Mr Subrat Ratho reflects, with wit and affection, on the family elders who dispense advice, preserve legends and remind us that some traditions never really change.
Some people can diagnose your life in five minutes flat.
An elder who still remembers you as the absent-minded bookworm who once almost bought an umbrella at a hill station without bargaining—until he intervened. A cousin who persuaded you to become an accomplice in one of his youthful escapades.
You may have worked in different cities, managed organisations, survived crises, raised a family, written on a variety of subjects, taken career risks or trekked in Bhutan. None of it seems to matter much.
What they notice instead is the grey beard, with no accompanying explanation, and the fact that you did not finish the orange squash that was served to you with great ceremony.
They know exactly how many steps one should walk before breakfast. They notice that you no longer wear a watch. They are disappointed by your sketchy knowledge of the family’s aristocratic history—which, somehow, has become even more distinguished since your last visit.
Advice is their default setting.
There is a touching confidence behind it all.
A belief that life has finally prepared you to receive the accumulated wisdom of someone you are meeting after three years over a plate of greasy pakoras and a glass of orange squash.
The advice may concern where to find the best mutton in your hometown or how to evaluate a vintage car you have absolutely no intention of buying.
Other people ask questions about your life.
They laugh.
They exchange stories.
They admit that life is untidy and that people carry burdens we cannot always see.
The self-appointed guardians of family traditions and superstitions, by contrast, are rarely burdened by uncertainty.
If they met the Buddha, they would probably advise him to sit a little straighter.
Perhaps every family needs one or two such people.
They are part of the furniture—like the grandfather clock that no longer keeps accurate time but insists on striking every hour.
They provide continuity, comic relief and a reassuring reminder that, however much the world changes, someone will always be ready to test your knowledge of the family’s orchards by the sea—which everyone talks about but no one has visited for years, ever since the coconut trees withered through neglect.
Strangely enough, what I found mildly irritating in my younger days now strikes me as rather endearing.
With advancing age, I have also begun to wonder whether it might be contagious.
