We Are Family, I Got All My Mallus With Me...

In true Cherukara (for those that don't know, that's the family name) style, us cousins had our own little family gathering - for the first time breaking free of our parents and doing it all on our own.
For you to capture the essence of the Cherukara family, I need to paint you a little picture of what its like being a part of this family, what it's like growing up in this family, the quirks and the traditions of this family.
The head of this esteemed household is the late C.S. George (A.K.A Appacha) A legendary man, a devout christian and a loyal and doting grandfather to us. His sense of humour was incomparable and the stories of his stunts and gimmicks was the stuff that has carried us through many a nights over the years. And being blessed with some members of the family gifted in acting and mimicry, the legend lives on.
Married to the wonderfully kind, understanding and rock solid Annamma George (A.K.A Ammachy)known to us for her faith and love (for us and for god), her tolerance for what life deals her, and (let's face it) the Cherukara men, together they had six children. Yes, SIX children. Who in turn had a total combined number of fourteen children, which is the current running generation of the Cherukara clan.
So this time we stepped up, travelling great distances, putting aside work and other priorities to do some good old family bonding.
So the first thing about the Cherukaras is that we just love our drink. So we kick start our gathering in the afternoon with a couple of beers, followed by a huge, delicious, heart stopping, cholestrol inducing lunch, followed by the requisite snooze.
Come evening, everyone troops downstairs and we have our priorities straight. Keeping with the Cherukara tradition, we have the family photo session. Women seated, Husbands behind their wives, Babies in their laps, and the unmarried folk jump in anywhere (but always, always women in front, men behind) After several dozen photographs have been taken, we troop onto the lawn, dragging our plastic chairs with us and settle into a circle to commence with the drinking. As the alcohol flows, so does the erachi olathiyathu (beef fry).. 2 kilos worth to be precise.
Keeping with tradition, the whole night is being captured on video and of course being photographed, as we swap stories of our memories of our infamous grandfather, stories of our childhood and our numerous previous gatherings growing up.
We are however proud to say that we also did things a little differently. For the first time I think, the women sat and enjoyed the alcohol and conversation as freely as the men did, and the men also took turns helping out with the cranky babies, putting them down for the night. Someone jokingly said perhaps with this coming generation the women may sit around in the circle on the lawn drinking while the men stay indoors with the babies and frying the cutlets. One can always hope..:)
As the night wore on, we drank some more, did some terrible karaoke (I guess the one thing we don't have are the musical genes), and wrapped up the night with a good old mallu dinner complete with Kerala paratha.
All in all it was a grand success. After all our scoffing at our parents for their endless gatherings, somehow I believe that the story of the Cherukara reunions is far from over.