My Bro

When I was just three years old, God saddled me with a burden so heavy, that at twenty-two, I’m still trying to cope with it. ‘It’ refers to my younger brother who has challenged me ever since he learnt how to say ‘no’. When he was little, he was an angel. He used to get me glasses of water from the kitchen, eat the smaller piece of chocolate that I gave him and listen to all my advice. He was so gullible that I used to make up stories about the trials and tribulations of the renegade, Robit Hul and his accomplice, Draculan and he used to get very impressed since, in all the six years of his existence he had not come across stories about Robin Hood and Dracula. He was an extremely adorable looking kid with long lashed eyes and a heart shaped face. A heartbreaker at the age of three, he drove young girls and aunties crazy with his baby talk. And how the baby could talk! He knew how to draw attention. Once some friends of my parents came over and they were talking about going out for the evening. One of them politely asked me what I was going to wear and before I could reply my brother said ‘barbie’s clothes’. Considering that I have always been diminutive and underweight, everyone found his joke unbelievably cute, much to my annoyance.

My brother first learnt how to say no to me when he was around eight and I was eleven. If you ask me, it was too early. I can just imagine how his tiny monkey brain must have evolved into a human one and realised that I was probably violating his right to equal pepsi, equal cake, equal TV watching time and equal space on the bike ride with my mom back from school. By the time I had realised this change it was too late to go back. I was stuck with a monster who constantly fought with me for space and for attention from my parents. Being the elder child I would always try to protect my parents and I always felt that he was too selfish to understand them and that he had too many demands. How I used to lecture him and try to make him ‘good’.

Before I realised it, time went by and both of us grew up. Our troubles stopped revolving around each other. We started understanding and facing adult problems of crumbling relationships, mortality and money. Although we found different ways to cope with our struggles they only seemed to bring us closer. Now that I live far away from him, I still feel like calling him whenever I feel low and with the same wit that he had when he was three, he makes me laugh and forget my sadness. It is as though we finally figured out that after our parents, we had only each other, to relive our memories of the glorious years we spent as carefree children in the Garden of Eden that was our home.

by Shivani Bail