If you have ever lived in India, I am sure you can imagine this scenario. A huge family living under the same roof, large verandahs, maids, water-wells within the house, chicken and kittens prancing around, the family matriarch busy running her fingers through rice grains for those ever present minuscule stones, and kids ready to break the glass windows when the next ball was bowled. It was under one such condition did I over hear my granny narrate this story to a distant relative visiting us.
The place we live, sits in the center of Madras city and must contain mostly shops, restaurants, tea & pan ‘gallas’, temples, pharmacies, every other imaginable stall and piles of bricks and sand bags for more such structures to come. Houses like ours must be relics of the past and must have been an astounding sight a few decades back. Why not? After all there have been practically no renovations to the place, except for the changing of fused bulbs (if you call that renovation) in the narrow corridors that used to happen ever so often. But in fact the structure was so pretty good even after standing in the same condition for more than 8 decades.
It was not this house that I was so much worried about, when I heard my granny reciting the tale but the other such houses in the surrounding streets. It was my great-great-grandpa who was the benevolent noble-lord who woke up one fine day (or may be after a distressed one at that) and announced to the rest of his family. "I decree my word, upon casting my eye on the humble peasant bereft of shelter and the lord bereft of his holy dues. I keep the floor beneath my feet and the roof above my turban. The rest will house the heavenly Gods".
J Thus vanished my chance to inherit what would have been a fortune anyday – especially today J
Well! This was several years ago. But until then I never realized that I had a great-great-whatever, and had confined my genealogical tail to stop at my granny. Darwin might be confounded at such a possibility and may be Adam & Eve would never had a chance to take an apple-bite nor exist, under conditions I subscribed to.
Stories have their own ways to re-invent themselves & haunt the heck out of you. This one was no ghost tale and so, one fine morning I decided to get to know the names of all my relatives. Delegated this project to my sister, Priya who has this uncanny sense to complete tasks to perfection without the euphoria, certain things deserve. Just to catch her on the wrong foot I probed this topic after several forgotten weeks. She had six A4 pages of tables & columns listing families, relations, et al. Have you heard the "foot in your mouth" phenomena?
It has been difficult for me to present this information as a look-up information and time & again, I open & close this file without much ado. I am experimenting right now on a way to present this information, and should constantly be polishing the page for a smooth finish.
Darwin, Adam & Eve! Dive
into this deep-sea experience – you may be related!