The Holiday Season is upon us and primarily that means lots and lots of family time. And while in these few weeks you may meet just a few too many uncles and cousins, it's very likely that there's plenty more of them. So this year on Christmas day, me and my cousin sat down and asked our grandfather to list out all his siblings and first cousins and their kids and grand kids--basically a family tree. Surprisingly, we realized we had never even met many of our second cousins.

(a picture of my big Indian family tree-excuse my very poor artistic abilities)

In fact, the family tree still has some gaps we were unable to fill.

Now of course the reason we've never met them isn't because we were trying to preserve our pure-blood status, like the Black family, but simply because we live far apart--in different countries and continents and sometimes it can be difficult to keep in constant touch with extended family members. We decided to change that and I'm currently in the process of tracking down phone numbers of all our cousins and adding them to one big Whatsapp group. It's a bit of a task--but it's immensely fun. So many of my family members are living starkly different lives and rediscovering our roots is a surprisingly exciting experience.

Now my grandfather tried taking me back another generation, but my head was still reeling from all the names from just 3 generations. Once I wrap my head around this maybe I will go another step back. But tracing your genealogy is a task I highly encourage everyone to partake in. Asking the older members of your family is certainly the best way to start but there are also tons of websites like http://www.genealogy.com/ , https://familysearch.org/ etc that can help you map out your family trees--just google it! You'll also find out interesting facts about your ancestors--I found out that my great great grandmother was the first person to own a car in her town.

So before your grandma leaves to go back home, try to get her to give you the deets on your family line: dig out old photographs, family heirlooms, anything--it's a great bonding experience on a journey of self discovery!