Our family cook Bhagat Ram came to us in Punjab when my father was a child. It was many decades later, just after my marriage that he retired and left for his village in Himachal Pradesh. The in-between years were a lifetime, he never spoke much but the unspoken said it all, he had no children and we were his. He was family.
Since then much has changed, yet even a cursory glance of the last few days will tell you, in our society much has also remained the same.