When Sandhya went to visit her son, Gopal, in the US, his wife and he were delighted. Sandhya was always a very welcome guest. A sweet-natured, accommodating person, she easily fitted in to their household. She found ways of keeping herself occupied and was never bored. She was happy to eat whatever was produced, and equally happy to produce meals when required. Uncritical and non-interfering, she adjusted without difficulty to their lifestyle, different though it was to hers.

However, there was one area where she drove her son crazy. This was her insistence that Gopal and his wife, Megha, got in touch with the numerous relatives they had, scattered all over the US. Gopal and Megha had been living in America for years without contacting these relatives, and saw no reason why they should now. In fact, they did not even know of the existence of many of them. Nevertheless, Sandhya continued to badger her son to contact them. For instance, “Your father was very fond of his father,” she would say of a second cousin of Gopal’s. “The least you can do is give him a call.”

Finally, Gopal snapped. “If you want to see him, or any of the others, I will get their telephone numbers and make arrangements for you to visit them, but we are certainly not going. In any case,” he added, delivering the final coup de grace, “I haven’t seen any of them falling over themselves to get in touch with us, or even you!”

But the last thing that Sandhya wanted was to see these relatives on her own. The whole purpose of her manoeuvre was to earn brownie points for her family. If her son contacted all these relatives, he would be seen as a dutiful member of the family, better than the sons of her contemporaries! Apart from this, how would she face the folks back home if she had to confess that her son was not interested in his relations?

Is garnering family approval for one’s children something that comes with advancing years? My own mother behaves in much the same way as Sandhya. The first thing she insists on when we spend a holiday with her is a round of visits to sundry cousins, aunts, and uncles. Over and above this, she is constantly prompting us to write and wish them on their birthdays, or congratulate them on various successes or express condolences on bereavements. Whenever we travel, we are presented with a list of relatives’ names to visit. It’s again the brownie point syndrome at work, and as with Gopal, it irritates me beyond measure.

But am I taking the same route? I have just remembered that I recently insisted on my son calling on a distant uncle whom he has never met!