Are we forgetting our heritage?

Charu Agrawal
Nov 8 · 3 min read

Are we forgetting our culture and traditions? One day during the festival season, this was the point of discussion at our family dinner table.

It started with Navya saying, when she grows up, while she will certainly follow the major Indian festivals, she doesn’t see herself following the other (smaller) traditions. I felt a pang of guilt that maybe I am not doing a good enough job of instilling my culture and heritage in my kids and it got me thinking.

I realized that I myself am not as familiar with the traditions and rituals as my grandmother or even mom were, and my kids are definitely way behind me in that matter.

While I love all the celebrations I don’t celebrate a lot of regional festivals like Sankrat or Teej or Gangaur. Partly because I moved away from home at an earlier age for studies, and even when I was at home, I didn’t pay much attention to things beyond my books and activities, so I never really learnt much about all these festivals and traditions. Also like any other young kid, I hadn’t realized the value and story behind all these traditions growing up. Now being a grown up [its questionable :)] and having read decently, I have a new found respect for a lot of ancient traditions and rituals. Now I strongly believe that they are way more scientific than I had given them the credit for as a kid. And clearly the rise of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy all across the world are indicators of modernity coming at terms with ancient wisdom.

So coming back to self-realization of my parenting lacking in instilling culture in kids, I started to think what traditions we follow at my home. And my realization was nothing short of a sweet surprise. I realized that while as a family we do not follow a lot of traditions that our ancestors followed, but we have certainly picked up a lot of traditions and festivals from different parts of the country and world. Growing up, we never celebrated Halloween or decorated Christmas tree, my grandmom didn’t celebrate “Durga Puja” or even knew about “Onam Saadya”. Having cohabited with different communities in close social circle has enriched our “heritage” tremendously. And it is true for majority of our generation who is truly global citizen. The geographical lines around heritage are getting blurred. So while generation by generation, we might be losing part of our ancestral heritage, we are adding something new. We are all creating our own heritage in the form of rituals and traditions which are more relevant to the times, e.g. every year my family creates Christmas tree ornaments to remember the year gone by, we create story books for all the travels to remember those moments.

So while I cannot make pickles and papads like my grandmother and mom but I can make delicious waffles and thai curry ! I might suck at making rangoli but I can decorate my christmas tree beautifully. So yea, we are losing part of our culture and traditions with time, but we are building new heritage as well. Isn’t this what evolution is all about? I am not saying it’s good or bad…but all I am saying that its part of natural evolution.

We our lucky to have inherited this very rich culture but we cannot stay stuck at it while everything around us is evolving. And if this was the case then we would still be living in caves and fighting with stone weapons. Evolution is the key to our survival and we have to keep up with it to survive.

So yea, I am feeling a little less guilty of being a bad mom, who couldn’t pass on the heritage, I am passing on parts of heritage which are relevant and the rest, I am building it with my family!!

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