“I wish I could
go back in time,
Not to hold you close
But to fight more, to argue and win all over again;
I wish I could hold more memories of you,
To write more and see what I have missed
all these years; a stranger you were to me
But a stranger I would love to have all over again;
A stranger, yet a hero to me.”
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In those days, telegrams were the quickest way to reach someone in absence of a telephone. And usually they carried bad news regarding someone’s failing health, death in the family but I was too young to know that. As I tried to peek into the telegram, he snatched it away from me and opened it. I looked up at him questioningly, waited to see him smile and convey some good news. Instead he stood like a rock and I snatched it back from his hand. He waited, it simply read, “Mangala expired.” I stood there blankly figuring out what it meant, I joined the letters together to say “ex-i-pi-re” still wondering if it was another word for “visiting.” Mangala was my favorite aunt and she always got us good stuff when she came home to visit and I loved her! Not to show off my ignorance, I smiled up at him and asked him, “When is she coming?” He smiled sadly and said, “Soon.” He asked me to wait while he would call mom at work using the landlord’s phone. That was my brother, always hiding the pain from me and allowing me to be the pampered child of the family.
From the time I remember, he was my hero, always standing tall challenging me to do the weirdest things and taking the blame on my behalf. He was four years older but always seemed too wise, well beyond his years. Before I was born, my brother “Vinay” was supposed to be notorious, a monster amongst kids, an unruly misbehaved kid and he had in fact, threatened my mother of locking her out of our house if she didn’t get a baby sister back from the hospital. Even now, my parents smile at how he actually locked them out and waited by the window till my mother promised from outside that
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she had in fact brought home a girl, a baby sister. It is weird, even after so many years, this scene is etched in my memory, as vivid and clear and I was just a week or two old.
It always amazed my parents how quiet he grew after I was born, just like that an angel had descended in him. He took a step back, immensely cared for me and allowed me to be the star. After overcoming the initial jealously, his love for me was unbound. He was never the brother who would put his arms around or say nice things, but someone who was just there if something happened. He hated to deal with traditions, and as a child, he drilled into me, to never calling him ‘brother.’ I was not allowed to address him as ‘Anna’ which in my native stands for elder brother. When I did, he refused to answer and turned away from me, until I called him by his name. While the rest of the family accused me of not respecting him, he didn’t want it any other way. But I was his baby sister and he was very protective!
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I still remember the weirdest things he told me - once he had convinced me that I was not born to my parents and that they had found me in a trash can next to a hospital. I had sat there with my eyes big and gaping incredulously, feeling how magnanimous this family was and I was just an orphan! As I started moping around the house, my mother had figured out something amiss and had given Vinay his due. Though his enormously planned schemes failed, he never gave up. There was a time when he told me about his secret experiment where he had discovered that salt makes one’s blood turn brown. I would pester my mother to not use salt in my dishes and had almost stopped eating in order to keep my blood red. Now, I smile at all these times and secretly wish to have them back. In his first biology home project, he was asked to dissect a cockroach and we both had huddled next to a tiny table, with small dissecting instruments, a dead cockroach, and two big handkerchiefs closing our nose and mouths – a grandiose plan I must say! We had carefully plucked each part and stuck it on a chart and named them, it was quite a success till we lost one of the
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major body parts and had to hunt the rest of the day for another cockroach.
He always let me have my way with things, I turned out to be the loud kid and wanted everything that our parents could buy us. While he refused new clothes for his birthday, I would argue why I needed more. He grew distant from all of us and slowly he had his own world, he became a stranger living amongst us. As we grew up, I missed having a brother whom I could tell my stories about boys, friends, anything. He never seemed interested with the materialistic world. While my friends all had brothers smart, dashing and friendly, I envied them! My brother never made friends and didn’t care about mine; I missed having a sibling as he was there while he wasn’t there. As I had seen my board exam results and came home in tears, he had found it unbelievable that I hadn’t secured a rank. He just stood next to me while I sobbed into the pillows. He somehow believed his little sister was capable of anything. While I secured good report cards, he never cared much for anything. He was an intelligent kid who won quiz competitions and excelled in sports. I always beat him in academics, because he never competed; while I basked in praises, he just stood there and smiled.
Somewhere he became fond of God and knew his only way of life would be that associated with Him. We all saw him walk away from amongst us but we knew he was doing the right thing, he was indeed a god-sent gift - a saint he would be! He never asked for gifts nor anything ever, nothing mattered to him more than being with God. He broke our hearts and killed our spirits the day he walked away from us. All these years, I had cried for the brother he wasn’t, now I miss him with all my heart; the brother that he was! I wish I could go back in time and know him better and capture more of ‘our’ moments. Wherever he is, I know he is building lives; he is someone I respect and now, I ache for the weird challenges, I could give up salt all over again. Not a day goes by, that a fleeting thought or his memory misses me. He was my brother, a man with courage, humor, discipline, intelligence – a stranger yet a hero to me!
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