This car journey is the reason I never wanted to grow up. I am surrounded by so many of my cousins and uncles and people I don't even know - they are relatives, that's all I know, but I am not sure how are we connected.
I have always been this ignorant child of the family. All my brothers and sisters can recognize people when they come visiting us at our home in the city, from the village I used to hate being connected to, but I would always tell my mother or my father that 'an uncle/aunt has come from the village', to which they would just smile, knowing that this was the best possible description that could come from me.
I remember my childhood when every summer vacations, we used to pack our bags and head for our village. I still find it amusing how every summer, without a miss, every summer, someone or the other was getting married, and as a part of our family tradition, we were supposed to attend the function. I cannot say that I hated going to the village, but I wasn't fond of it either. The only push I needed to go, was that my mother was going, and I couldn't stay back in Delhi without my mother. So, we packed our bags and happily headed towards the village.
We would rent a car and put all our stuff at the back of the white Ambassador. My father was fond of those cars, Ambassadors. I always fought with my brother to sit on the front seat, and would end up sharing it with him. My father would tell us stories of our forefathers, how ours was the most royal family in the entire region at that time. I was fond of listening to the stories about our haveli, the treasures, my grandparents and our royal lineage. I grew up without any grandparents. I never saw any of them. My mother tells me that I was raised by my Naani for a few years, but I was too infant to remember her now. So my parents' stories were all I had of my grandparents. My friends in school used to boast about their visits to their grandparents' place in summers, and all I had were these beautiful stories I grew up listening.
I, being the youngest, never thought that I would be needed to learn about my relatives. It wasn't my job to entertain the guests from the village, or to know how many millions of cousins or uncles or aunts I had. All the gaaon related matters were dealt by my father - the relatives, the lands, the disputes, the functions and everything. So I never thought that I needed to know. On days when our colony's power was down, all the family would take mattresses and pillows to the terrace and arrange on the chaar-payis and khaats, where we all would fight to get the second best khaat or chaar-payi to sleep on - the best one was reserved for our father. I used to share mine with either my mother or my elder brother, I was afraid of sleeping alone. They used to be long nights, and on many of such nights, my father was posted on night duties in some corners of Delhi, and on the nights that he wasn't, he would assemble us all on the terrace and tell stories, he would quiz us on villagey terms, idioms and phrases. I never knew any answer but I would try guessing, and whenever I was a little close, my father would give me a one rupee coin as a prize. That one rupee coin was the incentive I needed, to know more about our gaaon.
I was oblivious to my relatives in the gaaon for a long time, until today, when suddenly I have grown up. I am made to talk to people who are connected to me through my father's brothers or sisters or their sons or daughters, etc. It is such a huge khaandaan, I can never remember all of them. My mother tries her best to make me remember their names and their relation to me. My father used to introduce every one of them to me. He always used to say 'you should know your relatives, you will need to know them some day' and I always wondered 'when, when would I need to know them?' I think I know now. This is when I am needed to know. I miss my father because he's not here to introduce these people to me, and my mother can't do that because she's forced to hide herself from everyone for 4 months and 10 days. This isn't fair. I don't want to know any of these people, but my mother tells me it's important.
I didn't want to grow up. I never wanted all these responsibilities put on me. I was supposed to stay 'the youngest kid of the family'. But suddenly I am surrounded by all these people in that same white Ambassador, and I have no idea who are they. I don't even speak their language, I can understand every word of it, but I can't speak, so I just sit here sandwiched between two of my distant uncles (that's all I have picked up from the conversations) and I keep nodding when they direct a question to me, or I smile when they pass a comment on me, or on someone and they expect me to acknowledge. This car journey is the reason I never wanted to grow up. This is the reason I need my father, to save me from all of it, to evict the purpose of this journey. I shouldn't have to be sitting here, nodding and smiling. I wish I wasn't!
