''Family" ...

Saw the movie ''English Vinglish'',a couple of days back..... 

Powerful performance ... poignant exploration of human vulnerabilities and a valiant struggle to overcome the same.

What  got the thought process set in motion was - the protagonist towards the end, in a toast that she raises to her newly married niece and her husband, brings forth a very hard hitting  point - a family is a place  where you can be sure that your weaknesses would not be thrown in your face... where everybody would help you to overcome them...and become equal,to other members of the family.

Her frame of reference was specifically what she had experienced,and her angst was coming from the feeling of  'you are lesser than us''....being directed  at her from her daughter and husband- because she was a simple, rather timid, under confident house wife ;who did not know how to speak English or who would cringe in embarrassment  on a PDA from her  husband.

Coming back to what this ''under 5 minute shot'' set me thinking on- FAMILY.

For almost all of us, this is the most fundamental,most influential, often most important social unit in our lives and is often the determining factor - whether we would emerge as happy, confident,self- reliant,  mature citizens of the world or we would turn out to be society misfits - unhappy with ourselves,forever blaming, disgruntled, angry with life and angry with all...

And how many of us, are actually blessed with, a functional normal family ?? How many of us actually have the satisfaction that there is a family for us , a family who will stand by us no matter what, a unit where the relationship will not be a ''socially polite jesture",but would actually mean something, where inspite of differences in opinion, differences of heart would not emerge?

Quite a few of us I beleive - and that is what is keeping the world intact. Inspite of the tremendous socio-economic changes which the Indian society has witnessed over the span of the last 35-40 years-nuclear families, feeble family structures, individualism, openness of expression, changing role of women in society, unashamed ambition, apathy towards the aged - the FAMILY as we have known or expected it to be ... lives...
albeit not as  healthy and happy as we would have wished it to