I had an ordinary childhood. We were part of a joint family. The earliest I remember, there were 12 people at home. The big house built in bungalow style in Trichur had my grandparents, my grandpa’s youngest sister who had been widowed very early in her youth, my parents, my father’s younger brother, the five of us and one of the two dumb and deaf cousins of my father.

My grandfather’s elder sister was a widow and lived in a very small excuse of a house in Trichur. It seems she refused to take shelter in my grandfather’s house.  In spite of her tonsured head, colourless saree and horrifying (for us, those days) practice of eating off the floor, we loved her dearly. We were too young to understand that her eating habits were a part of the weird practices expected of widows in olden times! I have seen my grandma force her to eat off a banana leaf…but she would not… for reasons of self imposed ‘madi’ - the Brahmin notion of the state of being clean- she would refuse. We never would stay in that room where she’d eat because even we, ignorant as we were, could not accept such an atrocity. She normally would not eat in our house. She’d have finished  her meal and  would just visit us. Only on festivals or thithis ( death anniversaries when homage is paid to the deaprted)would she agree to eat at our place.  She, with all her limited resources would bring us toffees for about 10 paise… 5 of them, wrapped up in crumbled pieces of newspaper…and we’d eagerly crowd around her with hands out-stretched to get our share… How tasty those toffees were…. Probably all her love for her brother’s grandchildren made them taste like heaven.

Kunjaliyathai as she was called by us had had a very unfortunate life. Her husband had died when she was young and she had to raise 4 kids- three daughters and a son on almost nothing. I believe the son died young putting a full stop to their hopes and dreams for decent life. One daughter got married and is still around somewhere in Maharashtra. We have never seen her. Her other two daughters – Cheedu and Karunai-  were both deaf and dumb. Cheedu was with us for along time, till she died…of some illness. Soon after, Kunjaliyathai also passed away and we inherited Karunai the other dumb and deaf cousin of my father’s.

As a girl I used to wonder why my grandfather took Cheedu under his wing. Probably his sister could not handle both the handicapped daughters… and may be because Karunai, being stouter and of mean temper used to bully her sister. Maybe because since time immemorial, my grandfather’s home had sheltered many of his sisters and their children… may be it was the done thing those days…to take your not so well off kith and kin under your wing…

No one ever behaved as though they were a burden. Of course, they used to pitch in with the household chores. All five of us have been rocked to sleep by Cheedu’s song which were just sounds from her voiceless throat…It used to go “ thwaa….thwaaa… thwaaa”…monotonously on and on…till the toddler concerned fell asleep…patted and thwaa-thwaaed to sleep. She would help make brooms from the coconut fronds felled for the purpose… She would help deseed the jackfruits, help make “ vadaams and appalaams” during the summer and be on the watch for foraging crows and birds. She would secretly let us help ourselves to the half sun – baked vadaams… a delicacy for us kids, or slip pieces of sweet jackfruit, while deseeding them, behind the admonishing adults’ back. On the days of shradham, once we come to know that the priests are eating we’d go around the house to the kitchen door and she’d slip hot appams and vadas and ellurundais with which we’d vanish before other stentorian adults appeared. When I was told by my mother that she was no more, I felt an ache somewhere inside me…and the feel of those wrinkled hands became mere memory.

When Cheedu’s mother, Kunjaliyathai, died Karunai came to live with us. She was the most belligerent woman I have come across in life. She was a strapping woman and quite a contrast to her mother and sister who were frail and sparrow-like. She also had a wild temper. She would fight with everyone. If she drew water from the well, she wouldn’t let any of us drink it, wildly gesticulating that she had done the hard work while we were relaxing! If we went out she would sulk… We used to take her to all the temples, exhibitions and occasionally to movies… but she was never a cheerful woman. What irked us was that she would always pick a fight with our father’s aunt, who was like a grandma to us…and we would always support our “Achchu”( pet name for athai) against Karunai. Finally my grandfather or one of my parents would have to come down heavy on Karunai to quieten  her down. In rage, she would cry herself to sleep and sulk for days together. Though we all got cross with her, we never considered not having her around!

Interacting with them made us well-versed in sign language. All of us knew how to carry on long conversations with them using our hands and they could do a  little bit of lip reading… I discovered that Karunai could lip read one summer when we kids were planning something secretly…and she looked at me and gesticulated that she’d tell Mom about what we were about to do. I was amazed… I was a teenager and had recently seen a Tamil movie in which a character pretends to be dumb till the very end of the movie…So for many weeks, like a sleuth, I kept  watching her, trying to expose her till I felt convinced that it was all my fancy and she was truly dumb and deaf.

After the death of my grandparents, my own parents just continued to care for Achchu and Karunai- one aunt and the other cousin.

Another generation of kids were born when all of us one by one got married and Karunai now rocked my twins, my brothers’ and sister’s kids in her lap. I was surprised by the way our kids interacted with her, using sign language… Age had started to mellow her down…though the fiery spirit was always there. She would try to play my sisters in law against each other telling each one that the other had given her new saree or blouse piece, but, such things never created any rift among them. Karunai was with us till about 12 years back, when she died of cervical cancer. My own sisters in law….my brothers’s wives…took care of the ailing relative with patience and sincerity till she breathed her last. They never complained, never once asked my parents why they had to put up with those two old ladies, God bless them. They were never pronounced nuisances… I suppose this is where our culture comes in.

We, Indians knitted and purled in our family values, would think twice before abandoning someone in an old age home or an orphanage. My grandparents and  parents taught us all such valuable lesson by taking care of these three relatives. We feel enriched to have been in their presence. Even from them we have learnt a lot… how to be…sometimes, how not to be. We learnt about sharing and caring, about tolerating those not as endowed as we are and above all the lesson that families should stick together. It is indeed a blessing that my sister in law also feel the same way!

Today, I suppose the scene is changing. The western concept of senior citizens’ homes and abandoned parents are more common even in India, these days… Nuclear family system is here to stay. Joint families are becoming rarer. A sad and stark portrait of  the changing times. Families cocoon themselves and children grow up without tasting the love and care of grandparents, aunts and uncles. Children don’t get much chance to share or care…they hardly know even their cousins … they lose out on learning life skills, though they cover a lot of syllabus these days.

It is said one can’t choose one’s relatives. True…but one can always learn to adjust and accommodate, to sympathize and empathize, to accept fate gracefully, given such circumstances. Both my sister and I have married into families with strong familial ties. Both our in laws’ homes have extended families… but we just slipped into our new life snugly… We were well trained at home…