RETURN OF THE FAMILY
From San Jose to St Petersburg, Pune to Mumbai, 55 relatives gathered to celebrate Prashant Deorukhkar’s 60th birthday on Zoom in May. What awaited the former banker as a surprise birthday gift was a video in which the extended family shared their memories of him over the past several decades. In the touching video were 90-year-old aunts, cousins and nieces and nephews as young as five years. It didn’t matter that the revellers were separated by a screen and several thousands of kilometres. “The virtual celebration helped us bridge the gap of distance and time because you need your loved ones to celebrate happy times,” says Deorukhkar’s wife Vaishali. Earlier, getting the entire family together in Mumbai would have been logistically unthinkable. But Covid made them all the more aware of the value of sharing moments with one another.
Trying times often test the strength of relationships and, sometimes, alter them forever. That is something the past one year has proved to a lot of people. The pandemic, which has now been raging across the country for almost a year and a half, has impacted inter-personal relationships in unexpected ways. Relatives and friends from across the globe have come together to celebrate milestone birthdays, estranged couples have buried their differences, warring families have made peace, businessmen have eulogised departed
