narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

“Relatives cannot be ‘chosen’ but friends can be. It’s obvious that you ‘choose’
someone who you like, with whom you have a ‘heart-to-heart connection’. Atmiya
in the ‘real sense of the term’ should mean people who you wish to individually
connect to and not ones you are related by blood.”
Third generation Boudhayan’s narrative is significant in terms of the way he defines the
‘actual’ meaning of atmiya,
“Friends are much ‘better’ than atmiyashwajan. In fact, if we take the actual
meaning of atmiya, then only ‘true friends’ can be regarded as atmiya.”
In Boudhayan’s narrative, the first usage of atmiyashwajan is the conventional structural
meaning of kinsmen related by blood or marriage. The second usage according to both
him and Arjun is the “real” sense of the term. The meaning of the word atma from which
atmiya is derived means the soul. Shwajan means people of the self. Atmiyashwajan
therefore are ones who are connected through the soul, and are of the self; with whom
one feels ghonishtota (intense closeness) or antarangata (intimacy) and who can only
be ‘chosen’ and threfore “true” friends. ‘True’ or ‘real’ friends have been narrativized as
emotionally more supportive, trust worthy and less judgemental than less satisfactory
familial spaces particularly in its extended form.
This shift from the institution of kinship to that of personal friendship or a shift from
structure to agency, from family obligations to individual wish, constraint to choice,
denotation to connotation is however, much more complex than it appears on the
surface. I will argue in this context that denotation and connotation are integrally
intertwined with mediations of the ideological in both (Heck, 1980: 116). Subjective
connotations and individual ‘wishes/choices’ are not outside of family structures and
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