The First Tea: What Traditional Family Values Mean to Me

What is a Traditional Family?

If, like many people today, you are wondering what a traditional family is, maybe you are thinking of old photographs. The ones with stiff postures, unsmiling faces, and a rigid hierarchy across at least three generations. But back in the 1960s and 70s, in our two-room flat in the heart of the city, ‘traditional’ meant something that might sound almost radical to you. 

I am Bhaskar Deogirikar. I raised four children, with my wife and mother, in a space where privacy was a luxury we couldn’t afford. But there were only a few things we didn’t have. I worked two jobs: one as a railway employee and another as an English tutor. My wife managed the household and a small business. Supporting her business wasn’t a ‘progressive stance’ in the 1960s and 70s. It was the simple realisation that a family is a ship with two sails.

I don’t ever remember entering the house with the exhaustion of the sole provider who expected to be served.

What are Traditional Family Values?

If you want to know about traditional family values, don’t ask me about the scriptures. Ask me what I did at 5 AM every day.

In our household, I was the one who made the first morning tea. It wasn’t as much about pampering my wife as about quiet support. After all, every engine needs fuel, especially if it has to chug through a chaotic day. After I left for work, she had to manage the children, send them off to school, tend to the household and my mother, and then work on her own business. Even though I never said so, I knew it was a lot. So a cup of tea was the least I could do.  

To me, traditional family values were about bringing home sweets and flowers for the children on the first of every month. Again, it wasn’t about spoiling them. It was a quiet acknowledgment that while the world was hard, the home must be soft.

Traditional family values, to us, meant travelling whenever possible. Not because we were rich, but because we believed it was our responsibility to introduce our children to their country and all its wonders.

Why is the Traditional Family Declining?

Today, many ask this question. As I see it, the decline isn’t only because of modern technology, changing roles, or stressful workloads. Sure, those might partly be the reasons why the traditional family is declining. But could it be because we have replaced duty with entitlement? That we say more and show more than we do?

The traditional family is declining because we have forgotten what it meant in the first place. Not a set of rigid rules to benefit a few while suffocating everyone. Not a place to vent our frustrations and stoke our egos. But a system where everyone contributes and everyone acknowledges contributions. 

So I am appalled when I hear the younger generation say ‘Real men don’t enter the kitchen’. If you ask me, they not only enter the kitchen but also make tea.