The Global Family Dynamics in Virtual Age

My great grand pa used to live in a quaint village surrounded with lush green rice fields. On the edges of the hamlet mango groves garlanded producing some of the finest mangoes of the world. A total of seventy five brick houses with red country roofs were spread along the labyrinth of lanes that would shame international woolmark. On the periphery there were thatched mud houses. Some thick banyan trees used to work as evening club for the denizens. There were a dozen of grocery and miscellaneous items shops. Life was simple but great. This was his city of which my great grand pa was the boss whom almost everyone loved. Most people were content with the income from produces of rice, mangoes and banana.

Once upon a time...

One day a few miles away villagers heard sound of strange looking beasts working on ground. Many of the residents flocked to see them. Amazed, they shot back to my great grand pa for answer. After much coercing he said ‘Pancham George sarkar has decided to lay iron tracks near our village. This will carry huge carts and shall be driven by monsters which drank water, ate coal and spewed steam. We can reach cities faster and bring goods in bulk’. People exclaimed, chuckled and giggled on prospect of riding on chhoo chhoo gaddi. But, there was only a minor smile on the face of my great grand pa, in fact it was grim.

One day...

Soon, the buzz of the area grew successively, and so did my grand dad, son of my great grand dad, and his three siblings.

One day grand dad announced that he is taking the train to the nearby town for job, and may be or may be not, he will comeback to the village to live. And, so did his first brother, and so did his other one...

But, all of them assembled in our cute village twice a year and on special occasions and on fests.

Grand dad built a house, or rather a mansion, in his town. And, so did his brother in his town, and so did his other younger ones in their towns...

Visits to village waned away !

Time passed by, my dad grew into a promising man. For him his father’s town was not enough, he moved to a city five times the size of the town he grew up and fifty times away from his dad, my grand dad. And, so did his brother, and so did his sister.

We communicated mostly thru postal mails, telephone connection was a luxury. But, we communicated. The eagerness of receiving a return mail competed with wait for an incoming passenger train.

I grew up at a rate inversely proportional to rate of waning mails. I grew into a handsome young lad ready with a degree to jump on the train for my future life. But, a train was not enough for me so I had to take a flight. I settled in a foreign land which was five hundred times away from the town as much as it was away from ‘my’ village. So, did my brother, and so did my sister. Our families grew and we were many. Our communications stood stand still.

Time passed by...

Now...

One day my son brought a mirror in which I didn’t see my own face but that of others. I said ‘Mirror,mirror on the wall how do I look?’ And, lo, it said ‘Bro, you are looking great’. Whoa, it speaks also. My bro was sitting three thousand miles away.

There is a Sindhi community. We know how they were uprooted from their homeland, Sindh. They are in a variety of businesses but essentially in retail business. They are spread from Asia to Americas to Australia to Georgia to Zambia to Zimbucktoo. They have retail shops for clothings to electronics to watches to bhel puri. But, they maintain world wide fraternal cohesiveness.

Global family...

Close to this is Bori or Vohra community originating from Western India.

Close to this is Gujarati community from Gujarat who compete well with them.

It doesn’t matter they have Indian passport or those acquired in their resident countries, they coalesce on internal community ‘passport’. And, what has made the difference? The mirror that can mirror a scene thousands of miles away !

They trade within, loan within, help within their community-no matter which city in which part of the country in which part of the world they are located. They work as a mini nation spread all over the globe. They are at different places but at one place.

Conclusion...

I slide back to my great grand pa days. His children moved to various places in the nearby towns. My grand pa’s family spread to various cities. Now my dad’s family including me are radiating to different points of the world. My children are preparing to outdo. It’s a spherical wave front propagation of sound wave, whence every wave front becomes focal point for new spherical waves. There is never a going back.

The age of global pariwar has descended. Farther from home but nearer to home! The concept needs to be implemented now. With ever expanding wave front of work and knowledge it is not feasible to rollback to grand pa days. Add to this new greenfield cities and habitats coming up all over the earth....