Keeping it in the Family

It is with a heavy heart that I write this last post from Calcutta, leaving behind the land of my fore-mothers to head back to the flash and glamour of Delhi. I shall miss you, Cal. I will miss your 113% humidity, your unending traffic jams, your air the color of kajol-lined eyes. I will miss the kathi rolls, the guavas for Rs. 2 each, the hilsa fish (chockfull of tiny sharp bones), the deep-fried everything. Most of all, I will miss my fellow Bongs. Those brilliant, funny, exceedingly talented peoples of Bengal. Is it any wonder, given the clear genetic advantage we possess, that we might frown upon diluting its power through miscegenation?

“Modern science” and “genetics” tell us that in-breeding is “bad.” Those “experts” claim that continued intermarriage and procreation with close relatives increases the likelihood of otherwise recessive genetic disorders and birth defects. They might even say that the practice of marrying only in a particular strand of a particular last name of a particular caste of a particular religion of a particular geographic region actually results in the continued marriage between cousins. They would be right, of course, but what is the harm? If those cousins happen to be especially tall, fair, homely, sober and adjustable—with well-matched horoscopes, what’s the problem in keeping all that good stuff in the family? Seems like good marriage politics to me. Just because Bengal has the highest occurrence of albinism in the world, a genetic disorder which otherwise has a .007% statistical likelihood of manifesting itself, doesn’t mean that the Bengali genes have started resembling the pulpy, truncated, and deformed mash of their West Virginia counterparts. We are, after all, a culturally and intellectually progressive people. We do not frown upon marrying outside the People because we are prejudiced, chauvinistic and moderately incestuous. Bengalis would welcome marriage with outsiders if they could simply prove, with a degree of genetic and astrological certainty, that the union would result in children as obedient, bookish, and hirsute as those produced through the proper channels. But until we see some properly documented and referenced proof (please include statistical tables in appendix), we’ll just keep doing it the way we have for the last seven millennia, ok? I mean, what’s a little more hemophilia within the family?