Family fundas:Smriti Irani

Deadlines - I hate them. Does that say something about me? The fact is, that I hate being controlled. I am my own master. My sister on the other hand is discipline personified. For her everything is on time. She's so precise it's scary.

At times I wonder whether we grew up on the same planet? It's shocking to know how different we are. I hate mathematics, she loves it. I hated dressing up (still do), she was made for it. I couldn't put two decent sentences together to hold a dialogue (still can't); she's the queen of conversation. Coming from a family, where we both received equal encouragement and attention to ensure that we blossomed into beautiful ladies, we are totally unlike.

Let me tell you why I feel so 'sisterly' today. Of late, every newspaper has a story about how grown-up individuals, who happen to not only share a roof but also genes, are knocking themselves out in a free-for-all-public spat. Even news channels have extended it into a saas bahu saga. Melodramatic break-ups of once happy joint families are becoming hot topics of discussions over chai at kitty parties.

I don't find these fights juicy or funny. I don't think personal dilemmas should become 'news items'. I can't imagine why, in a day and age where frank conversations between family members are a norm, when the generation gap is closing, do relationships break so easily? Many journalists have asked my views on the joint family system breaking down.

To be honest, a family never breaks; people do when ego and greed, jealousy and hate creep in. I have often heard many a debate about how good it was in those 'golden years' when children valued their parents, when parents would invest only in the future of their children. In every act of sacrifice and forgiveness reflected the trust we had in our families.

Today as we grow in stature, as we manage to carve out a niche for ourselves in the world, we forget to carve out that special corner our families deserve. I am not saying that we be saccharine-sweet, I'm not saying that 50 of us live under the same roof and eat from the same chula a la a Sooraj Bharjatiya film. All I say is that we retain the same trust and respect for the people we shared our early lives with.

For every fight that we sisters had, my 'ma' had a simple solution - my sister and I would be locked up in the room, beating the hell out of each other till our bones ached. Then we would sit to sort out "stuff" that sounds so dumb today.

Now as mother I follow the same policy. The only difference is that along with the boxing gloves I throw in the antiseptic. For through the years not only the joys, the sorrows but even the scars prove that we are still family.