By DEVANYI BORADE [ducts . org] – The family spared no efforts to chart out the blood line. Memories were taxed, telephone lines were engaged for hours on the end, Society books were dug up and dusted off, the library became an impromptu meeting place for the clan, and even the local post office was not spared. Matters started coming to a head when people broke off in the middle of perfectly normal conversation to start convulsively, gaze into space and make a bee-line for a bit of pen and paper to jot down the uncommon name that had been eluding them for the last so many days.

When it was time to finally commit the entire tree to paper, everyone who was anyone, even the neighbourhood dog, was keen to chip in. First the door-bell was knocked out of order so that the milkman or newspaper boy or sundry others didn’t interrupt. The telephone receiver was similarly taken off the hook. All the furniture in the hall was pushed back up against the wall, leaving a large clearing in the middle of the room. Sheets of newspaper were laid on the floor so as to not get the plans dirty. The notebooks and little scraps of diaries were spread around, ready at hand. The entire household had turned out and was watching the proceedings anxiously.

Dad rolled up his shirt-sleeves and lowered himself heavily down upon the floor. The rest of us crowded in around him. He began by hunting for his glasses. Shirt pockets, trouser pockets, inches of the floor around him, everything was patted and peered at. No glasses. He bellowed out for Mum, who calmly plucked them from where they were hanging down on his chest and plonked them firmly on his nose. Satisfied that he could now see clearly, he then looked around for a pencil to draw some rough diagrams. He took several minutes to decide which one to use from the impressive array of pencils set aside for the purpose – soft lead, hard lead, medium lead, fine lead, thick lead, blunt lead, sharp lead, drawing pencils, copy pencils; enough to stock a small store. The rest of us were getting fidgety. Finally, Grandma poked a bony finger into his shoulder and ordered him to get on with it. Reluctantly, he picked up the first pencil that came to hand and bent over the paper.

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