Where do I start here. This topic is really "Joint" as a Joint family, where relations, relatives, cousins and people you know never have an end. Its like a creeper growing by a big tree where you will never figure out where it ends and where it started. Its all very green and Jung lee but beautiful!! That`s how I grew up knowing so many people around me and it felt great, good, safe, protected and loved. We still live that way back home in this old Haveli.
I also had an opportunity to travel just a little bit in the State of West-Bengal (Darjeeling) where my Mamasa and most of my mother`s family lived and worked in the tee gardens. It was a very contrast life from what I was used to in Jaipur (Rajasthan). I must be 7 or 8 years old. We took a train for over 36 hours to Siliguri and from there we were driven to the wonderful Tee garden of Longview. Everything was so different, the air, the people the atmosphere, India is really diverse, I didn't realise that then, that time the feeling was kind of a bit of confusion but you don't really think that much. Kids just go with the flow and when your mom is around you just don't bother. But I still don't have any words to explain that feeling. I still remember the time when we entered in the Bungalow (real beautiful, British styled place) it was like in the movies. I was a very shy kid then. That's where I saw a live piano, a Table Tennis table and a billiards table in my life and that's where I tried to learn to use cutlery while eating. It was a bit too much for this little shy girl of 8 years old. But I survived and I learnt a lot without knowing that I am learning something. The place was done in a very British way but the atmosphere was very Indian, very respectful, humbling, happier
and desi but in a very nice way. My Mamisa was a very nice person. She loved all of us very much and I guess I saw a very beautiful relationship between my mother and her. My mother being the youngest of 5 kids. We stayed there the whole of summer vacation. I just remember everything in bits and pieces. Another thing I remember is my cousins going to the Boarding schools in Darjeeling and Kursoeng. Loretto convent where Nibha didi went to school was a beautiful building and they had so many things to do there academically and non academically as well. Again I felt the school was from the movies. Actually Farah Khan did shoot parts of her movie Maa hoon na in Darjeeling. Ok, now that is really a problem I of going off the topic all the time. But you see I have so much to tell and write and everything is so interconnected, remember the Creeper :>
Anyways so that was an augenblick from the holiday in Darjeeling. Most of the other summer holidays we went to my Nani (Ma) in this little village called Sagoobari. Its a small village in the District of Naguar and 23 Kilometers from Didvana. This place we went year after year in the summer holiday and the life here was total 180° to what I was shown in Longview. As a little girl I even remember taking a brass Pitcher on my head to bring drinking water along with the other beautiful dressed Rajasthani women in colorful lehngas and their faces covered with mul-mul ordnis in ghunghatk(veil)walking tall with pride carriage about 3 pitchers on top of one another.
So what I am trying to say is living in Joint families has so many advantages, one get to see so many people and also get influenced by them while you are growing up. There can sometimes be some compromises or more along the way but I think its worth it(can be overwhelming at times too, I know it but I would still go with this concept). Today I was seeing a documentary on BBC that how today's kids feel shy and have a low self esteem when they are left in a group or a crowd of people. The answer to these problems was to do things together with other families, as I think we had done back then in India and some of them still do. But the concept of Nuclear families is also mushrooming there as well.
So this is for now but I am not done yet. Until next time.
Stay Happy and healthy.
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