Big Brother(s) Watching Over

It was that time of the year again. When sisters celebrate the brothers in their lives. Though Sunitha was not very much given to celebrating the symbolic rituals and rites, this one always seemed like an exception for her. Those threads on display across the shops is a smorgasbord of colours and one was spoilt for choice. As Sunitha stared at the ones she had bought, a memory from her growing up years crossed her mind.

The schools were yet to reopen after the summer holidays that year and Sunitha was finding the sultry weather of pre-monsoon days extremely irritating. “I would rather prefer the unadulterated heat to this humid and stuffy feeling” she would curse under her breath as she lazed around the house. As a teen during the early seventies, she had the options of playing outside in the open, listening to the radio, reading books for passing her leisure time. The Idiot Box and the mobile menace hadn’t yet made inroads into their lives. It was only in retrospect that she realized how lucky she had actually been thanks to that.

The outdoor games that they played, innovating a few as they went about with their daily lives, kept their bodies well exercised and the books they read kept their minds well nourished.

But with the constant threat of rain outside and with the limited stock of books inside, she was particularly distraught that day and she vented out her frustration at her older brother who was busy reading a book.

“Why are you not getting me books to read?”

“I have been urging you to read these” he replied pointing to the stack of books written in English next to him.

“You know I don’t like them,” she replied.

“Don’t like or don’t know how to read” he challenged her with his chin raised up in the air.

“I know how to read English” she retorted with her pride severely hurt.

“Then prove it. Finish one book and show” he said before burying his head in his book once again.

Though Sunitha was fuming from within, she kept quiet. The fact of the matter was that, having been educated in the vernacular medium for most of her life till that point, she did find reading books written in English quite a daunting task. But her brother’s challenge provoked her into action. Since his educational background was similar to hers, if he could do it, so could she, she thought.

Prior to that day, all her attempts at finishing a book written in English language had gone futile. But this time, since she had vowed to herself that she would finish one come what may, she started with a thriller, inching ahead page by page.

By the time she finished the book through painstakingly slow progress, something unexpected happened. She got hooked and stayed hooked for life. Sitting within the close confines of her home, with a book in her hands, she would often get transported to the wonderlands they created across different dimensions and time.

Sunitha felt grateful to all the forces that acted upon her on that fateful day to influence her to embark on a lifelong expedition enabling her to live many lives within the span of her single life.

Presently, with the dwindling eye sight in her sixties, the book in her hands stood replaced with a Kindle, a thoughtful gift from the same brother – the youngest of three brothers, which had become her steady companion during the lockdown times.

She often wondered about her big brothers who had become kind of sentinels, keeping a watch over her, having her back in times of dire need over the years.

The oldest of them all was the Yudhistir, wise, poised and composed with a compassionate outlook towards one and all. His regular calls and the inspirational messages over Whasapp had been her succor over the years.

Her heart ached all over when she thought of the untimely loss of the middle one, who was the most intelligent of them all. He was the person they all had taken pride in boasting about. He was also her “go-to” human encyclopedia. Till date, she couldn’t make sense of why his life was nipped in the bud abruptly.

Perhaps, that was why this other sentinel walked into her life without any notice one fine summer day. This one is like a younger brother, not born of her mother’s womb, but still a sentinel who stood by her through thick and thin over the last 30 years.

Like wine becoming better as it ages, these relationships with her brothers had been aging with grace. Long gone were the days when each one of them was pumped up with raging estrogen / testosterone hormones within.

With life having knocked enough sense into each of them, they were now wise enough not to sweat over the small stuff, as they walked about with their creaking bones and aching muscles. They learned to tread cautiously, around life’s unknown bends, lest they should fall and get perilously injured. While wading through all their lives’ joys and sorrows, they managed to hold onto each other somewhat well.

Unlike the threatening eyes of the big brother watching over everyone in George Orwell’s dystopian world of 1984, Sunitha knew she had only comfort to be drawn from each of her brothers watching over her.

She hoped their journey continues for as long as it can, as she symbolically celebrates their special bond through the ceremonial knot of a simple thread over her brothers’ wrists every year on the “Rakshabandhan day”.

This true story is in celebration of all the brothers and sisters out there on the occasion of “Rakshabandhan Day.”