Disclaimer: I have no intention of injuring
anybody’s sentiments. My humble plea is: ‘think’.
I was pretty
much distraught at an invitation that came my way through Facebook to join a
reunion of school friends. In fact, this reunion was facilitated by a Facebook
forum created by one of our batchmates some three months back. The person who
had sent out the invite, I guess, is currently located in Bangalore
I am not really tetchy about this
invite. I am actually trying to use this as a pretext (even a case-study) to
voice a concern nagging me for the past few years. In fact, the concern was so
very overwhelming that it prompted me to take it up as a part of my doctoral
programme. The much sentimentalized and emotionalized six-letter word FAMILY…my
thesis investigates into an almost pathologic obsession with the family in
postcolonial South Asian fiction. Not only in South Asia ,
family is of supreme consequence to any capitalist society, and this condition
of late capitalism that we blissfully inhabit attributes to the family an
unprecedented importance. It is therefore not without significance that 1994
was declared the international year of the family; it is around this time the
revolution in information technology occurred, whereby globalization, in true
sense of the term, reached its climax. It is interesting to note that as the
East/West binary that began to dissolve with lightning-fast speed afterwards,
the South Asian pride in the family as against the individualized society of
the West no longer held water. For, family as an institution also gained
tremendous importance in the West; and that was not surprising at all. For any
consumerist society to survive a proper channelization of wealth is absolutely
necessary; therefore, monogamous heterosexual marriage, reproduction and
perpetuation of progeny are encouraged to such an extent that the possibility
of an alternative lifestyle is often wiped out from public consciousness (And
notably, in the sanitized space of the middle class deeply rooted in morality,
any form of miscegenation, racial, caste or class, through marriage is
generally vehemently discouraged). The single independent woman and the gay man
(or for that matter the straight metrosexual man as well) with a steady flow of
income have definitely gained importance as new potential consumers, but the marketability
of the family as collective consumers is of no match to them. So much so that
the debate involving queer marriages often addresses the state-sponsored benefits
the heterosexual family enjoys in western societies. In fact, the radical
opposition to gay marriage (why imitate a heteronormative way of being?) has of
late sufficiently sobered down to a comparatively more assimilationist stance
whereby the economic advantages of having a family are recognized.
These
advantages are not hard to recognize, indeed. Films, novels, television soaps
and serials, magazines, newspapers, and most visibly, ad-films and billboards
are much too passionately rejoicing the family as given. For instance, no food
bazaar advertisement is ever complete without an over-the-top happy holy
trinity of the father, mother and the child. As if no single person can
possibly be in need of any grocery ever! Take for example the recent Amway ad:
claiming to have brought to the market an amazing range of consumerist
products, from arthritis drugs to anti-wrinkle cream, the Indian version of the
Amway ad has an old dadaji suffering
from joint pain, a middle-aged mother anxious about her sagging skin, a tired
father and a child much too eager to become tall. The bourgeois household complete
with the holy trinity overseen by the authoritative figure of the old patriarch
ostensibly becomes Amway’s target consumer. In fact, it’s indeed difficult to
think of ads which have a single man or a woman shopping happily.
Therefore, my poor friend cannot be
blamed at all. He has been brought up in a society which has attributed to the
family such a status of ‘givenness’ that any departure from it is either
inconceivable or generally eyed with suspicion, condescension, and sometimes
treated with unsolicited sympathy. In fact, a person without a family is
perhaps the queerest (as in strangest) person available. A single person is
remarkably menacing to the complacency of the family, for his/her very presence
threatens to jeopardize the perpetuation of capitalist economy. Therefore, the
entire world conspires to pair him/her off, and eliminate the threat.
Interestingly, even Shakespearean romantic comedies, which end in happy
marriages, alienate those who remain unpaired till the end. Jacques, Malvolio,
and even Feste. These plays were written when a feudal economy was stealthily
but steadily giving way to a capitalist one.
The parenthesis containing the
phrase ‘with Family’ also struck me as unsettling because I could not
comprehend why a reunion of school friends should turn into a family affair.
Well, more sentimental folks would argue that it is perfectly ‘natural’ to
introduce your school friends to your spouse and children. What’s wrong in
that? Well, not really! But, my problem is that a space which could jolly well
be my own is sadly usurped by the presence of the spouse and the children.
Don’t I desire or am I not entitled to a private space beyond the everydayness
of family affairs? A gathering of old school buddies could provide me with a
space which would not demand of me to perform in some expected ways (as a
parent or a spouse). I can be myself. I have not been to any of these reunions
ever, even when these had taken place in my own city, but I am more than
certain that these rendezvous would soon turn into over-enthusiastic discourses
of kabhi khusi kabhi gham with the
family. This is but expected. With very little in common, except for the school
which has now become history, what could be the topic of conversation? How long
could nostalgic rumination of the past go on? Two weeks, may be three weeks?
Then? Of course, many would lose interest and the enthusiasm with which this
informal alumni meet had begun would reach a point of precipitation, and would
suddenly evaporate one day without any trace. I’m not specifically referring to
this reunion of old school buddies; not at all. Actually, in any kind of social
gathering where people of myriad backgrounds congregate without any particular
purpose it is indeed difficult to zero in on one topic of discussion. Either it
has to be the ubiquitous family or cricket…or may be television serials. You
can’t expect a group of people of diverse sensibilities and preferences to
discuss, say novels. For many, all novels are written by Chetan Bhagat. Not
even cinema; for many, art films cannot be commercial and vice versa. Not even
fashion; for many, high-heeled stilettos are not at war with the salwar-kameez. Not even economics; for
many, it is the realm of Pranab Mukherjee by default. Not even politics; for
many, CPM is Marxism. Not even sex; for many, sex does not exist and even if it
does it exists only in personified forms as Paoli Dam (it was Mallika Sherawat
a few years back)! The erudite snootiness I displayed above is hard to digest I
know. Therefore, I hasten to add with humility that there is nothing
consequential to confer on usually. This is the general condition of these
social meetings. In any case, Bangali
adda has of late acquired the status of a genre, and many sociologists
might just attack me with vengeance. Who said that every adda has to be esoteric? Of course, not. Haven’t we come a long way
off from Socratic Greece? Now does this last comment remind you of Ray’s Agantook? Well, that was one Bengali
film that wasn’t middle class.
Returning to where I started. Why
drag the family in the private space consisting only of school friends? This is
because most of us have never felt the necessity of being alone, or the
importance of privacy. Privacy? What is that, anyway? By ‘us’, I specifically
refer to the run-of-the-mill middle class men and women who have grown up under
the perennial surveillance of a mercilessly monitoring parental gaze, one that
could put the panopticon to shame. Most of us have not had the luxury of a room
of our own. Woolf might have to modify her thesis had she been aware of the
middle-class Indian household where, let alone women, men rarely have the desired
room, quarantined from snoopy parents and curious relatives. This lack of
privacy becomes such a habit with us that we do not ever question it.
Especially after marriage, most middle class men and women cannot imagine
having a social circle beyond the knowledge of their spouses (although cyber
social networking sites have opened up possibilities of interacting with
like-minded people without having to face much hazard). Lend a patient ear to
any conversation among middle class people on a public vehicle, and within
minutes you would be well-acquainted with everything that concerns their lives:
from their daughter’s horoscope to the underwear brand they prefer. Why even
try so hard? Roadsides are often converted into loos with a certain sense of
triumph. Could there be a more glaring example of the lack of a sense of
privacy? The point is there is no privacy in our lives and we have been
programmed not to yearn for for any. Therefore, let the family saga rule. Hum Aapke Hain Koun is any day a bigger
hit than Arth!
I know most of you might have
concluded by now that I am much too frustrated. Why harbour such profound
hatred for the family? And who said privacy was a desirable necessity? Well, I
don’t harbour hatred for the family as such, but the unnecessary sentiments
that are associated with it. But even then the very act of questioning the
family might appear weird to many. Plain ranting may be. And that is natural.
For hasn’t Louis Althusser been shouting himself hoarse that we are irreversibly interpellated by the ideological state apparatuses? And doesn't the family rank quite high up in that list? Remember
what Raymond Williams’ Keywords reminds
us? The root of the word ‘family’ is the Latin famulus meaning ‘servant’. The word has since then evolved remarkably,
but somehow its original meaning has not yet been lost. I feel the family has
successfully colonized everyone and constantly demands of them a servile
consent to remain colonized forever.
Image courtesy: londonnfp.com
