Your parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. Shouldn’t that be a wonderful occasion to get together and have a wonderful time? Family, friends, celebrations and so on. Unfortunately, when you’re the 26-year-old single daughter who has moved to the city to have one of those fancy careers (being at the beck and call of the associates of a law firm, not so fancy, really, but it’ll be worth it in five years), going home for a family gathering gives you nightmares.
The nightmares, quite literally, start about a week before your flight is scheduled. Till then, there’s the uneasy feeling as you duck your aunts’ calls and make excuses that range from the plausible to the outrageous when your mum calls and asks why you’ve been ducking the calls. As the day of doom approaches, though, you start waking up in cold sweat having dreamt of a gaggle of aunts closing in on you intoning ‘You must get married, you must have babies, marry, marry, BABIES!’ by which time you mercifully open your eyes. You start hoping for airline strikes. You start hoping that your leave will get cancelled – what a difference from the last trip with friends to Goa, when you had fingers crossed that nothing would go wrong!
Unfortunately, there is no escape from your fate, and there’s no escape from family gatherings unless you want to deeply hurt your parents. It’s not their fault that their sisters, sisters-in-law and cousins have babies – not their own, but your hypothetical babies – on their brains, is it? So the day of the flight home dawns, and you wish you could gird your loins much as gladiators did by the time you land.
The first few minutes are wonderful. Your parents have nagged your brother-in-law into picking you up. Once you get home, you’ve got your adorable two-year-old niece all over you, and you get to be the best aunt of the year by giving her a few choice gifts, a couple not to be shown to her parents until she was done with them – sugar high, yes! As you hug her, you vow to yourself that you will be a better, less scary aunt to her than any of… Oh dear. There comes the gaggle. Loin-girding time.
“Beta, you’re home! How long it has been!”
“How is your job going? That’s a nice dress you’re wearing, but it’s a bit short, did you run out of material?” Strike one.
“I guess you’re going to be all high-power lawyer and everything, eh? God help your husband if you argue like that at home as well!” Strike two.
“You look so thin, you know, you should put on some weight, you will look nicer in that saree once you do. Then we’ll find a nice boy for you.” Strike three and you clench your fist… Aunt number three will never know how lucky she is that your sister came and pulled you into a hug before your fist made resounding contact with her face.
So now to give your sister her belated birthday gift – a bottle of her favourite vodka, snagged from duty free the last time a friend went abroad. Still annoyed, you don’t think of sneaking off into your room before you give it to her. In a gesture of rather pointless defiance that will inevitably give them enough to gossip about for a week, you pull it out from your bag right in front of them. Cue collective gasp.
“I found a really nice duty-free store where I picked up this, a couple of bottles of nice wine and a really nice Jack Daniels for myself, you know I love a good whiskey,” you lie shamelessly. Cue second gasp, this one actually loud enough to bring your mum from the kitchen. She shakes her head sternly, as she always does when she knows you’re about to blow your top and let it rip at one of your aunts, but she welcomes you home with a hearty hug and sends you off to the living room where all the men are enjoying their pre-dinner Cognac.
It was only three in the afternoon, so perhaps it should be called pre-pre-dinner Cognac. Being the youngest girl in the family has its good points – everybody over 35 might be on your case to start acting like a ‘proper woman’, but you’ll always be daddy’s little girl. You’re always assured a wonderful welcome from him, so you go and grab him in a giant bear hug before he can even get up. The affection is returned with great enthusiasm. You give him your gift, too – brandy glasses and a set of whiskey stones. Of course you have to open it then and there, and then of course you have to inaugurate them. Oh boy – uncomfortable looks from all the uncles. But thankfully, your dad is fairly oblivious to them as you pour yourself one and make yourself comfortable beside your dad, all ready to join in the conversation about international politics. The uncles are beginning to shift in their seats resignedly.
Half an hour later, your mum comes into the living room as you’re holding forth about your particularly strong opinions about imperialism, capitalism and the US being the real terrorists of the world, what with invading countries for their resources and attacking people with drones. Your mum listens, then sits by your side and squeezes your hand. You look up to see that it’s not the ‘don’t argue’ look. It’s the ‘proud of you, baby’ look. Later, after dinner, as you help your mum wash up, she tells you that she’s proud of you for confounding expectations. You smile – the aunts and uncles and the rest of the world would just have to deal with your choices. They didn’t have a choice about that.
Source: http://www.theindianrepublic.com/tbp/26-and-single-100027576.html
