It's a family thing

Strange thing about families...

We were driving home from a wedding reception the other night..with us was Old Relative..all of us enclosed inside the car...no escape routes visible..

Now, I rate traveling in a closed space with relatives, right up up there, a close second behind waking up to find myself buried alive in a crypt.
Anyway, we were not long into this claustrophobic ride into the night, when Old Relative turns to me and says: Why are you vegetarian? Is it because you are FAT?.....

Dead silence....
Old Relative is older than my birth mother...husband's much older sibling..
I expect gracious polite Madras charm...instead I get crass, rude, not to mention crude and cruel Chennai behavior..

I do have some excess adipose tissue on my person...Okay, several excess kilos...but still....

Spouse looks silently out of the blackened window at non existent scenery, it makes JFK, the driver, miss the speed breaker and land on a pot-hole....


That should pass......
But it doesn't..

"Then WHY??... Tell me, tell me.....," he persists...Much like the Tamil comedian Vadivelu saying "C'mon.. Talk me, talk me.." in that movie clip that Winner and I so love to watch..

I mull over this and wonder...now how do I field this one? Should I turn this into a general question as in "Are vegetarians slim?"......"

Anyway, why are relatives so obnoxious to their own families? Should they strut out their very worst to those bound to them by ties of blood?

Several instances come to mind...
Times when we have gone to eat out...times when I have had someone turn to me and say, "the food was awful today.." With deep emphasis on AWFUL.......I did not cook the food, I only helped pay the bill...even then....

How about some grace here? Some sensitivity? ...Am I expecting too much? Do we reserve the best for those who are not family? Is family supposed to lump everything? Is this an Indian thing?....

If it is, then it is another one we need to change real soon...