Those were the nineties and they were beautiful. That was
the time for integrated living, and after that it was only disintegration. These
are the times where we have evolved to sustain an isolated living. This is the
time when nature wants us to be isolated. That was the time where our neighbours’
in-laws slept at our place because of space-crunch at their already crowded
home. In the tiny 2 bhks with 5-6 members sharing one toilet, life had its own
beauty.
I stumbled upon a picture of my aunt’s wedding in my father’s
diary. It was one of the random pictures that the photographer had taken. I
assume this because no one is in the focus. There are just a lot of people
eating, talking, things that you normally do when seated to eat at weddings. Honestly, that pictures and a few pictures
from my aunt’s wedding are the most “real” representations I have seen of life-
heads turned at un-staged angles (what is awkward? Only the unstaged-ness of
life), serious faces, blank faces, mouths in the process of chewing-. And there
is an unstaged moment in one corner of the picture, where the flash of the
photographer could not reach. That moment has impacted me more than any art or
poetry ever could.
There are three people from three families.- Thamma (my
grandmother Flat no. 4), Dadu (The grandfather from flat no.3) and Aunty Ji (The
grandmother from flat no.1)-. Aunty Ji is seated to eat and Thamma is pinching
her cheeks as aunty ji was looks up at her with a girl-ish. There is something very
innocent about the whole act, as if they have gone to school together, as if
they have spent long hours chatting about everything under the sun. These are two
different women from different families, two different ethnicities, sharing a
physical act that is probably done in sudden spurts of deep affection. I still
don’t know what made Thamma pinch Aunty Ji’s cheeks. I could have passed it off
at Thamma wiping off a morsel of food from her cheek, had Aunty Ji not been
smiling that way and had Thamma not bent her head in the angle I associate with
affection.
Behind Thamma unperturbed by this act is Dadu. He is standing tall with his hands on his
hips, looking in another direction with the purposefulness of a manager or the
father of a bride. He has always reminded me of that man in the Titanic movie
who stayed back in the ship to sink with it, even if in reality he was the
first ones to leave us later. Dadu had always been a part of 6/4 like we had
been an integral part of his life. He was not just helping us out, he was
involved in our lives like a second grandfather. His demeanor in the picture is
exactly how he was in our lives, standing in the end of the room, making sure
everything is ok.
We were like lego pieces in the building, different families
joined seamlessly to form one big unit. Would I call it a family? I don’t know.
Families are structured through genealogical ties or ties brought into life by
legal/ religious institutions. The shared living I was born into was structured
by the willingness of the heart or to extend ourselves beyond what is already
given to us. If there is really something called unconditional I have been a
witness to it. An un-pompous, un-professed uncondition. These relationships do
not fall under any defined category. So the sake of naming, I would call us building blocks.
