stay for days..or months, no one much cared. Families were large then, a few more people sitting down to lunch was no big deal. (Practically every old letter I read had an account of people coming and going, sometimes the multi-person letters even contained greetings from visiting relatives.) Is it any wonder that they were tied together inextricably at the root?
What do those of us growing up in atomized times know of such things? Not a lot. But if we are willing (and humble enough to admit that we've messed up badly), we can learn.
You know how when you look at trees, they seem to each be standing on their own little piece of ground, unconnected. Growing up, that's how I saw our extended family (outside my parents' siblings) - aunts or uncles who would turn up suddenly or that we had a duty to visit, almost strangers who very predictably exclaimed "she's grown so much!" or swore that I looked exactly like my mother or my father's youngest sister. There would be bearded, grown up cousins who presumed a familiarity simply because I happened to be Aju kaku's daughter. As a shy person, I did not enjoy these encounters. I begged off family weddings. "Oh but everyone will ask about you!" my parents would say. I interpreted that to mean "what will people say!" and I couldn't care less.
Now, when I look at trees, I see what I didn't before..I didn't know before that underground, out of sight, trees are connected through dense fungal networks that they use to share resources, to communicate, to care for each other. Only now, when it's too late, I realize how closely first, second, even third cousins used to be connected, how distance hadn't loosened their bonds, how my refusal to go to weddings and meet everybody saddenned my father. (My great grandfather and his brothers had lived with their families on the same property, their houses were called the "eastern house", the "southern house" and so on. My grandfather had been the youngest of four brothers and had lost his mother early in life. His older brothers' wives were his default mothers and very loving ones from all accounts.) It wasn't about "what will people say", it was about cousins who had been close in childhood, who shared fond memories of times gone by, meeting each other after decades, their eyes lighting up at the sight of an old, familiar face, excitedly saying "where is your daughter? I want to see her!" And then the disappointment, "oh...she didn't come?"
When I think about my previous post about my rich uncle and how everyone "groveled", I wonder whether I was looking through the harsh, cold eyes of a clueless teen. Now that I have read so many old letters, I wonder if I saw just the deference and missed the warmth. When I was growing up, our standard of living was so impossibly far from that of my rich relatives, that in my mind, I defined our entire relationship by that external standard. And yet, as the old letters told me, it was this uncle and his family who had arranged my parents' marriage, hosted the wedding parties for both my dad and his sister and eagerly shopped for the weddings. It was in their house, that my dad's brother Biju lived for a time during his illness and was so well taken care of that he developed a glow of health just before his death. It was this uncle who writes about another relative, "ask him not to worry about money, he should get all the treatment he needs". Many relatives found jobs in his business when they fell on hard times. True, my rich relatives lived in a huge house and had enormous wealth, but even the handful of letters in my possession bears witness to the fact that they were not just generous with their house and money, but also their time, enthusiasm and affection for the extended family.
In the old days in East Bengal, where my father's family is from, everybody's home (বাড়ি) was in a village. If they happened to live in a city for work, they would refer to the place they lived in as a house (বাসা), not home. People from home (not just relatives, even neighbours) visiting the city (for medical treatment or shopping or, longer term, to study) just showed up, expecting to be given a meal of rice and dal and a spot to lay out a sleeping mat. They might stay for days..or months, no one much cared. Families were large then, a few more people sitting down to lunch was no big deal. (Practically every old letter I read had an account of people coming and going, sometimes the multi-person letters even contained greetings from visiting relatives.) Is it any wonder that they were tied together inextricably at the root?
What do those of us growing up in atomized times know of such things? Not a lot. But if we are willing (and humble enough to admit that we've messed up badly), we can learn.
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