Theory of Relativity

Disclaimer: This post intends to reflect only on the relatives and friends certain blessed ones like myself encounter typically at any sort of family function, especially of the grave kind, and sometimes how the two cents they offer are so ludicrous you wished demonetisation upon their chillars.

In the interest of protecting the privacy of the characters in the incidents narrated below (more for my sake than theirs) I will be using fictitious names.

It was the 14^th day of passing of a senior matriarchal figure in the family. As per the Hindu customs, this is the day when the soul no longer lingers around and has departed the earthly abode. During the 14 days, the close relatives of the person usually stay together to perform daily rituals for the soul. Unlike the newer generations, these families usually comprised of anywhere from 6 to 14 siblings, which mathematically meant the possibility of fights and arguments was no small number. Yes, fossils not mere skeletons, would emerge out of the closet, and some of them would be on their millionth rerun, but the dramatics only escalated each time. There was enough fodder here for a Malayalam serial. In this wonderfully dysfunctional family, siblings would also get into weird contests to outshine each other. Keep in mind their elder sibling has just passed away yet they have lost all cognizance of the fact and instead have started a coconut dehusking contest in the courtyard, I kid you not. The older brother challenges the younger one to a duel where the former would deshusk coconuts using the kathyaal/machete and the younger one would use the deshusking tool. We warn them about the looming rains right around the corner but they smirk as if to say “We have seen and walked through rains and floods, we don’t scare easily like you young lot”.
Of course, as predicted rain plays spoil sport and the contest is discarded midway though you can hear one of the brothers mumbling that rain wouldn’t have hindered him and the other one reciprocating in the same tone only for their fake bravado to crumble at the sound of the ground shattering thunder that rips through the sky sending them scrambling to the verandah like two bunnies scared out of their wits.

The power is out and the senior brother of the lot decide to drown us in tales of valour from his army days. There is the reference to Indo China war and these are stories you have heard before and it wouldn’t hurt to hear them again only if the build up wasn’t so long. I mean when you are talking about how you moved in stealth and attacked the enemies, you really don’t need to start from the breakfast you had in the morning or how bhindi was always on the menu. Come to think of it there were too many food references that we the kids often suspected that the only kind of intense deadly pressure the grand uncle had seen was one from the cooker in the army kitchen. We were of course severely reprimanded by our parents for the quips but grand uncle nevertheless continued with his boring narrative. Not because he had a good sense of humour because my maternal family were radio-active people. No not the Plutonium kind, they were like active FM radios, that transmitted information one way only. Imagine sitting at the head of a table while two of them sat across each other and sort of ping ponged information to each other. To quote an example

Speaker 1: Its highly unfortunate that aunty XYZ hasn’t come or not even bothered to send a telegram.

Speaker 2 is seen nodding as Speaker 1 continues with her case against aunty XYZ (who by the way is somewhere in the U S of A)

Speaker 1: I mean, they grew up together, went to school together. (Please note that aunty XYZ can barely remember what day of the week it is). This is just really not done. Right?

Speaker 2 (still nodding her head in agreement): I am sure about one thing. I have lost all appetite. I think it may be an early onset of some severe disease. I think my days are numbered.

Speaker 1, is now nodding her head as if to concur with Speaker 1's hypochondriac tendencies and responds, “I am not talking to aunty XYZ again”

Speaker 2: I think I need to find a solution to my problem soon. I am going to see the astrologer tomorrow.

So you get the gist. There could be multiple people at times carrying forward their individual conversations and not one of them would have paid attention to the other’s concern. They were like human forms of self help books, where the questions would be asked and answered by the same person. Probably the mundane nature of their conversations never interested the other. We have tested the hypothesis couple of times. My cousin and I decided to interject these conversations once to test what would actually catch their attention amidst their ensuing monologues. However, we never realised this was a totally foreign and dangerous territory for us. Much like Jaganadhan who wandered into the den of a musical virtuoso and was challenged by the latter to prove his mettle (Aaran Thampuran lingo), we too would have to find the right tone to hit that magical frequency no one heard. We nod the head and ramble on with our lazy musings, so far we seem to be doing good because no one absolutely cares or responds, until my cousin gets a bit overconfident and blurts out how we had prank called a few people in the neighbourhood and scared them out of their wits. And just like that, we had alerted the zombies walking away into oblivion and now the herd has turned around and is moving towards us and we have nowhere to run. Our brains are bust, phone rights taken away and of course we plead but too late, they are back on radio-active mode.

So back to the grand uncle who just loves to talk and talk until his listeners stop having the will to live…. he is now on Quiz mode. Quiz mode is where he asks you a lot of “Do you know..” questions, all relevant GK questions btw, and many (in fact all) we don’t have any answers to (where are the Bollywood questions?). So, you would typically expect one to follow the question with an answer when his non-voluntary participants give up. BUT NOOOO… he has to rub our ignorance in our faces with the most annoying rhetoric, “Do you know who knows the answer?” V A N A J A..” Yeh, Vanaja (fictitious name of course), was his remarkably bright child who has been studying all her life on scholarships obviously and she knew everything. If there are a few things people hate, its comparison, especially with an “intelligent” sibling or cousin. We of course did not hold it against Vanaja (well, maybe a bit). This of course would have been a good time to develop the radio-active capabilities mentioned earlier. We realised the only way to get out of the Vanaja Propaganda/Quiz time was to ask him questions? So, we quizzed him on a lot of scientific terms and he never could answer. Before you start believing that we were just humble kids who did not like to brag about our IQ, I need to stop you and remind you we are Malayalees, we brag about everything, so that wasn’t it. We were just quizzing him on non-existent words and even coming up with nonsensical but believable definitions for them. Yeh, fiction we were skilled at (come to think of it, should have just made a living out of it, only if they had a certain party's IT cells back then)

Meanwhile, in another corner of the ancestral home, an argument between two siblings A and B about an incident that took place ages ago was going on. There are tears, curses, so much angst. Of course the argument is about how A commented ages ago about another sibling C having a better musical voice than the star singer of the family B. Drama would ensue until their niece who had just lost her mother a few weeks back would give them a piece of her mind about how they have to learn the art of subtlety during mourning. You would think it would have an impact, instead they ensue the argument in whispers.

Its impossible to miss some of the other unintentional humour that occurs like

1.How an aunt who gets to meet her husband only 1 or 2 times a year or on unprecedented incidents like this, fakes her Kannur accent to a Palakkad accent to perhaps impress the husband only to be caught red handed by her daughter who involuntarily once again blurts out, “What’s with the fake accent”.

2. How one of the daughters of the departed, breaks suddenly into tears and says something counter intuitive like “This is the first time we are having a function at home without Amma”

3. How someone would give a long speech about how much he knew the late grandmother only to realise upon one of us interjecting that he was talking about someone else, who btw is very much alive in the U S of A

4. How the competing brothers were asked to leave the feast preparation area by the head cook since their dehusking claims and attempts were slowing down the proceedings

5. How quiz/army grand uncle would ask a non-rhetorical question regarding his missing garb (shaddi) amidst leaps of clothes that had piled up on the clothesline “Who knows where my VIP Frenchie White Shaddi is (subtlety is not our forte)?” only to have one of us not miss a beat and shout out “Vanaja knows”

On a separate note, I have always wondered who initiated the custom of a 12/13/14 day ritual followed by a grand feast in remembrance of the passing soul. People who barely knew/liked/spoke a kind word about the soul and vice versa would be present. One could surely see the irony. A life celebrated after death but what if it was a miserable life in the first place, what indeed are we celebrating, the liberation from all of it?? Perhaps these elaborate customs were created by certain sections of the society to earn a living, nevertheless it still may be a valid healing process for the family – the distractions come in many forms.

For the younger lot its their first experience of meeting the close/extended family, and no matter how strong/weak/strange/absurd/annoying/cuckoo they are, it’s the first and up close encounter with them and if its anything like we had, you will be jumping on that cycle with ET and asking him to ramp it up to escape velocity.