Story of brother and sister – Requiem for a Rakhi
Once upon a time, she had a brother … at least, she though that she had one although he was merely a cousin. Yes, after all, how could he be a brother, when he was, in fact, a cousin?
***
As she stepped down from the auto and headed towards the staircase, her feet were winged, yet hesitant, supporting a frothy confection of spring in blue and white which flapped about her like the spring breezes, the pallu flaring out after her hurried rush up the stairs. There she reined herself in, took a deep breath and continued in measured but expectant steps, round the corner, down the short corridor and into the crowded room. Her dark eyes searched the room eagerly and encountered a bland “Hi, long time, no see?” from a massive paunched apparition in blue, from the opposite of the doorway. Encountering the impersonal look…. where was that laughing mischief in the eyes she had unconsciously looked forward? … She checked the rush of emotional tears.
Responding equally nonchalantly: “eleven years or thereabout, I should think. A third of my lifetime, siree”, with a toss of her head and a smile which included a greeting to all the rest of the room.
The conversation flowed, except for a slight but conspicuous halt and swerve in the corner occupied by Blue Brother, seen after a third of a lifetime. Sitting herself down, she made polite conversation with her neighbor, while her mind continued on its own chain of thoughts. ‘How foolish can I get? Flying into his arms? Thumping his back?’
He turned politely to her. “How are you?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“Hubby, kids?”
“All fine, thanks, all alive and kicking.” Glancing politely at his belly, “no need to ask about you; you wear your prosperity like Ganeshji does….”
Her remark drew a wide spread laugh, which to her sensitive ears, sounded slightly hollow, from one direction. She sat strategically located between the old and the young. Rather the no-so-young assortment of cousins and sisters, all now middle-aged. What set her apart, she felt, was her refusal to subscribe to the universal refusal to look middle age in the face.
The conversation flowed around her, avoiding her as studiously as she avoided it, a stranger in home grounds, the family which still refused to accept her now fifteen-year-old decision to follow her heart outside the community and caste to join the Brave New World outside the safe, secure precincts of an arranged marriage.
‘Why’, she wondered, ‘had I anticipated that he, at least, would be different from the rest of them?’ She watched the plastic expressions animate the doll-like face of her bhabhi, a delection in dovegray to complement the blue of her husband.
Immersed in the cross currents of the conversation, the chain of thoughts tapered off, to revive late at night, with past scenarios flashing on the white screen of her tear-stained pillow.
Those early memories of child play, Ghar Ghar, of playing a baby to his papa who brought her sweets of sand wrapped in toffee wrappers, he a lordly seven to her precocious five. Of the transition to young adulthood, when they cheerfully roughhoused together at home. In keeping with his new adult image, he would ignore her on the street, or in front of his friends and at night, make up for it by sneaking her out for an ice, while keeping a wary eye open for teenaged predators on his ‘sister’.
He lent her his books to read and shared her early introduction to Archie comics, Perry Mason and Ayn Rand at a precocious age. And then, they grew up. His interest in girls was kindled and she had helped him to dissect and analyze and select the girls. Was it not yesterday that they had poured together over a perfumed missive in a flower feminine hand, promising him untold delights, if only he would turn up at five p.m., at the corner behind the mango tree to see an apparition in yellow with a red rose. Oh, for those juvenile Mumtazes, and she had helped him to select a complementary outfit for the blind date.
All evening she waited on tenterhooks until he returned.
“What happened? Who is she? Do I know her? Where does she stay? What did you talk about? What is it like to go on a blind date?” all the innocent questions came pouring out and he had equally innocuously expounded from his superior male height ” Oh, nothing much. But it was wonderful because she was dying for me. She promised me everything. She even kissed me”
A train of memories of assorted girlfriends who had followed, of whom she had pointedly refused to keep track. Was it out of pique over his studied disapproval of any boy who made advances to her without being thoroughly whetted first by him personally?
So much so that when the ultimate choice was made, he had lied manfully to dissuade her from following her heart rather than her head into a marriage, merely because it would take her outside the pale of conventionality.
” I have a problem. Could you come over to help sort it out?”
“Sorry, but I’m leaving tomorrow evening. There is still a host of relatives to say hello and bye to. By the way, I never did get a chance to ask. Why didn’t you come for my wedding?”
The question jerked her to the reality of her ‘brother’.
‘This,’ she thought to herself,’ was my brother, Once upon a time”.
As she turned eloquent eyes searching on him, she said aloud,
“Pity none of you thought to ask years ago. If you had spared twenty rupees from your twenty lakh wedding, on a trunk call, perhaps I may have told you that my husband was laid low by a heart attack and I with a miscarriage”.
“Oh, so sorry to hear about all that. What was that again about some problem?”
“Never you fear, Brother dear, I’ll tackle that on my own too. Thanks, nevertheless…”
Kusum Choppra
