‘Love is all you need’ 

If a microbe has made one thing clear, it’s that you can avoid them during a pandemic, but not your family! I wanted to write this month because I do not think there has been a time before where the world has been in need for some genuine love. We wait for virtual affection sitting in bed alone, we sit together at the dining table with our noses in our phones- if we catch each other eating dinner at the same time that is. Before microwaves, refrigerators, televisions and fast food were invented, you ate when mom fed you, you caught up over a hot home-cooked wholesome meal, you had a conversation so you could get to know each other as people, outside what it meant to be a family. Before covid-19 this was reserved for national holidays, where the only thing being spoken about is ‘how different you look since we last met’. We had lost the art of taking the time to get to know the very people we share a living space with. But Covid-19 has forced us to be more involved in our hearths. Oh yes, it’s been messy and painful at times, but I cannot express how grateful I am, in words or kind, for being given this gift to reconnect with my family, the love I have felt, and that I feel writing this article can only be described as a high. 

I grew up in a joint family of two dozen people ranging over three generations, with people to look after me at any given point in time, but I always took them for granted. Especially when I was in Scotland for 5 years pursuing a Master’s degree in Classical Studies. A family I previously lived and ate with every day, I only saw during the holidays. Living in Scotland for so long had also offered me a certain freedom of life I failed to receive in Bombay, that when I returned, I had problems with communicating and expressing myself and my thoughts. For the first six months I was at loggerheads with anyone in the house who chose to indulge me in conversation. I had spent a whole year not talking to some of my family that I had grown up with because of petty arguments. When I came back to Bombay, I had forgotten what it felt like to be a part of my own family. That is till we all spent 8 months coping with lockdown together.

Right before safety measures had started being implemented anywhere in the world for covid-19, my dadi died, after 3 years of battling an aggressive form of lymph node cancer, she was our mama hen, and her death left a hollowness in all of us, and I have to admit I thought nothing brought a family together like grief. But something wonderful happened this year, my dad (the oldest of the second generation) turned 50, so all the adults of the family (about a dozen of us) took a trip together to the mountains in the north of India for a week to celebrate. Most nights we sat around a fire, feasting together, we danced into the night, and went rafting in the day to freshen up. There is no space for an elephant and bottle of wine in the same room!  I was also given an opportunity to get to know each of them better as people, and during planning this trip I was marvelled at how so many people can put their own “ego’s” aside to create something so beautiful and wholesome- a trip I know all of us will remember full of memorable positive sentiments that we carried back home with us, that will only magnify as time passes. Nothing brings people together like love, not grief, not death, not hate. 

Hestia, the Goddess of hearth is one of the lesser-known Olympian Gods today, but in ancient Greece she was the most highly regarded Olympian, the Greeks offered libation, and sacrificed first to Hestia in their household or otherwise, then to other Gods. She is a personification of home and the soul of family. I am so glad to have rekindled mine. If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s what it means to be a family, why the Greeks gave family so much importance, and how unique and unconditional the love is. Dan Buettner’s coined ‘blue zones’ are places where people live longer than anywhere else for example Okinawa in Japan or ’the island of longevity’ for the number of centurions living there still. They press that one’s social network or moai can affect your health. Jim Rohn even said ‘you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with’, so ‘call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.’ Go find yours, and if you have one, nurture it. 

This article is more an ode to mine.

Written By Taabish Rayani

I was born and bred in Mumbai, but I consider myself a resident of Pangaea. I’m a stick and poke tattoo artist, I like dogs more than humans, and I would rather read an ancient satire by Aristophanes, than watch a Marvel movie (I know, what a classical gyp). I believe life is happy if you are the person your dog thinks you are!

Week 8, February 2021