Tonight:
4°c
Since returning at Christmas after six months abroad I've been living with my parents while low on cash. Before you mutter the word “loser”, remember this: with the recession biting, I'm lucky they have a room to spare.
Many thirtysomethings will need to crash with their parents as they lose their jobs and homes. For me, it's been an extremely irritating but warm and occasionally hilarious experience — like living in a Punjabi episode of the Royle Family.
With my presence, the whole family has regressed 30 years. My mum cooks lavish meals each evening. My younger brother, who also lives there, says, “Since you came back, it's been like living in a hotel.”
But she treats us like toddlers, making me wear slippers (in case I catch a cold) and snatching knives from my hand lest I hurt myself.
Family dynamics never change. I was a chunky kid so am still habitually subjected to fat jokes and comments about my weight.
My younger brother is an adult with a good career but I still patronise him like the little boy who was once in awe of me. Our PlayStation games of football are as bitterly contested as ever.
Likewise, I have had to readjust to my parents. Like Barbara Royle, my mum says whatever comes into her head when sat in front of the telly.
Watching Jurassic Park, she pondered the brontosauruses roaming across the screen and asked: “Ooh, is that Australia?” Later she wondered: “How did people ever survive, with all the dinosaurs and the King Kongs around?” My friends call this “mum-speak”, saying their mothers also switch off their brains in the company of their adult children.
My father's eccentricity is equally entertaining. Hearing him emit a loud monotone “mmmmm” while showering, I enquired what the humming was for. “I'm meditating,” he said, “like how they chant Om in India.” When I asked why he only uttered the tail end of the holy syllable, he replied: “Because I'm an atheist.”
Living with your parents as a thirtysomething isn't ideal but perhaps it might help my generation to remember how important their folks are. Having said that, when friends offered me a chance to live with them, I grabbed it.
However old you get, whatever you achieve, your family relationships are the same as when you were 12. Grateful as I am to my parents, they're strictly the safety net of last resort.
Reader views (4)
12? You lucky thing. I'm just about potty trained and still need help cutting up my food at the age of 39! I wouldn't trade my high rent for all the tea in china if it meant living with my mum. I'd be in a sleeping back on The Strand (< you might wanna give it a go, it's not too bad).
- Real, London, 12/02/2009 00:19
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I'm glad Nirpal is back. Nobody writes like him, so off the cuff at times.
- Gloria Corduan, London, 11/02/2009 14:13
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Don't expect it to get any better - I just turned 50 and get the same treatment as when I was 12. It works the same on the phone long distance as in person when I visit. My mother once said in her view I could not call myself an adult until I was a married woman. As I never married, I suppose it is all my own fault that I am treated as a child to this day!
- Deborah, London, 11/02/2009 13:50
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Hmm, whatever happened to 'India's the future, this country's finished'?
Let me guess: being an Indian with a good command of English is nowhere near the novelty in India that it is here.
Still, sponging off your parents makes a change from sponging off your wife, I suppose...
- Garygadget, London, 11/02/2009 13:13
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