Siblings and secrets..S for Sathya..

People who have grown up with a brother or sister at home will have innumerable memories. Memories that are powerful enough to moisten your eyes and put a smile on your face. The memories that are a gateway to your childhood. What wouldn’t we trade to get back to a life without any commitment? I wish…
As we grew up in the same household with 5 + years age gap, stealing sibling’s food, blackmailing them to not spill our secrets, jasoosing and eavesdropping on them, a victory dance every time they got punished, pretending tothe rule maker during parent absence .. oh! Well, I can keep adding. I am sure we would love to re-live all of it again. I guess these silly bickering and meaningless fights strengthened our bonds, and memories of it still keep lightening our present mundane life.
Being born with a considerable age gap makes the firstborn prematurely graduate into an “elder one” at the not so old age of 5. The elder one call occurs specifically during the sibling fight. It stays this way from the younger one’s toddlerhood through adulthood. … Only our parents can reason it out and answer why it is so ?
My not-so-tiny sibling used to follow my footsteps / actions in all literal sense. Right from ordering food in a restaurant to wearing clothes..oh, don’t be surprised, he wanted to wear my long skirt ( yes HE did) and got to wear it too. It didn’t end just there , he had wanted matching footware collection similar to mine, chill out with friends whenever I got to, insisted on learning to ride a bike when I learned to, all of this conveniently forgetting the age difference . I remember throwing tantrums during those days and ended up being reminded by parents for being such a spoilsport and that he took me as a role model. Seriously? Role model? Parents just didn’t get the competition there.
He would wait untill I ordered food and blurt out same order only to complain about how his order wasn’t the same way as mine (it always was either too hot or too cold ) just to exchange his with mine. He won most of the time because of that age gap card. Episodes at home were not too far from it. Both of us loved eating from amma’s hands. He would eat 3 times faster than me, leaving a bawling me. Sharing food was a perpetual problem in our household.
His mathematical skills would shrink if he was asked to share his favourite food. Maggi, Poori-masaal would be shared in 5:95 ratio and chow-chow kootu 98:2. Yes, he disliked some food, too.

Coming to that, If I am asked to compare and review the milk supplement brands that had been doing rounds since 1990’s like viva, Maltova, Cadbury, Boost, Horlicks, Bournnvita, complan, Ragimalt I am sure win top notch food reviwer awards. All thanks to him. His criteria to select a drink supplement was purely based on the freebies they gave out. It just took one shuttle bat, tennis ball, some crappy car, etc, for that supplement to shake hands and become friends with our kitchen spices. In a day or two he would get bored of the drink and focus only on the freebie despite that “mother promise -” I will drink this all by myself this time” Oath, he would take front of the store cashier uncle right before billing, every damn time. And, my parents turned in to a life coach to make me drink the one their son lost interest on using the same “he is a small boy- he will understand when he grows up , you are showing him the right way” card.
Stealing food from the fridge and leaving behind a sobbing elder sister was a daily scene at our place. He stuck to his creepy practice of buying whatever I bought (P.S. he liked everything), and we stored our respective food packets in different compartments. He inhaled food & I nibbled it, one quality which didn’t change with age. But of our shares lasted the same duration. There is no way that one could consider the possibility of me finishing my share faster or him getting down to stay at my pace. But till today, the mystery of who stole my share remains unresolved, even after physical fights.

Once, my father took us to my mum’s friends place . They were warm people who extended good hospitality by placing some regular biscuits in front of us with tea. Courteously, my father refused it, saying we all were done with our dinner. Not to forget that we were never into busicuits at home.. So my father did not see a point of having them to open the entire packet for us.
But my brother, who did everything different from the usual behavioural pattern, started eating from that plate. Before he was done with 2nd one, we stood up to leave. They politely offered him to take 2 busicuits to eat on our way back. My father cordially denied, only to find his little son pocketing few biscuits in both his shirt and pant pockets.
And also he innocently looked at my father and questioned “when they are asking me to take it, why are you stopping me” and walked out with that entire packet. For records, he never liked those biscuits and did not eat them too.
Once someone from our neighbourhood had kept his lunch bag outside his house before leaving for work and had went inside to pick up something. As soon as he returned, he noticed his missing lunch bag. The commotion went on for sometime, till people decided to forget that bag and move on with real world. Suddenly my paati found an extra bag at home. The 3 year old sushed her and asked her not to shout as the old man might come back to steal it. She made him understand that the bag belonged to the man and not us, which wasn’t accepted by him. Then after showing the other similar bag we had at our place, she convinced him and returned it back. Isn’t it cute. For my mom this incident has so much meaning attached to it and she frequently brags about her son’s IQ level, quoting this incident even now, probably she might tell his offspring too ( unga appa appa ve avlo smart).
During our physical fights I would have hardly touched him, yet he exceeded Mark Zuckerberg in extending invitations to solve the murder mystery and become police officer.
That always ended up in a sorry state, as both of us were equally punished.
He used to drop me off at the bus stop everyday for the full 4 years of my college life. The distance between the stop and house was short for me to complain about his road sense and also both of us used to sleep ride. After college, once I rode pillion with him and kept giving him road tips and traffic rules tips all through the way. He was irritated and suddenly stopped the vehicle in a corner of the most busiest road (pondybazar), got down and walked away even before I held the bike. I fell down and the bike fell on me. That was enough to attract the attention of a shocked crowd, who came to my rescue. Two people in the crowd piped in to give me some free advice “We don’t understand how you girls believe such rude guys and love them. This fellow will leave you in the streets”!!. Even though I was hurting, I smiled and told them he was my own brother. They grinned sheepishly and walked away. When I look back today, I miss all those fights, his childishness (not that he has grown up now😎), and bossing around him. I have many more stories to tell, lifelong memories to share. Happy ones, angry ones, poignant ones and those that can easily get lost in the real time, day to day life challenges. I am Grateful to God for giving me such a naughty and angry sibling who is still the chinna payyan of our house, “according to my parents”.
Few of my college friends had dropped in after college. At the end of our closed room round table discussion about some college crap, we decided to go for a walk and of course indulge in some chaat . My left out darling Younger brother asked for a CREAM BUN and I refused to get him (he anyways got it through other means) . He threw tantrums, blackmailed and threatened. I admonished it. So, he revenged me by spitting out all my previous NOT-SO-GOOD gossips that I have had with my mom about one of the friends right in front of her, very casually.
I was so shocked that actually my brain had stopped working as he continued to blurt out all the mean”est” things In front of her- about her . I watched her reactions to it like a Wimbledon final set. Once he was done I just wanted to vanish from that place. Was angry, embarrassed and shocked beyond the realms of reacting. .
.
The major contribution for such an emotional disaster was not the actual spat but the fact that he did THE DAMAGE for what, JUST FOR A CREAM BUN!!!. (Even though I agree those days the bakery wala #cream-buns were such a delicious evening treat)
Somehow chided him, convinced her and stormed out with my friends….
After returning, I persuaded my parents to give him out for adoption. I tried my best convincing them that he was not their baby and probably got exchanged in hospital, which was unsuccessful like the previous infinity times.
May Karma work and God bless you with over dramatic off springs and same God make your nephew a caring, sweet guy well behaved kid.
Except for the picture I drew rest of the images were taken by googling…
Credits to the original sites which had them