Long Live the Family Saga!

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, and had clicked on the Send All button, not bothering to filter out those who were elsewhere. Of course, I, by the virtue of my very location, was not expected to participate in this reunion; but what immediately struck me as weird was the six-letter word preceded by a preposition within a conspicuous parenthesis: {with Family}. The parenthesis is certainly interesting: at one level, one could feel that the use of this punctuation mark does not assume the naturalness of having a family; at another level, one (more sceptical ones) could feel completely demoralised for the parenthesis is etched in the collective unconscious as a mathematical command −‘take common’. For example: 3ab + 9acb + 12a² is preferably written as 3a (b + 3cb + 4a). Right? Who knew whether the inviter did not invest the parenthesis with this algebraic meaning? If that wasn’t true, the {parenthesis} encapsulating the two words ‘with Family’ inadvertently walled out those ‘without’ one. Thinking semiotically, isn’t the walling-out effect much too conspicuous in the {}?

            

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