Morning:
8°c
Having spent the past few days with my parents and siblings, I'm astonished that such wildly different people can exist in the same family. Being around them is one of the most annoying but inspiring experiences I've had in a while.
My mother is the epitome of overbearing Indian maternalism, who can't help treating her adult children like infants. She frets constantly about our wellbeing, and even still tugs on our sleeves if we happen to be crossing the road with her. Present her with a problem and she'll be frantic with worry, or try to solve it with mantras and fasting. My recent divorce did more to curb her waistline than a rant from Dr Gillian McKeith ever could.
Families are a time-warp. Whatever you do in your life as an individual, your identity in your family is the same one you had aged nine. My brother and sisters still subject me to fat jokes, though I'm a perfectly decent shape. My sister, who was the wild child in the family, still gets treated like a irresponsible troublemaker though she's now a professional youth worker. My youngest sister is condemned to remain the baby, forever being patronised and given advice on what to do with her life despite never having asked for it.
But being around my family made me realise what a remarkable feat my parents have accomplished. Having emigrated to an alien culture, they raised four wholly assimilated adults. My mum managed to find a middle way between her early morning mantras and modern multiculturalism. She never wears western outfits, but didn't bat an eyelid when I married an English woman. She has a typically Indian ability to adapt. Britain has only experienced complex diversity for the past 50 years, but India has teemed with myriad cultures for the past four millennia.
Though they love India, they're not sentimental about it, and have never nursed the illusion that life might have been easier for them there or that India represents a superior culture. As a result, they raised us with a fundamental respect for Britain and its values, and told us to do whatever we wanted to do with our lives.
Despite the irritations and suffocation of spending time with my family, they represent something special. They shows how quickly people from the Third World can find their feet and succeed when given a chance. And it shows how Britain is a country that is almost unique in accommodating such people and giving them the opportunity to do so.
Reader views (1)
It never comes too early
and also never late;
it's always young and curly...
Hello, 2008!
A good New Year to all of you.
- Valery Shuvalov, Moscow, Russia, 31/12/2007 15:23
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