My paternal grandparents had 13 children. At 96, my aunt is the oldest living member of our extended family now, and for her age, I hear, she is doing great. The last time I saw her at a wedding three years ago, she was at her jovial best and even joined us for an impromptu jig. Knock on wood.

Being part of a large family comes with its special perks. Every gathering becomes a jamboree, with uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, grand nieces and grand nephews filling the marquee with their laughter and chatter.

It also brings to the table a lifetime’s worth of stories and experiences from our older folks. We have spent hours listening to them, picturing them prancing around in their native place in Kerala. It was an egalitarian set-up where my aunts would rival their brothers in every department of the growing up game- from climbing over walls, scaling up the trees, diving in the pond to running races and acting in plays at school, they did it all with aplomb. At the risk of sounding utopian, I must say that bias was unknown and boundaries were non-existent then.

I have grown up listening to their escapades and adventures. Appa would bring the days of yore alive, his stories underscoring the laidback nature of childhood in his time. The anecdotes are lodged somewhere in my memory, flashes of which appear only occasionally now. The frequency of their emergence has decreased after appa’s passing, but a few fun facts, like how my grandmother and my eldest aunt delivered their 11th and 1st children respectively around the same time remain clearly documented in my memory.

When I grew up, I figured that I had nephews and nieces older than me, and my grandmother had fraternal twins (one of whom is my eldest aunt). This aunt’s granddaughter then had fraternal twins too, which of course isn’t rare considering it can be a genetic affair. But what is certainly uncommon is this-

Today, my eldest aunt became the great great grandmother of my cousin’s and niece’s grandson. You read it right. Great great. Twice. And my cousin and niece are husband and wife.

I know, it is not easy to wrap one’s head around it and I resist the temptation to explain it further. But that’s what makes this family unique. At 96, the grand old lady has seen her fifth generation and I wonder how awash with emotions she must have been when she received the news of her granddaughter becoming a grandmother!

The more I think about it, the more ecstatic I get. And I am not surprised at the surge of emotions.

There are occasions when glad tidings from distant places, from people whom you haven’t met in a long while, about events that don’t have any direct bearing on your life can still make you feel euphoric, as if all the joy in the world had distilled into that one extraordinary moment. As if the vibes of that phenomenal occurrence had wafted across the seas and reached your doorstep. As if partaking in that sterling event was in your destiny. It was a moment that reminded me that not all our happiness comes from what happens to us. Sometimes, the joy of other people is what can sustain us. It is their shared delight that can lift our flagging spirits and put the bounce back in our sagging lives.

Zayden Iyer,

Welcome to this marvel of a family. And thank you, for bringing us this unprecedented joy. God bless you.

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