Micro Social Safety Net

My wife grew up in a joint family. Her father was the eldest among six brothers and two sisters. When I married four brothers and a family friend Surendra Nath Mishra stayed under one roof with their families and the other two stayed at the places where they worked but had strong roots in the main set-up. The two sisters were married and stayed with their husbands. Except for their bedrooms, everything else was for common use; kitchen, living room, guest room, toilets, courtyard, kitchen garden and you name it. They shared furniture, and household items like fridge, washing machine, etc. Not that everything was hunky-dory, there was bickering quite often. Particularly, this was more apparent as each unit’s income was more than sufficient for their comfort and luxury needs. Ego sometimes came on the way. But they realized that the advantages of staying together far outweighed these trivialities. I am happy, even after nearly four decades of my marriage, the elders continue living as one unit.

Initially, I thought a joint family set-up made a lot of sense from the economic point of view. But certain developments made me think otherwise. On November 10, 1992, my 21-year-old brother-in-law, Dipu, drowned in the Mahanadi. One can well imagine to what depth of despair the tragedy would have pushed my parents-in-law. I could feel how the joint family set-up shared the misery and helped my parents-in-law to absorb the shock and recover from it. In her late sixties, my mother-in-law became seriously ill and had to be admitted to an ICU as she slipped into coma. She recovered but needed constant nursing and care. She preferred to live in the joint family even after her husband passed away as the socio-psychological security kept her vibrant and cheerful. I have also heard from my wife, how in her younger days the joint family had stood by them when my father-in-law went through a lean patch due to professional disturbances.

After my marriage, more surprises unfolded. My mother-in-law was from an even larger joint family from a village in western Odisha. Her father and his two brothers stayed together; amongst them, they had thirty-six children and thankfully, each of them had two children only. Later on, they got dispersed due to marriages and professional compulsions, but inter-unit bonding remained intact. One of my uncles-in-law, Dulu Mamu, who settled in the USA, is a binding force. He and a few of the elder brothers in the family played a major role in facilitating career planning and marriages of younger siblings. He comes home every year and organises get-togethers of all his cousins, a gathering of about 150 people (this he is continuing even in his late eighties). Although I enjoy the frolicking, my embarrassment comes from not promptly recognizing seventy-odd uncles/aunts-in-law and an equal number of brothers/sisters-in-law.

My wife being the eldest in the family, I was endowed with umpteen number of beautiful sisters-in-law (salis), evenly distributed in all age classes, quite a number of whom were born even after my marriage: Owner’s pride and others’ envy! But sadly, I was a jijjaji more like Om Prakash in Hindi Film “Chupke Chupke”; highly revered, but dismissed as romantic material. In the initial months of marriage whenever I went to my in-law’s place, I got mobbed by salis and certainly loved spending most of the time with them. Their parents didn’t force them to study when I was around. Being the first jijaji for that generation, I was their “Raymond’s Complete Man”. They had myriads of queries; very divergent in nature as their ages ranged between one to eighteen. It was both interesting and entertaining to address those. In due course, I became a close confidante to several of them. They preferred seeking my indulgence and guidance on matters which they were not comfortable sharing with others, particularly the elders. And I was too happy to oblige. I have a sense of fulfilment that I was indeed a good Samaritan.

However, Geetu the eldest of them had announced from the very beginning that as the younger sibling of my wife she would exercise proprietary rights over me. She was in her first year of graduation when I got married in November 1985 and I took upon myself the onerous responsibility of involving myself in all her matters till her marriage five years later. She married Arun Prasad Das, a soft-spoken and suave person, an officer in NABARD. Besides being an efficient officer, he is a very well-read person and a connoisseur of classic English movies. Our two families got along very well. Although most of the time we stayed in different locations, we were in constant touch and met frequently. I always wished we stayed together. Arun retired as Chief General Manager of Dehradun region and we cherish staying together at Bhubaneswar.

My wife’s cousins, from her father’s side, continue the warmth of fraternity even now, after getting married and settling down in life. They maintain their differentiated individual identities, but, when need be, can seamlessly integrate into a monolith. They meet frequently over drinks and dinner. And I continue to be their ‘big brother’. Their surviving parents also meet regularly. But our next generation couldn’t maintain that as our families went nuclear and they lived in various places. My two daughters hardly have any connect beyond their first cousins.

In a circus a net is hung below performing trapeze artists, ready to catch, in the event they slip or something untoward happens. Along similar lines, through a close-knit among its individual entities, a joint family provides a safety net for all the members during a crisis. However, due to globalisation, modernisation and easy mobility practicality of the joint family system has waned considerably. Social safety nets have become weaker and smaller. Insurance systems have gained ground for financial providence. Better and easier access to psychologists and psychiatrists is taking care of an emotional crisis. Yet, I feel there is still a need for micro-social safety nets, at least at the immediate family level.