In a standard household—let’s call it the Sharma family in a bustling Delhi suburb like Gurugram or a quieter lane in Pune—there are six members: Dada ji (paternal grandfather), Dadi ma (grandmother), Papa (the IT manager), Mummy (the school teacher), Priya (the 22-year-old MBA student), and Aryan (the 16-year-old JEE aspirant).
Indian families love to celebrate festivals and special occasions with great enthusiasm. Diwali, the festival of lights, is a time for family reunions, exchanging gifts, and enjoying traditional sweets and snacks. Similarly, during Navratri, families come together to perform traditional dances like Garba and Dandiya Raas.
The is often criticized as intrusive, loud, and lacking boundaries. From the outside, it looks like chaos.
“Rohan, 34, lives with his parents in a 2-bedroom Mumbai apartment. He works from home. His mother constantly enters his ‘office’ (the bedroom) with snacks. ‘Eat, you are getting thin,’ she insists. Rohan has asked her 100 times to knock. She never does. Yesterday, during an international Zoom call, she walked in holding a banana. Rohan muted himself and sighed. He didn’t yell. Instead, he ate the banana. In India, love is an interruption. To refuse the snack would be to refuse the love.”