These days, often as a refuge from the disquieting content and presentation of television news, I find myself seeking cover in entertainment channels.
And there, on more than a few occasions, I have encountered Karan Johar, the poster boy of multiplex moviedom, endorsing an international channel with the words: “When all else fails, there’s always family.”
The poignancy of an only child living with his recently-widowed mother extolling the virtues of family is not lost on anyone. Neither is the fact that Johar, one of the most intelligent troubadours of pop culture, has divined India’s most notable characteristic: it digs families. Johar stumbled upon this truth at the beginning of his career and has cannily milked it to great commercial success ever since.
Family. That’s what makes us tick. Our great mythologies, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, are at their core family dramas of the “he said, she said” variety, with much philosophical instruction slipped in when no one’s looking.
One of the most popular TV shows that set the ball running was Ramesh Sippy’s Buniyaad, the saga of a family in the throes of Partition. That it spawned a million saas-bahu splinters, which mined the family stratification to its minutiae and made producers like Ektaa Kapoor very rich and eccentric, is a fallout that can’t be helped.
But it isn’t just on the small and big screen or in mythology that the family has India in its thrall. We are a people who dig families the way other nations dig personal liberty or standard of living. It’s our thang (sic.) you see.
Witness our enthusiasm for the great film families of Bollywood, for instance. “And then Prithviraj begot Raj who begot Rishi who begot Ranbir,” we say with pride.
In politics the lone wolves stand no chance against those that hail from big political clans: the Gandhis, the Abdullahs, the Karunanidhis —all sprinkled with magic dust when we present them to the world.
Business families fascinate us no end. What the brothers said on the breakfast table, what Mummy is going to do and who gets the bigger red cycle is the subtext of a lot of even the most erudite business coverage.
In India, families marry each other, while couples only go through the motions of solemnising the event. When we hire staff at home or even at work discreet questions are always made about their “phamilis”.
And on the sports field, each time Sachin Tendulkar scores a century and looks upwards towards the sky — we choke in memory of our own dads, watching cricket matches from their own celestial vantage points.
But, of course, no obsession of this nature can be without its undertow. Families turn on each other, feed off each others’ anxieties and complexes, are often the aggregate of each member’s neurosis and, worst, give rise to some of the greatest crimes known to man.
Witness honour killings in the name of family pride, or the fact that in India most sexual abuse takes place within the confines of homes. The selling of underage daughters to rich older men, forced arranged marriages, the bullying that goes into career choices and female foeticide are only a few of the crimes that families carry out behind closed doors and on their own members. Battered and bruised babies, the puzzling Aarushi case, and brothers killing each other over property are some of the examples of the dark side of family life.
But good or bad, Johar is absolutely right — the family is India’s thing.
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com
