In Bangladeshi language, everyone is either brother or sister. It doesn't matter if they are your cousin, neighbor, family friend or someone from your village/town, you refer to them as your elder sister, or your younger brother. I got a rude awakening the first time in America I was celebrating the birth of my cousin's son, and I was strongly corrected by my dormmates that he's not my nephew, he's my cousin's first-born. I like the american drive for accuracy, but I think it's too much detail and most often it is intended to confuse and miss the point. Look at the political debates, and you see too much rhetoric and nitpicking about who said what, but zero substance. So having said that, the baby on the top picture is Anika Farha Aziz, my cousin's first-born's first-born, and I refuse to call her anything but my grand-daughter. She's in the arms of Latif bhai, my brother-in-law (cousin's husband?)
In this picture, my proper niece, Sara, in the arms of Monika, my niece, who happens to be my batchmate. She's a very happy mother, but the baby was cranky because of lack of sleep, or the heat-wave, and cried the whole time.And finally, the whole family, with my sister-in-law, and my cousin, they all gathered around my dad, who kinda looks like Mr. Burns from this angle. Quite a happy family, even though no one is smiling.
