The Prodigal Son Returns (Part 2)

Sons and daughters, war and peace, and the rest of that mutton stew story

Dear reader,

There are so many definitions of love. The kind that makes you feel like you can fly, the kind that lets you know people need you, the kind you give yourself in the eye of another storm. Earlier this year, while talking to a loved one, we came to the conclusion that love is, ultimately, freedom.

In Keralite culture, love has always been about obedience. Obey your relatives, obey your parents, obey your teachers, obey your in-laws, obey what society tells you is right. All the thinking has been done. All you have to do is listen. And then we all harbour a deep resentment of society, forgetting who its members are.

For all of India’s favour toward sons, Keralites have had a different take on their child-rearing strategies.

Sure, a boy can stay out late and enjoy the rest of their lives in bliss - but their privilege is ultimately your doom. Your golden boy will forget you as easily as he’s forgotten nearly everything that doesn’t suit him. Take care of a girl child well enough and she will be the one to care for you in your senior years - even if they get married off, they’re more likely to look after you out of emotional need.

Ammamma told me this when I was eight, and I thought it was pretty smart then. Years later, it seems to be just another responsibility insidiously thrust upon us.

While Ammamma hasn’t had to take care of her in-laws or her parents (she was born into some serious wealth, and moved countries after she married my grandfather), her responsibility is always, somehow, the smaller share.

Her son - her golden boy - has taken ample care of her for decades, giving her everything she might want for. Lifetime subscription to Vanitha magazine? Done. A new Samsung tablet to play Farmville on? Easy. In his eyes, there has been nothing she could want for. And yet, when my Mama arrived, all she longed to do was talk to him. The way my Mom talks to her - the way I try to talk to her.

She didn’t care that he still smoked and hid it from her - she didn’t care what amount of money he had been making - she just needed to sit down and have a conversation with her baby. Of course, on this occasion, he was trapped and surrounded by family members - so he took part joyously. But for a woman spending the hours lost in the internet or the kitchen, the continuous social connection she craves is a gargantuan thing to ask for when you’re a millionaire trying to become a billionaire.

In the middle of the longing and the oblivion, I stuck to my strengths and observed - what it is to become old, what it is to grow up so vastly different from each other under the same roof. What kind of conversations siblings have to have, whether it’s eye rolls from their mother’s age-old lectures, or the future of their own businesses. The obedience of their childhood was now loose, feigned - and their own freedoms set in ever so organically.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy, and so at peace being the youngest in the room. My life is still chaos, but striking that transition from obedience to freedom quickly. At that table, I could still hold on to the structure of being someone’s daughter, someone’s niece, someone’s granddaughter.

While we ate that ghee rice and stew, we talked in a language only the Rajs could understand - all of us feeling at home again after years. We were one man down, a couple of kids missing, in a new country, and definitely a new dinner table - but it was just the four of us, sharing a meal and reliving days we didn’t think we’d ever get back.

The Boy Mom in her is staunch, and while she watched his silhouette in the car fade all the way down the road to the airport the next morning, you couldn’t have moved that smile off her face.

I just hope we don’t have to wait another twenty years to eat together like that again.

Hope you’re hugging your family (blood or chosen) tight,

Kaav