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Family fabric... crease-free
BUSY BANSALS: The 20-odd member family of the Bansals in Delhi eats together, stays together. Photo: Sandeep Saxena.
THERE ARE 30 of them. They live together, eat together and have been staying together since 1959 in a haveli in Chandni Chowk, Delhi. It's a family of five brothers - Ratan, Ramesh, Anil, Pradeep and Ajay Bansal. Their unity is reflected in the well-kept secret that they are cousins - sons of two brothers, Vishambhar Dayal Gupta and the late Onkarnath Gupta of Bhiwani.
It all started when they came to Delhi in search of bread and butter and decided to start their family cloth business together, here. The joint business led to a joint family.
Now this family has five women including a grandmother, and 10 children aged two to 20 years. This is one family that reminds one of the saas-bahu soaps, minus the intrigues of vamps and villains. They have one common kitchen and a washroom. They never tried to bifurcate, despite the need and tested their virtues and vulnerabilities many times. "Due to the increasing number of children, problems like who would bathe first would arise almost every day. We decided to take it in turns. During winters, the younger bahu would bathe her children before they went to sleep at night and leave the washroom for the elder bahu's children the next morning, but we never fought on this issue," recalls Beena Gupta, the elder `bahu' of the family.
While the mother-in-law decides the menu for the day, bahus cook together. They wash clothes together too. One bahu washes them, the second squeezes them, and the third one hangs them out to dry. "We never needed any servants despite having a big family," Beena adds.
What about the men of the family? The eldest, Ratan Bansal, looks after the whole business. The other brothers opted to become physicians and chartered accountants. But as time passed, they got married and brought their wives to live in the same family. Today the eldest child Shobit who has just completed his Class XII exams, may be a new generation guy, but hopes that whenever he gets married, his wife should be an addition to this household.
What binds them together? "Now the concept of joint families is passé. If they exist, it is either because of financial reasons, of love and affection, or because they have no option. We live together because of love and affection. We all are earning well enough and can live separately with our families, but none of us wants to leave the family," says Ramesh Bansal, a physician.
"Tolerance, patience and respect are the key words," says Pradeep, known to be the most naughty among the lot. "If our elders scold us, we never answer them back, even if they are wrong. We respect their age, and they love our attitude. This binds us," he adds.
Recently, one of the brothers bought two houses for two brothers because now, the space in this haveli is not enough for the growing children, who need separate space to study, but he had to "dispose of them, because nobody wanted to live separately".
These grandsons of Ram Raj Pal, a freedom fighter who went to jail with Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru and who was bestowed the title of Mahashayji by the Arya Samaj, are now planning to build a three-storey house in Rohini. Each brother's family will take a section and live together, instead of buying separate houses.
The bonhomie doesn't extend to the national family though. Staunch members of the RSS, they believe that Muslims are "anti-national", should convert to Hinduism because their ancestors were Hindu and should feel obliged that they are "allowed" to live in India despite being invaders, as Ramesh Bansal declares.
Never mind. Nobody's perfect!
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