Family Tree

Some time back the woman with (weird) voices in her head had this emotional post on her blog, which was centered on her memory of the mystic Taj Mahal visit with her dad. Agreed, time flies by with a blink but then we can always sit back and re-live these ever beautiful and mesmerizing moments from the past.

Last night while helping mum re-arrange old photo albums, I found this really old photograph of me with my cousins.

To me it’s nothing less than what we often say, “A perfect Kodak moment”. This picture was taken by my dad, who was ever so enthusiastic with his camera and tons of nieces and nephews and not to forget, his own kids. I must have around 6 or 7 years old and was on my yearly summer visit to Mhow (about 1 hour drive from Indore, MP), which also happens to be my native place. Dad had taken us for a picnic to one of my granny’s farms, which about 45 minutes drive from our family home.

The boys spent the afternoon playing chor-police, girls being girls mostly talked about everything under sun whereas I and my cousin sister, since we were the youngest of the lot were mostly bossed around by both the groups. Though I must have cribbed a lot then but if you ask me now, I would not mind going thru this moment time and time again.

Today, most of the young faces you see in this photograph are married and some even have kids, barring me and the girl sitting next to me. Since all of them (except my bro & sis) live outside Mumbai, we barely ever get a chance to mingle except during family weddings or something.

Frankly speaking, I feel nowadays we people keep ourselves just limited to our immediate family that we never bother to make the extra effort to be involved in the lives of our distant family members. And this does bother me at times, especially when I see my own niece and nephew growing up without such wonderful encounters.

Most of cover-up this flaw by blaming it all on our fast-paced life – “This is what we call life” is what I often hear my cousins exclaiming whenever the topic of “old days” crops up. So engrossed are we in securing our lives financially and materialistically that we don’t even notice the finer and simpler moments we and our children are missing out on.