Guest-o-mania

I have always been a person who enjoys people coming home. Be it family, friends, relatives, or just acquaintances, I like to be host to them and talk to them and entertain them. In Dombivli, when I was a school going kid, my grandmother’s siblings often visited us and I absolutely loved the time, when my favorite aaji, Sakhu aaji (grandmother in Marathi) came home to stay. I pestered her to stay longer and longer and never wanted her to go. She had a soft corner for my dad, as she was the one who took care of him when he was doing his military school in Pune.

He was like her son and she completely doted on him. She was also closer to my grandmother than any other siblings and they both often told me the stories of their mom and their childhood and it amused me a lot. Sakhu aaji cooked the tastiest of dishes and I absolutely enjoyed gorging on them. My grandmother’s other sisters and brothers visited us too, but Sakhu aaji was a regular one and she was the most loved amongst all her nieces and nephews. We often went to Mahad, her place, where all my extended cousins also came and we had a blast there!

I have often heard and seen the stories of guests creating a nuisance and I always wondered, if such people really existed in reality. In metro cities, the houses are usually small and when 4 guests turn up for staying, then the whole routine became upset and the adjustments with time, space, and money were hard to make. But as we have the saying, ‘Atithi devo bhav’ (The guests have to be treated as gods), most of the people had a smile on their face while entertaining guests, though it meant a pinch in their pockets. 

After I shifted to Bangalore and got married, our parents regularly visited us. A few relatives and friends came sporadically as coming to Bangalore involves a lot of planning, ticketing, etc. I made a few friends in Bangalore at work and they came home more often than the relatives. They became my family. Now that I am abroad, there is no chance of anyone dropping to my place, just like that for a cup of coffee or a chat. Things have to be planned here and nobody is entertained here without an appointment. I wonder, how mechanical can these countries (and of course the people who reside there) really be, with no human touch and no place for sweet surprises or human errors. Boring, isn’t it?

My general observation: As we move up the economic and social ladder, the contact with people ceases. We become self-centered; we have no social lives in the outside world. We maintain a strictly professional relationship with colleagues in the office and once we are out of the office, we switch off and become slaves. Yeah, we take the help of technology and the virtual world. We mail, we chat; we update status online, but do not talk to people face to face. We no longer host parties or call people home on birthdays, anniversaries? We rather ‘outsource’ the contract to an event planning agency than plan it on our own. Why have we grown allergic to people? Weren’t we once upon a time social beings, those who loved to be in groups? We seem to have forgotten the purpose of our own existence.