Anjali Menon’s Bangalore Days is an ode to cousins and large extended families that used to be the norm. Divya, Aju and Kuttan, the irrepressible trio of the film, showed us just how fun and fulfilling spending time with cousins can be.
The ‘Krazzy’ sisters
Annie a.k.a. Pothay, Vinod a.k.a. Bhaiyya, Asha, Vinitha (Jumeirah Jane), Anitha (Munni), Sunitha, Reena (Porky), Sandhya and Sheetal are the Dubai-based ‘Krazzy’ family. In the words of Sheetal Rajan: “ We are a bunch of liberal, loud, opinionated, passionate and creative women looking for their next adventure with every step we take in life. We are each other’s strengths and some of us are each other’s weaknesses as well. We show our love openly and embarrassingly, confessing our loyalty in full Bollywood pizzazz. No matter what we go through, the foundation of my relationship with my cousins stays solid. When I packed my bags to go to Egypt during the revolution, instead of going into a frenzy about how dangerous it was, they said ‘Keep in touch, be safe and always know we’re right here for you.’ That says it all, really.”
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At their parties, the cousins say that food and fun are primary and all the rest just falls into place. “There’s a lot of dancing and a lot of belly-aching laughter because we’re all a bunch of people that love to laugh at one another as well as ourselves. We play Anthakashari – a lot. Once we were all on Annie’s bed in her house and it literally came crashing down with the combined weight of all eight of us! When the whole family gets together, no one can hear themselves talk, there are a hundred different conversations going on, no one knows what’s going on, and it takes us about 20 minutes to get out of the house because we’re all still talking after having said goodbye a long while back. We’ve done so many picnics that involved sandwiches, cricket, sunburns, food poisoning, someone getting beaten up for having harassed us, beaches, water parks…” says Anitha Jaikrishnan.
‘Subras’ on a roll
Jaisree Ramesh, her brother Jairam, and her cousins Rahul, Anupama, Anjana, and Reshma, or ‘the Subras’ as they call themselves, aged between 18 and 30, may live in countries as different as Germany, Dubai, Malaysia, the United States and India, but they’re each only a Whatsapp away from each other. “Our group is active 24x7 thanks to the different time zones,” says Jaisree, who lives in Germany. “Wherever in the world we are, we have made a pact that we will ring in the New Year with each other. This year we met up in Dubai. Also, if any one of us is coming home to Thiruvananthapuram, we all try to be here roundabout the same time, so that we get at least a couple of days together. Our get-togethers are non-stop yapping sessions, reminiscing about childhood pranks and pulling each other’s legs. We enjoy trekking and dining out together too. Now that some of us have married our group has grown to 11. It has become bigger and better.”
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Globetrotting Gomezs
They are a bunch of 24 globetrotting 30-somethings, the children of eight siblings of the Gomez family of St. Andrews village near Thumba. Marketing executive Gulshan David, who is just back from a wedding-cum-get-together of the cousins in Singapore, says: “Every summer vacation for nigh on 10 years, my cousins and I used to land up at my grandparent’s place in St. Andrews and have a whale of a time climbing the many trees in the extensive backyard and irritating my grandfather! In the evenings we used to hit the beach. It was all incredibly fun and it is here that we all became best friends. Even later, when studies and life took us to different places – Bangalore, United Kingdom, United States, and so on – we made it a point to keep in touch with each other and meet up at least once a year. My cousin Suraj, for example, is my buddy, my adviser-in-chief, always ready with a patient ear. Another cousin, Ramesh, a journalist in Singapore, and I, have the same interests in sports, entertainment, and politics and so on. We often hangout with each other, we party, we travel together…”