I don’t know about you, but when we were young, we didn’t really look forward to the visits of our cousins. With more than three dozen cousins of different ages, there were reasons for this. The older cousins were almost as good as aunts and uncles. They treated us like children — which we were — and they did their own thing while we did ours. Sometimes, they took us out for treats and then, along with the ice cream and hot chocolate they introduced us to, they themselves fast went onto our list of hot favourites.

Cousins nearer our age, however, were not so easy. When they came home, we were paired off with them and had to include them in our games. Anyone with siblings will know how normal it is to grab what you want, tell each other off rudely, or go to a parent for support or arbitration if you are the injured party. You are guaranteed a fairly just decision — whether it is in your favour or not.

With cousins, that doesn’t happen. Irrespective of what the problem was — one of them could be sitting on us or twisting our arms behind our backs — we invariably got the same spiel from our parents. They were our guests. We had to be polite. We had to share. We had to give them first dibs. We had to mind our manners.

As if that wasn’t bad enough at playtime, it spilled over to meals as well. And there — for our food-loving trio — is where the resentment really built up! Imagine giving them first dibs on the marrow bones and the biggest slice of cake.

There were other ‘administrative’ problems too: Cousins came with their parents and the deluge of people meant that we had to give up our rooms and / or our beds and bunk. This could result in an almost sleepless night as we tussled for space and for the covers. What’s more, Mother would be extra busy — not only with kitchen work, but also with all those late-night conversations with her sisters and sisters-in-law (that we tried so hard to eavesdrop on)! She had no time for us and our petty quarrels — and we resented that.

Thus, gradually, with the passing of the decades, when most of our cousins went their way and we went ours, we did not miss them at all and left it to our parents to keep up their first-degree ties with their siblings and keep us abreast of what was happening in our cousins’ lives.

Then our parents and their generation began to pass on and now we have just one aunt left to keep the flag of the ‘older’ generation flying. Without any offspring of her own, when memory-loss struck her and she could no longer live safely alone, suddenly, she was our responsibility. And equally suddenly, the lines of communication opened between our cousins and us. We were in touch again. Everyone wanted to find out where our aunt was and how she was. While one of us did the major caregiving, it was only natural to approach another cousin when a break was needed.

With all of us equally invested in our aunt’s life, e-mails went back and forth, phone calls were frequent and meetings were forced upon us. We learnt things about our cousins we had not known before and we appreciated the places they had been and the lives they had lived — something we would never have done without this aunt we shared.

She is the glue that binds us together across age differences and across continents. I guess it is another way of illustrating that blood is thicker than water.

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.