The Niche

The Big Fat Indian Family

I am in Lucknow...yay!

Welcome in Lucknow was awesome better than probable, it was huge.

All my family members came to the train station to receive us and we sang all the way in the car through the station to our house. It is always a joy to meet the family, come back to the roots and enjoy the company of your loved one. When I use to stay in this city I didn't care about the family that much, most of the time I was sick of them but then I moved on and only being surrounded with three people made me realize the value of the family that we have left behind.

Our family in Lucknow is huge. Big fat Indian family

My father has two elder brothers and one elder sister all are married to beautiful people, one of my uncles married twice and gave gossip to the family for rest of our lives.

All my cousins are the children of my dad's siblings and they are the reason I actually love being here.

The occasion I am here for is: one of my cousin gave birth to a baby girl and I am an aunt now.

Yay! I am so excited.

I can't believe my cousin sister is a mother now. It's beautiful, joyful, but frightening at the same time. Frightening because I feel so grown up now and my parents might be feeling a little old when they will hold their 'granddaughter' in their arms.

Also, I cannot imagine my sister to be a mother now, like I have seen her doing some really life threatening things like, parkour from the terrace, flying kite in the balcony and drinking orange juice right after brushing her teeth. I cannot imagine her being a mom, but she is! It will be weird.

We reached our family's home in no time and it was like the place exploded with laughter and rapture. Everyone came to us and greeted in their loud way I got the famous 'she is so grown up' a lot. All my aunts and uncles surrounded us along with a few miscellaneous uncles I didn't know. I was smiling so much that my jaw pained.

Unlike my sister, I always liked family life, being surrounded with people, wearing cousin's cloths, brother standing up for you, sisters fighting your fights and at the end of it playing charades and sleeping.

But something happened years ago and that made us leave this heaven.

Aunties and uncles just surrounded us; suddenly many people I don't even know existed were hugging me, talking about my childhood and how I came so far (in looks). It was lovely.

Though we exited the house on a bitter note nothing is changed. The love and affection the family is still the same. We still love each other. A few taunts here and there are alright it shows the folks are still mad. But all is okay.

After the loud greetings were over I got hold of some aunty to show me 'the room'.

The room, basically, is our cousin's den. It is a big hall in which all the kids of the family are in. If we are not in our family house we find 'the room' in any house and camp there.

No or only cool adults are allowed.

In this house the room was upstairs in the terrace. Coolers were installed in the room to keep it ventilated, there was a small door which let the visitor in and there was also another door on the opposite wall. There were no beds in the room there were only mattresses piled up in the corner.

As I was about to enter I shooed my aunt away and got in the room without making much noise.

Now the thing with the region of our house is there is no internet; so finding children using mobile phones is highly unlikely.