The Afternoon Visitors
When I was growing up in Mumbai in the late ‘50s and the ‘60’s, we often had visitors. Or to be precise, my grandparents did. After the many decades they had spent in the south and north of India and my grandfather’s long and steady career in the government’s Ministry of Finance, they had numerous friends and acquaintances in addition to our large and expanding extended family network. In their role as elders, they received visitors who were contemporaries, peers, old friends, their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, other relatives close and distant, removed by varying degrees, kin by marriage or blood or both. Often they would call out to us to join them - my mother and the three of us - to introduce us and explain the intricate connections to us. These visits knit us all into a kind of large colorful social fabric, providing ongoing cognitive stimulus to our young imaginations working out these interwoven webs of relationships in ou