Crazy cousins are besties for life ~ Malinda Words

Cousins are the first besties we have, provided of course they are roughly around the same age. Sibling rivalry there is and I suppose in a culture where parallel cousins are considered siblings there could be rivalries among cousins too. Again, provided they are roughly the same age. They may develop into abiding rancour or worse, in the case of siblings or cousins, parallel or cross, but there’s some truth in blood being thicker than water when it comes to crises and moments of truth.

Siblings can become estranged for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people want their children to share their antipathies when this happens. They might insist that they ‘cancel off’ the particular aunt or uncle and the relevant cousins too. This also happens. Then again, there are cousins who will not let the quarrels of their respective parents sully their relationships with one another.

In general, cousins are cool. When they brush off fallout from the suspicions and quarrels of parents, aunts and uncles, they are supercool, really. They take care of the aunts and uncles regardless of whatever tensions exist among those aunts and uncles. They even laugh about it. And they treat each other’s children as if they were their own, rejoicing in their achievements and helping out with a word or deed if they get into some kind of trouble.

That’s what makes a clan. The sensitivity. The empathy. The humour, mostly. And I feel it gets better as one grows older. I see it among my cousins and how my parents relate to their cousins, even though they are all very old and some of them are not exactly firm of mind.

I recently learned that the late Siri Gunasinghe, the well known academic, poet, Sanskritist, art historian and filmmaker generally considered as the key figure in the development of modern Sinhala free verse had once reflected on the importance of keeping in touch with former lovers. He had apparently said that as one grows older they offer the comforts of knowing. There’s affection and caring without all the pitfalls common to young, passionate and romantic love.

It’s the same with cousins. They just know you. They know the blemishes and scars, they are forgiving and most importantly they focus on what’s best in an individual.

Most of all they remember a shared childhood. And things that may have appeared a tad mean at the time all of a sudden become hilarious. Here’s an example.

It happened just after the television arrived. My grandmother would have been close to 70 at the time. She was fascinated by this new piece of technology. One day, while watching tv, she asked my cousin, who would have been around 10 years old or younger, ‘Puthe, now these people in the television, can they see us?’

‘Achchiamma, can you see me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I can see you too. That’s how it is. We see them and they see us.’

She may have been humouring him when she accepted this revelation to be the truth. She had expressed some surprise. My cousin, who just cannot resist an opportunity to conjure wild and hilarious stories, moved in.

‘Do you know that Ruvani Akki has eloped with some man?’

‘Really? I didn’t know. No one told me!’

‘Well, what do you know Achchiamma…aren’t you even aware that Malinda Aiya is running the country with the power of the gun?’

It sounds even more hilarious in the original Sinhala: ‘Achchiamma danne naedda malinda aiya thuvakku balayen rata paalanaya karanava kiyala?’

‘Aney…kohoma hitiya lamaida neda?’ (Oh dear! They were so different as children!).

So we share such stories again and again and find relief from the trials and tribulations of parenthood, work and, simply, living, and partly for the entertainment of our children and our respective parents.

Crazy. Crazy cousins. You know they will not judge you. ‘That’s how he/she is,’ we tell ourselves when they slip, fall, are bruised and battered, bruise and batter one way or another. And we just love them to death. Regardless.

Crazy cousins. Besties for life.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

04 June 2023

Crazy cousins are besties for life

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