A normal household in India used to be a joint family of Grandparents, parents, you and your siblings and 2–3 uncles, aunts and their kids. Now it’s changing rapidly and nuclear families are getting more and more common. But one thing which has always been common is problems in families, whether it’s joint or nuclear, there have always been problems. Many people of today won’t get to see this world ever again, neither the love and affection of their grandparents nor the fights of a joint family and all they would have is their parents, sometimes even that also is questionable.

I am a born and raised Hindu and Hindu practices have been part of my life throughout. There have been phases when they didn’t make any sense to me and felt kind of forced upon me; there have also been phases when I have outright rejected them but now I am in a phase that I try to understand the rationale behind such practices instead of just dissing them and try to follow them with respect and if they make sense, I try to make them part of my life.

My family was a joint one and just like any big family, it had its own share of problems. Occasional fights, bruised egos and not talking to another member of the family for weeks and sometimes even months despite living under the same roof was something very common. Also, my family was and still is a very Dharmik one, people read all kind of scriptures in my house and there is vast collection of Dharmik Books from GitaPress, Gorakhpur. After reading famous RamCharitManas multiple times my father found something out of it which should be implemented in real life and he tried to discuss it the whole family which itself was a kind of big deal just to make them all sit together.

He decided that every younger member of the family will touch the feet of all the members elder to them just after waking up in the morning. He found this in RamCharitManas, where there is a verse which reads:

प्रात:काल उठ के रघुनाथा ।

मात-पिता गुरु नावहि माथा ।।

“After he wakes up in the morning, lord Ram bows down to his mother, father and his guru”

Lord Rama bids goodbye to his father Dashrath before leaving for exile

He replaced ‘bowing down’ with touching feet, which is another form of respect in Hindu philosophies and it had to be started from next morning. Not to forget that all the members in my family were ego maniacs, meaning my younger uncle wouldn’t talk to my mother and my father properly, my elder uncle wouldn’t talk to his father and my father properly and I wouldn’t talk to my brother properly but this is something which we all agreed upon and it had to be followed. At that time it was not in mind that it would bring peace in family but just that it was another way to interconnect ego-maniac individual Hindus.

My younger uncle used to wake up earliest in the morning and go for a walk and when everybody else woke up, by that time he used to come back. It is common in villages to sleep under open sky. Like every night I was sleeping under open sky at that night too and in the morning when I woke up, I saw him touching feet of my elder uncle. I closed my eyes. I was 7 or 8 years old at that time.. But since it was the order, I had to follow it too because someone who was not on very good terms with my dad was already following it. I woke up and went to my grandfather and touched his feet. My grandpa used to give a lot of blessings, countless numbers of them. And with little shyness, I went ahead and touched feet of all family members. When I went to my mother, touched hers too and asked if Uncle did the same, she told me that he did which was little unbelievable.

This practice was not for a day or for one member that we could choose which day and which member to respect. So coming to the improvement part, now since the day used to start on good terms, it usually used to end at the good terms too and if something bad happened one day it was for sure that the next day won’t be the same and all the members had to meet each other again next morning showing respect for each other. No matter how bad last fight was, touching feet never stopped, blessings never stopped and now instead of fighting, my younger uncle with other family members used to sarcastically take a jibe at them because it was him whose ego got most affected by this simple practice. This simple gesture worked like a magic.

We still follow this rule in our family, even though some of us are not part of joint family anymore but whenever we meet, it comes back into practice automatically. It doesn’t mean that all the problems in my family got vanished like phew, but 90% is still a good number because most of the time it was just the ego and not other problems. It also goes against the popular saying that ‘You don’t need religions to be a good person’. I disagree on two counts, first, all religions are not same so be careful on that and since they are not same, they don’t preach same thing so we do need non-organized religions to be a better person, better family and better society.