March 15, 2006

Family fun

It’s never easy when dealing with family, is it? 🙂 We were over at my parents place yesterday (and no, this isn’t about my parents :p) My brother is getting married soon and they are getting ready for the wedding in a major way. The invitations are going out, suits are being made, saris chosen, outfits coordinate – the whole works.

This leads me to the point of this post. The wedding is a fairly large function with about 400 people attending – around 150 from our side and 250 from the bride’s side. Now the problem is, over here you get family, extended family and the ever extending family :p You have so many people in the family circle that sometimes the ripple effects can be felt on the other end of the island :p On my Dad’s side for instance, he’s got seven siblings and on my mother’s side, she’s got five siblings. Each of these siblings has at least three (sometimes more) kids and each of those kids have kids as well. Then there are the other family members. My paternal grandfather had three siblings and each of them had eight or more kids – one of them had twenty, if I recall correctly. All of these, if not immediate family, are still family.

This is just the tip of the iceberg since I’m not counting all the other aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws and what not for about four generations. That’s a lot of people and somebody is going to feel left out no matter what you do. Of course, being a developing country, transportation is not the best and even though the island is barely 240 miles across at the longest point, it sometimes takes eight to ten hours to get from one point to another. So, some relatives are excluded by virtue of being too far away to get here. Even with that, my parents have had to make decisions as to who gets invited and who does not. They try to be fair and to make certain that there are representatives from each branch and sub-branch of the family tree. But that still leaves the question, how do you ensure that somebody does not feel left out?

I guess the answer is you can’t. No matter how hard you try, you can’t please everybody and you can’t make sure that nobody gets hurt. Sure, you can invite everybody over but then how are you going to pay for all of that? :p How are you going to find the space to house all the people? There used to be a time when weddings were simpler because it was usually a village affair. The bride and groom would be from the village, everybody gets together from the village, have the ceremony and it’s done. But no more. Now you have relatives all over the place and everybody has to be invited …. Ah the complexities of modern day life :p

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Posted by Fahim at 7:41 am  |  No Comments