In the middle of a languid conversation, my mother smoothly changes tack. “Have you spoken to XYZ recently?” she asks casually, and then hastily adds, “She was asking after you. I told her you have been busy. You can call her one of these days when you have time.” I should have been prepared, but as always, I am a little flustered. My mother and I have had this conversation many times in the years that I have moved out of home to set up my life. An uncle or an aunt had come home, he or she seemed lonely, would I mind speaking to them one weekend? A great-grandmother wanted to see my son but wasn’t WhatsApp-savvy. Why not courier her a few copies of his recent photographs? I bristle, but eventually give in. I make the call, I order the prints and remember to courier them after half-a-dozen reminders. In this day of micro-connectivity, I think of people far more often than I get in touch with them. I tell myself that those who matter know that I am always around, even if I never get around to telling them what they mean to me. But every time my mother rounds off the conversation with one of her pointed hints, it reminds me of my childhood. And all those people who made home what it was. I grew up in a rambunctious joint family where home was made of not just the few of us who shared a surname, but of a huge extended family — grand-uncles, great-aunts, uncles, aunts, first, second and third cousins and friends. Home meant a bustling four-storey building where we woke up to the ringing of the door-bell and sat down for long convivial meals. Home meant air mails from my aunt in Beirut with notes for every member of the family. It meant holidays together and family get-togethers for every event — births, deaths, anniversaries and festivals — with at least the same 30 faces every time. That uncle who was a wildlife enthusiast and whose cottage on the edge of the Maromar forest in Jharkhand was our summer getaway forever, who took us on safaris and made us fall in love with forests for life; the other one who introduced us to our first computer; that aunt who knitted winter clothes for our dolls; the grand-uncle who never forgot to get us a book by our favourite author — we had them all and counted them as our own. Our grandparents and parents lived in each other’s lives, demanded one another’s attention and barged in and out with their memories and their misgivings. As children, it was exhilarating to be swept up in this tidal wave of emotions, to watch our previous generations love, bicker, grow apart and get back together in a never-ending spiral, but it seemed less attractive as we grew older. Home meant equal part laughter and heartbreak, indulgence and scrutiny (Imagine putting your boyfriend or girlfriend through more than two dozen appraisals at one go!), and for those of us who were quieter, a difficult search for moments of solitude. By the time we moved out of home, most of us — sisters, brothers and cousins — had devised our rituals of communication. Those of us who lived in the same city met up on weekends; phone calls were almost always preceded by text messages to check if the other person could spare time for a conversation. Not for us those impromptu get-togethers after work, or long exchanges over the telephone that began with a recipe and ended with everything else. Meeting each other was an event for us, marked out on our smartphones in advance, made time for like a chore. There’s no way we could escape each other, we joked, our parents would make sure of that. Over the years, our generation has drifted apart, tiptoeing around the edges of each other’s lives like strangers at a masquerade ball. We forget birthdays, apologise to each other for being unable to make it to yet another reunion; we put up photographs of our shared childhood on social media and get on with our lives. Our parents, meanwhile, are living the only way they have ever known — in the thick of things, always on the edge of chaos, always with the security of having each other to stem their ebb. While we raise lonely children in unfriendly cities, they keep each other company through health and hospital visits, in retirement and in death. They still call each other every day, squabble over trivial things such as the Sunday lunch menu and tell us they are doing just fine. “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance,” an uncle was fond of quoting Bernard Shaw to describe our family. But every time my mother calls and tells me about yet another relative who would love to hear from me, I feel strangely comforted after the first burst of annoyance has passed. It makes me think of home in the only way I ever do — “Time and place can close in on me, it can so easily seem as if I have never got away, that I have stayed here my whole life. As if my life as an adult was some kind of dream that never took hold of me” (Alice Munro, Home, Family Furnishings, Selected Stories, 1995-2014).
