(The one and only complete portrait of my Ami's nuclear family - Lahore - 1980)
I'm in a very strange, unexplainable nostalgic mood today. I can't seem to get the stories of my families (paternal and maternal) out of my mind. I keep going back to family webpages and facebook groups to look at old black and white photos of deceased relatives. I know it sounds morbid but I just like looking at them and thinking about their lives.
I think what makes it interesting is the one and thousand stories my father used to tell about the family all the time. The wasn't any apparent reason for the story-telling - except the fact that my father knows how to tell good stories (even when we do get impatient).
Every family - if not individual - had a story. They weren't often glorified. In fact the more unflattering the detail, the more likely it was that it would be passed down. They often were great things about them too - about their passion, their hard work, their smartness, their big heart or their love for food.
The most interesting aspect of this was that it seemed in hindsight, everyone had a place in the world. The smart, the foolish, the peacemakers, the rebels, the troublemakers - they all had interesting complex dynamics in their characters - or at least in the characters retold. The book-smart ones mismanaged their relationships; the quiet ones rebelled in awesome, unheard ways and the socially savvy ones ultimately faced loneliness - and this medley of humanity made interesting lives.
I think also - if this makes sense - looking back 4 different generations gives me strength. I can see so many different people managing their marriages and family. Balancing their work and their dreams. Loving and hating life. Dealing with adversity. Making mistakes. It makes my life seem less dramatic and more....doable. Nothing I'll go through will really be much different from anyone before me. Life is life. God balances things out for everyone.
(A wedding in my paternal family - Aligarh - 1935)
2 comments:
The part about the characters in your family and how they ended up was like reading a paragraph out of a book by a famous author. It was poignant and heartfelt. Really enjoyed reading it.
And, the Aligarh picture made me wonder how rare it must be for a Desi person to have a family photo from that time in India. I use to think my mother's wedding pictures were a rare and precious find. But then people like you come along with family pictures from pre-independence and put to shame the likes of us.
Abdu
( http://abdusalaam.blogspot.com )
I believe that every family that enjoyed a certain level of education and upper-middle class status (in the 1800s) would have the access and desire to document their family life.
Since Aligarh was one of the more educationally advance areas in the subcontinent during early 1900s, its inevitable that with the rise of education, income came the rise in desire to procure modern goods like cameras.
Old photographs of family are always rare and precious. I would say you are lucky to have yours.
As for the writing compliment. Thank you. I wanted to write a novel since the age of 7. Somewhere along the road that dream ended. I don't regret it; but I still do enjoy writing.
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