*Enter family name here*

I love being a *Enter family name here*!
It’s bloody amazing.
I know I complain a lot but I’ve had the most amazing childhood ever. Sure a lot of stuff wasn’t nice and quite a lot of my life would scandalize normal people but I just wouldn’t be me without it and at least it was never boring.
Ha! Understatement of the century…… my life has never been boring.
Thing is, I live in a joint family. 14 of us in one bungalow and four other kids besides me. In descending order-
My elder brother- lets call him He-who-should-not-be-spoken-of-at-least-in-polite-company.
Me.
My cousin- lets call him Monty. 6 months younger than me and the bugger who knows most of my secrets. We’re pretty close.
My other cousin- Fuzz. A year and a half younger. Completely insane. The only other girl in our particular branch on the family ( not counting second cousins and what not)
And the youngest- Monty’s brother- Lion ( thanks to a disturbing tendency as a child to claw at people’s faces…… we used to consider it an act of courage to venture near his playpen). He’s four years younger than me.
And at the other extreme- my grand aunt Ella. She has to be the most interesting person in our family. My friends used to wait for her to show up for mass so they could see her latest hat.
My favourite would have to be the purple velvet and black lace number.
We’ve actually lost count of how many hats she owns.
She used to give us piano lessons as a kid ( having learnt for Sir.somethingortheother while India was still under British rule) and her wing of the house used to freak us out. She’s got these bloody huge writing desks that are more than 300 years old, barrels full of reaaaaaaaally old stamps that could probably buy her a lot of new hats, more wardrobes than I want to know about -and I’m pretty sure at least one of them could take you to Narnia or somewhere equally as interesting but I’ve never bothered to look because I’m also pretty sure most of them also contain things that would love to eat me- and her beautiful grand piano among other things….. honestly, I could go on for ages.
She’s a real card. She fights with the rest of the family but the two of us get along pretty well. She keeps saying she’s an old fish and I keep telling her she’s an old bat.
She’s actually pretty interesting and its nice listening to some of her stories. It seems our family was pretty well off and whatnot and we lost it all when my great-great grandfather built this house. Seems the contractor ran off with the money and there was a court case that we lost resulting in an even further depletion of funds. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her and her siblings. Imagine having servants to dress you and do your hair and then having to go out and get a job and actually earn your living.
At least that’s what she told me.
Anyway, she’s the one who taught me how to climb trees and she’s the one who broke her arm chasing a rat with a hockey stick and surprisingly enough she’s the one who used to chase the boys playing cricket off the street and then off our mango tree and then away from our coconut trees and then off the street again.
Most people hate going to cemeteries but I love them. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal or into necrophilia, it’s just that, well, so many of my ancestors are there. It’s nice to stand there at the family plot on All Soul’s Day with my cousins and joke about my grandparents and walk across to my grandmother’s side of the family’s resting place and see the old lady who comes to visit one of my grand uncles every single year with a lone candle. ( they used to have an affair… it’s the cutest thing ever though I’m sure the rest of the family didn't agree at the time.)
And afterwards, we all go to gokul to get some ice cream… it’s tradition. It’s nice. Not fun, just nice.
The general idea in my family is we’ll beat on each other as much as we like but when it comes right down to it, it’s us and the rest of the world. We beat on each other because we’re family… don’t you dare try. At least, that’s what I like to think.