We often invoke the phrase “the personal is political” to emphasise that private life (love, marriage or parenthood) is not beyond the machinations of power. But we miss how the political becomes personal in return. How economic forces shape our most intimate breakdowns, how care is driven by guilt and the structure is a kind of silence. This fourth and final essay in the series traces the emotional and structural weight borne by families in post-liberalisation India. While earlier essays looked at academia, private institutions and their public counterparts, this one looks at the home, the place we return to after work.