Tag Archives: Childhood

The many forms of nostalgia

Posted on by
34

Food! Yes big foodie that I am, for me food is associated with happiness, security, comfort, and at times even with sickness. Its surprising that I am not as huge as an elephant!

Childhood was spent in various pursuits – the most memorable one being raiding Mom’s larder for atta laddoos and besan burfi. My kids have never eaten Maa key haath ka atta laddoo! Our neighbouring halwai makes them so much better. I do make besan burfi – but kids dont like it, and I end up scarfing the whole lot – not so good!

I would also join the neighborhood gang of young hooligans and go on raids to rob all fruit trees of their raw fruit. It got to the point when kala namak(black salt), salt, chaat masala and lal mirch(red chilli powder) was kept under lock and key, so that we kids did not overdo it. Never worked heh! Ahh the taste of raw imli(tamarind), kamrak(starfruit), raw guavas, shehtoot(mulberries) straight from the trees! Its the taste and aroma of childhood. Of course we were chased, beaten, had dogs set upon us but we soldiered on undeterred.

Some commercials I remember from those “good old days” and these are in print!

Thank you Utube

Not as way back as my childhood … when we did not have TV but these are still old! One ad that I remember but cant find is Vijaya Butter – the ad was awesome Gimme Gimme Gimme Vijaya Butter, On my toast gimme the most, Vijaya Butter! Does any one have a link to that ad? Here is Humara Bajaj

Doodh Doodh Doodh

And of course The Zing Thing … Gold Spot! I had forgotten all about it until I found it on You Tube looking for Vijaya Butter

Some products I would love to see again

1. Modern Bread and Nandi Bread. Modern Bread used to be softer than Brittania which I hate. It was soft and moist and Brittania tasted like cardboard. Nandi Bread was my first modeling assignment as a baby who had just lost her front teeth and had to bite into the slice and smile. I still remember the pics taken but cant find them, try as I may. Sigh! Wish we had net those days.

2. Parle Goblins : They were not toffees, nor were they chewing gums. They were squarish pieces, pink in color which were a bit of both, individually wrapped. They tasted of fruit flavors if I remember it correctly.

3. Cigarette candy sticks : I dont know where these went either. I suspect its not politically correct to manufacture them now. They were white, chalky and had red tips. I found this pic on the net

Banta lemon – This has made a surprising revival. I never saw any of these drinks in the 1990s and thought they had perished with time. But this is still going strong as of now! Apparently the Japanese have a similar soft drink bottle (inspired by our homely banta?)

And Lalitaji – Surf ki khareedari mein hi samajhdaari hai!

The TV Serials …… Oooh! They were such fun, given that normally Doordarshan was so staid. We waited for Friday when Doordarshan discovered some sense of humor.

Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi … Wonder where Swaroop Sampat went? This was, if I am not mistaken, Satish Shah’s first entry into the world of TV

Malgudi Days

Karam Chand

Wagle Ki Duniya

The solemn ones were there too, Tamas, Hum Log, Rajni

Will sign off with this one

Those were the days my friend

Posted on by
53

We’ve all gone through it : My Dad was a village boy and he used to tell us tales of how they had to help out with the cows and buffaloes (he used the word MAJH) and I never inquired if it was cow or buffalo and then went to the village school on foot. There they had Takht which they had to prepare using gachni mitti (it was something that they had to apply to get a writing surface) and then write on it. We had to be totally accurate, he would say proudly – there was no room for errors.

My grandmother used to get miffed with my Mom’s generation because they had the pressure cooker. “These days the young have it so easy” she said when cooking gas appeared. Unable to handle the green eyed monster, she retreated into religion – humanity’s greatest escape. Of course ladies of her generation resorted to sulking or stating that they thought things cooked on gas or in pressure cookers were not nutritious. ;) Women I tell you …..

Well all that bored the shit out of me. I would tell myself that I would never say such crappy things to my kids. Times will change and all that. That was then ….

But dammit kids these days really do have it easy!!!

Consider this : We had one phone, not cell phones with inbuilt memories and the ability to go online. We had to memorize telephone numbers. The phone was in the living area and if your crush called you, the entire family eavesdropped your conversation. Love life was not very happening. No caller ids, so you never knew who was on the other side. Could have been risky – but on the other hand, if your mother got boy-friend’s call, he could hang up and flee. She would never know who it was!

We pretty much had to write everything painstakingly with pen on paper. No fancy keyboards for us. And yes, no email. No SMS either, but the joke factory still thrived – without forwards …. hmmm bet kids this generation wonder how :D

If we went out of home, we were pretty much on our own … no way to get in touch until we got home. It may sound dangerous to kids – but it was sheer bliss. Who wanted to be in touch 24/7? Ewww. Out of parental earshot and view range is sheer bliss.

NO INTERNET!!!!!

Hence one could not keep in touch with relatives and friends if we did not have their phone numbers. It wasnt like now – just log into the person’s Facebook page and write “Wassup??! Long time????” or update oneself by reading the person’s page. No twitter. One had to “shudder” write letters. If one had aspirations towards being a writer, one kept a diary – in longhand …. and kept changing its hiding place so that lesser beings like savage pesky younger brothers did not get their filthy hands on them! No blogs for us.

Like I said earlier NO INTERNET.

Internet is a luxury – we (in my days) did not have TV either …. and the wars my sibling and I fought over the radio were legendary. We were kids that grew up in playgrounds, none of the mealy mouth shoves and smacks for us. Wars were fought with total energy, commitment and we wounded each other in our quest for supremacy. Nails, teeth, punches in the stomach were all allowed. Bleeding gums, broken noses, cuts and bruises were expected to occur, and were not the reason to call a truce. Victory was all!!!! The winner got to listen to the radio station he/she wanted …. for the entire day! We did not have Ipods with earphones. Heck we did not have MP3s, and could not download music or porn … no napster or torrent either. If we wanted to steal the damn stuff, we had to go to the store and try our luck. As luck would have it, we lived in easier slow times and chances were that the Store owner knew our parents, so did the dratted Principal of the school. Us being ratted on was a common phenomenon.

No PSPs, Facebook and MySpace games. If we had to beat up or get beat up by friends, it happened in play grounds, not on LCD screens.

I really dont think kids of this generation could survive our generation. We rolled on real grass, rode bikes without knee cap protectors, climbed up trees and even drain pipes, jumped from our roof to the neighbor’s roof. We got hurt, got up, wiped our tears, put on tincture iodine (by ourself even though it burnt) and got back to living life.

Yeah those were the days

Examination Stories (Apni toh Paathshala, Masti Ki Paathshala)

Posted on by
23

Was going through Brown Phantom’s memories. Started a chain of memories for me

I grew up with siblings, all male, most of ‘em older than me. Which means I grew up as witness to wonderful capers all to be blamed on exams …..

One sibling was totally exam challenged. What aggravated the issue was that he was made much of by his Granny and Mom, the only male child followed by sisters. He fared badly in the exams and threatened to jump of the roof rather than show his report card. Needless to say the ladies panicked. My Ben Hur Uncle walked into the courtyard to see weeping Aunt and the boy on the ledge and got into the act. He pushed his bhabi into the room and locked the door. Then told the errant boy “Koodna hai, kood ley, main hoon na” {Wanna jump … go right ahead, I’m here to take care of you}
The boy stood for a minute, took stock of the situation, shrugged and replied “I wasn’t trying to scare you, I was just trying to scare them” and tamely climbed off the ledge ……..

My elder sibling had a friend who had flunked his boards umpteen number of times. He introduced me to the world of “pharras” or cheat papers. They were tiny, folded like Japanese fans and covered with minuscule writing. He hired my brothers to write his pharras for him. They subcontracted the chore to us young ‘uns for Ravalgaon toffees. We dutifully made the pharras copying all the answers from Kunjis (help books). Then the friend came, his coat lining was torn and the pharras tucked inside the lining at strategic points, while we kids watched with fascination. A soochi (key) was made of where each pharra was hidden. That was tucked into the seams of his tie. I kept thinking that if he lost that soochi or his tie, he was sunk!!!!

He barely made it, you know, just got 33%. We didn’t care. We got our toffees and the elder Bhais got their money :D

During our in-school exams our class was made to sit with students of higher classes. It was a nightmare for our school teachers! At one time 17 of us from the same family studied in various classes in the same school. They kept trying to shuffle us, but it never worked.

Once there was some theorem I could not memorize. I knew it would come in the exam and was almost in tears. The brothers tried to help me, but it did not work. At the last moment, one of my brothers slipped a pharra into my hand and said “Use this”.

I panicked, got this insane urge to pee, got hiccups …. u know the classic I wanna flee reaction …

Managed to walk and sit down at my desk. Sure enough that dratted theorem was in the question paper. Not being able to face up to the challenge of opening the pharra (he had shoved it under the dial of my watch) I attempted everything else. Once I had stopped trembling and my heart beat was some-what normal, I risked opening the pharra ……

In my terror I had worked myself into copious sweat (even though we lived in Imphal, Manipur) and the ink had run and blurred the entire pharra.

I did not know whether to laugh or cry …

That was a multiple choice question, and I easily attempted the other one …

My brothers were in splits when I told them what happened -

Ah well!!!

The mad world of childhood

Posted on by
15

This is inspired by the post Goofy stuff by Pal.  We were a bunch of hyper active, insanely imaginative kids.  School for us was tame ….. home was just base – you know to eat, visit the loo, change clothes.  Our life was spent in the garage+lawn/the roof/where ever there was scope for “interesting” activities.

  • We had many childish demands to make of parents.  We had a mango tree in our lawn.  My father would point at the tree and say “When that tree starts bearing rupee notes, you’ll get it.  One day we dug the entire darn tree … very very deep, in our quest for money.  The roots got seriously injured.  The poor tree – a horticulturist had to be called to cure it.  Oh we did find a stash of marbles underground … wonder who buried that!
  • We hated brinjals, and we had a huge crop growing.  So one fine night, we raided the kitchen garden, harvested the whole lot and threw it into the pond.  We woke up in the morning to find that the whole crop was floating in the pond.  Man!  The repurcussions were severe!  Really :P
  • Mom and aunts went to the market one day and got lots of bottle gourd.  Every self respecting brat hates ridge gourd (Torai).  So we stole it and dug a deep hole in the ground and buried it.  The darn thing grew into hundreds of creepers!  We had so many torai to eat …. every darn summer! blech!
  • We had an uncle who was a Ben Hur fan, who regularly organized fights between us to “help us get over our sibling fights” and he was a hot favorite.  I mean, we were such chamchas – since he was refree and he got to decide who won a particular fight.  Once the younger lot (four of us including me) felt that he had treated us unfairly.  He used an alum stone as after shave.  The stone mysteriously got some salt on it.  Ouch!  That really must have hurt him when he applied it in the morning.

Shucks I could write a book about stuff we did in childhood …..

 

May be I will!

So what is my relationship with Mumbai?

Posted on by
11

I first went to Mumbai when I was a kid – about seven years old.  My maternal aunt lived in Mumbai.  Mumbai those days (as far as I can remember) was very Naval in nature, and my Mausa Ji was Captain of INS Vikrant.  They had had a very bad time.  There was a war on with Pakistan and INS Vikrant was one of the major targets and the family had lost all contact with my uncle.  He came back along with the ship once things were settled.  The HQ had told them to lie low and protect the ship, so they had severed all contacts with family and friends for that time.

At that time, it did not matter to us kids.  All of us cousins were together, since Mausi was surrounded with her kith and kin.  It was one whale of a party.  Adults were too busy getting worried, so there was no rules for us apart from “Dont break things” and “Dont kill each other”.  For us land lubbers the sea was bliss, and the swimming pool was luxury.  I think we came home to eat and visit the  loo.  We were submerged for most of the time.  Any more … we would have grown gills and webbing on our fingers and toes.  3 weeks of sheer bliss.  Childhood is wonderfully selfish and unconcerned with the sorrows and tensions of adults.

The next time I visited Mumbai was kind of stressful.  My Naani was diagnosed with breast cancer and her operation was in Breech Candy.  She was brave, wonderful and beat the disease, and lived for twenty more years.  I was older, in charge of younger siblings.  We learnt how to board and travel on the local trains.  I got introduced to vada paav, sindhi kadhi, dhansaakh and prawns.  I went overboard on them.  My younger Mausi was also posted here and so was Mamaji.  Really bonded with the maternal wing of the clan.  The fun part was that a few cine stars lived in the same building as my younger Mausi and we hung around like total taporis to see them.  (I must add here that my Mumbai cousins acted very superior and sniggered at us Delhi Yokels for our star struck craze!)

I was married when I visited Mumbai again.  Ex’s Mamaji and cousin are both musicians and actively involved with the movie industry.  I met a whole lot of movie people.  I actually saw Mr. R. D. Burman and Mr. Bhappi Lahiri!

Oh Kay!  I know I am a star struck yokel – so what?????  Humph!

It is not out of place to mention here that I have met a lot of movie people on and off, but I still get star struck!  My cousins studied with a lot of star kids, and are quite blase about it.  Sigh ……

Now, I have cousins in Mumbai, DIL’s brother and Bhabi are living there.

It is a lovely place … with the sea and the glamour.  Now with super cheap flights, one does hop across often.  Wish I had more time to spend there.

Mumbai tailors for women’s blouses and suits can teach there Delhi counterparts a thing or two

Love the sea food!

Wish I lived with and hobnobbed with the stars …….

Actually Naah!

Wish I had webbed fingers and toes and of course gills …..

The ocean is a greater attraction

Of kids and worms

Posted on by
22

When I was a kid, I thought the world owed me much, just because I got born in it.  This feeling had much to do with the fact that I was the only girl, and made much of by my grandparents, who I had conned into thinking that I was a saintly doll.   At the slightest hint of opposition water-works would start.  I kid you not, I had mastered the art of looking ever so pretty crying.  A slight pout, watering of the eye, a delicate and excellently timed sniffle, and dabbing the tear with a lacy kerchief.  Of course all opposition melted.

My parents were less impressed.  My father even went to the extent of complimenting me on MY ONLY FEMININE ACCOMPLISHMENT as he called it.  Humph.  He also gave me a book with this poem that he dedicated to his darling daughter, the drama queen.  Bloghopping today I found it on Sue’s blog, Thank you Sue

Nobody Loves Me

Nobody loves me,
Everybody hates me,
I think I’ll go and eat worms.

Big fat squishy ones,
Little thin skinny ones,
See how they wriggle and squirm.

Bite their heads off.
“Schlurp!” they’re lovely,
Throw their tails away.

Nobody knows
How big I grows
on worms three times a day.

Lovely isn’t it?  It just describes the “much misunderstood poor me” act kids love to put on.  I used it liberally on my two kids who hate the poem.  They would throw such tantrums when their eggs would be runny, or they would have to drink their milk or even not be given two wheelers before they turned 18.  Oh I would not get mad, or stressed …. I’d just start reciting this poem

Nobody loves me

Every body hates me

I think I’ll eat some worms

Hey, I am lucky they grew up to be normal.  Otherwise they would have gone into therapy and billed the expense to me.

Then I would have been reciting this poem.

Buying toys for little kids

Posted on by
13

It is really difficult to buy toys for children when yours have grown up totally …. this is what I thought.  This Lohri one of my cousins came over.  It was our first Lohri in our own home and all that, and he was in India this time.  I met him after thirteen whole years.  The last I saw him was on his wedding, after which he left for foreign lands.  OMG, it was wonderful.  He has five kids, one set of twin daughters aged eleven, one eight year old son, and a set of mixed twins, a boy and a girl aged three.

Naturally I wanted to spoil the entire lot of kids.  Naturally he did not want me too.  Sigh!  Naturally we had a big argument with me telling him that he was being a male chauvanistic whatever and denying me my divine right to spoil any child in the family.  His wife is one helluva smart lady.  She saw this battle happening and quietly withdrew to play with her little twins.  My kids know that they are not supposed to interfere.  That does not stop them from bringing out a bowl of popcorn and enjoying the show.  His elder kids watched fascinatedly.  I dont think they have even seen Punjabis loudly and boisterously enjoying a lovely argument.  That does not happen in foreign lands I guess.

The girls watched for a while, and then one of them came up to me and said

Don’t get upset.  You want to buy us toys, I’ll show you where to get them

And she took me to my laptop, totally ignoring her father’s disapproving glare.  Girls are smart I must say! Hehehee

She took me to this wonderful online store

This way the kids got to chose what they wanted

One little lady wanted a Magic Set.  She thinks she is Hermoine Granger.  Her twin wanted a Hula Hoop.  Its a big myth that twins think alike even if they look alike.

The little boy wanted a robot.  How typical.  I think girls are more original in their choices.

I bought a stuffed toy and building blocks for the little ones.

The beauty of it all was that I could get the children totally involved in the buying process, they got the stuff they wanted and it could be delivered to their own home.  They would not have to discard them or have to cart them back to their own country.

This is one gift they will surely remember for a long time.  The more I learn about the net, the more I am awestruck by it.

Rites of Passage

Posted on by
15

This post was written a long time ago – airing it right now thanks to Tikuli’s post

And yes, please read this speech by Gloria Steinem.  I would have this on the school curriculum if I were in charge of such things.

I have got inspired.  I read two most hilarious blog posts on menstruation, one by a woman, and the other is a male view point on the subject.  Thanks Sue for pointing me in the right direction.  There is no doubt that men got lucky in this department.  The don’t have these rites of passage like menstruation, pregnancy, labour and menopause.  Well I also think that they don’t have our power, experience the joys of nursing an infant, and frankly we look good with or without clothes.  Also we have total black magic power on our men since our headaches, cramps, aneamia and hot flushes can make or break their lives.  I think the scales are tilted heavily in our favour.  Oh yeah, one more thing, we actually enjoy shopping.

My mother belonged to a generation that was taught to hide evidences of being a woman.  Even drying a bra was much cloak and dagger stuff, the darn thing had to be hidden under a saree or some other cloth on the clothesline.  I swear she must be dying a million deaths when she went to buy them.  When I reached puberty,  I was pretty clueless about what it all meant.  My social circle comprised of my male siblings.  I had no girlie person to share confidences with.  My mother dragged me into her room and locked the door.  Then she told me, in hushed whispers, while blushing deeply, that I was grown up now and would bleed for a week every month until I got pregnant.  I was not supposed to talk about this and from now on I would not play with the boys and would sleep with the babies.  I looked at her totally confused.  Far reaching changes were being made in my life, and it was scary.

Anyhow, after two years of this episode, I became friendly with another girl in my class.  We started sharing confidences and we got into an argument.  Both of us had Science in school and were aspiring to be doctors and engineers (was there any other profession?).  I insisted that we would have the period only until we got pregnant, after that – chutti.  My mother did not tell me that one got reprieve only for the duration of pregnancy you see.  She took unholy delight in correcting this misconception.  She had two elder sisters in medical college, and she hauled me by the collar and took me for an intense re-education program conducted specially for me by her didis and their class mates.  Quite an enlightening experience.

Having lots of brothers to grow up with can either make you the shy feminine retiring sort, or it can make you an aggressive (fight back for survival) kind of a creature.  I became the latter and also developed a shocking sense of humour.  So when I read this blog about using human milk for ice-cream I simply loved it.  It has just the right amount of grossness for it to be side-splitting hilarious.  When Kid#1 was born, my elder cousins were scattered all around the globe in various colleges.  They all decided to come meet the “little man” at the same time.  Kid#1 was 6 months old when this happened.  They were fascinated by him, and also by me.  ”Oyyyyyeeee, you look like a little lady” they would remark.  They were most impressed by the way I carried him around and handled him and also the diaper duties, even though they made the most gross jokes about it.  Most of all, the fact that I was suckling the baby freaked them out.  I was discrete about it and would turn my back to them or go into an empty room and lock the door.  OMG,  the jokes they cracked!  Their entire stock of jokes was about milk booths and production factories.  Over the weekend, they decided to irritate me by asking me to make tea at every given hour – oh wow! the tomboy could make tea.  Uff, I finally had enough and stamped my foot down and threatened to make them tea with my milk, and insisted that they be brave enough to drink it.  What was good for my baby was good for them.  They backed off!  Phew!

Oh!  Now I am at the peri-menopausal stage …. or as my brothers quip MEANO – PAUSE.  They aught to know better, my sister in laws have been giving them hell I guess with hot flushes and mood swings.  Today one of them sent me a link to this delightful musical with the caption “I know you’re growing old, heh, Celebrate the Change”.  Thanks Kanav Bhaiyya, thanks a lot.  Do you remember the day you opened your drawer and found a dead frog stinking of formaldehyde?  It wasn’t Neeraj Bhaiyya who put the frog there, it was me…… just to let you know.  You were so nasty about not letting me play marbles with the rest of you that day – so I just evened the score.  So what if I waited 30 or 35 whole years before ‘fessing up ?

Happy memories my dear, and happy Diwali :P

Some school time memories

Posted on by
9

That tag I did yesterday stirred up some school time memories.  So here goes …..

I must have been about 12 or 13.  I had a whole lot of brothers, one real and about 9 cousins that I grew up with.  It was wonderful for me, when I was a kid, since I always had playmates, and the rough and tumble of boys’ games suited my tomboyish soul.  However, I grew up and started sprouting breasts.  I was unceremoniously dropped from the team and ordered to behave like a girl.  I hated it and also my stupid brothers.  I thought girls were sissy, and did not like them at all.  So to nurse my wounded pride and to get over their betrayal, I became an introvert and got into the world of books in a big way.  

There was this boy in my class who made my life a living hell.  He was tall for his age, and very very popular.  I was decidedly nowhere near his social status.  I was a geek and hurt many male egos with my over-achieving scholastic ways.  The girls thought I was a snob, and I could not stand their catty sissy ways.  I had too many brothers in the same damn school for any boy to even consider being friendly with me. All in all it made me pretty friendless.

Soumya was a likeable kid, the class clown. I think he had ADD decades before Tare Zameen Par made it fashionable.  He couldn’t sit still and drove all the teachers nuts with his constant wise-cracking and fidgeting.  So they did what any good teacher would do. They sat him beside me, the class swot, in hopes my goody two shoes behaviour would rub off on him.

It didn’t.

He took every opportunity to make fun of me, pull my proverbial pig-tails and make me the butt of his jokes. I was the angrezni, the chashmish (I did not have specs but since I was bookish …..) and the worse of them all, the girl who was flat as a board so he called me “Four-by-Four”.  The damn nickname stuck.

How I hated him. I would see him and cringe and pray every day he would fall ill to some mysterious disease and have to drop out of school thereby never having to sit beside me and needle me with his jabs through out the day.  I would be depressed, sorely tempted to get my elder brothers to bash him up – but I never did.  I was not speaking with them so I endured it.

I also endured it because sometimes,  when no one else was around, he was completely different. He was sweet to me and thoughtful and almost apologetic for his incessant public torture. It made him almost likeable. Almost.

For two years I was stuck with this boy, the boy who made me the laughing stock of our class on more times than I could ever keep count. Then thankfully, his father got transferred to another town.  On his last day in school he walked up to me and said “Hi”.  I just nodded, holding my breath wondering what verbal parting shot he would fire.  I cringed and reminded myself that this was the last class in which I would have to see him or hear his nasty voice.  Man, was I glad to be rid of Soumya, who would tell the class in a loud voice “Ritu does not wear a bra, she is so skinny” or “Ritu’s tiffin spilt on her skirt hahahha.  See there are haldi stains” and tell other girls in my class “No one wants Ritu as his girl friend”. I waited knowing that this was the end of the Soumya chapter.

“Ritu, I just want to apologize to you for all the teasing I did to you in school,” he said in his deepening man voice.

I just grunted.

“I want you to know, I really like you. I’ve enjoyed sitting next to you for the last two years. I wish we were better friends.” I looked at him like he had just grown horns out of his head and stood there tongue-tied. “I only teased you because I had a crush on you.”

Then he walked out of the door, turned around and smiled at me and said, “I teased you to get your attention.” Then he turned around, headed towards the school compound and out of my life.

At the time I was seriously annoyed. I could have thought of a dozen different ways he could have shown his affection for me, none of them which included drawing a plywood piece on the blackboard and naming it Ritu, snooping into my school satchel, peering at the back of my shirt to check whether I was wearing a bra or not.

But I’ve grown older and wiser and I look back on the memory of that smiley curly haired boy who loved his comic books and I see what I was blinded to in the midst of my youth.

Soumya  loved me. He was just a jackass about it.

As for me, life started improving after he left.  I had the desk to myself without having to be careful about it slamming down on my fingers.  Even tiffin would not spill so often which makes me suspect foul play.  I started filling out.  One thing remained the same – I never got along with the girls in my class.  Actually two things – I never got included in my family team of all boys.  These two changes happened in college where I met lovely chilled-out women who I am still friends with, and my cousins started behaving less like chowkidars and more like pals ……. possibly because they wanted to date my female friends.

For Dony, on Raksha Bandhan

Posted on by
16

He was exactly 361 days younger than me. He was the apple of my mother’s eye. He was the SON in our typically Punjabi family, the heir, the prince. He was the person on whom I practiced my skills of bossing over hapless males. When we were little kids, he was the one who would follow me around, and get blamed for most of the breakages in the house. I being a girl would not be suspected. He would pull the dog’s tail, but would also share his meal with the pet. He would sit for long hours on the steps of our home, telling fantastically wild tales to the dog, and the dog would look at him adoringly and swallow each one of them hook line and sinker. He also blinded my dolls and pulled out their eyelashes. Oh no, I did not mind it, I hated dolls and loved books. Once he threw my Enid Blyton into the pond, and I knocked him over and sat on him beating him up.

When we grew up, he hated all the boys who would befriend me, and would mimic them mercilessly. He grew stronger and larger, and it became harder to beat the hell out of him. He was the only one in my family who could carry a tune. He had an awesome sense of humour and a ready answer for anything. He was also someone who attracted trouble and accidents. That never seemed to quench his spirit. When he met with an accident and we weren’t sure that his eye would be okay, he put a patch over the eye, picked up a bottle of Old Monk and limped on his fractured foot and said he was the Pirate from Treasure Island. He would encourage us to make jokes about his being accident prone. He was my very handsome younger brother.

When he was 23 years old, the joke turned sour. That accident was his last one. They brought his body back, lifeless. My elder son kept nudging him and asking him to wake up. It was the first time I was faced with death, and was devastated. There would be more in the coming years – but this was the first, and it was something I took personally. I was angry with Death and with God. It took me a long time to recover. I think my mother never did. My father went from being a participant in the game of life to a spectator.

I have never talked about this, never written about it … but there is something about blogging – it makes one open up. So this Raksha Bandhan, I hope and pray for you, my sweet younger brother because I am sure that you are reincarnated somewhere. Where-ever you are – may you have the happy and long life that you were cheated of in the time you lived with us.