My Sis: Through My Eyes (8)
Chapter-8 ( Envy Alien to Her Character)
In Chapter -7 I tried to place before you the immense love my sis has displayed for her only child till date. Nothing extraordinary about it, I guess, but then she discharged her duties to her daughter with a passion, zeal like few mothers would. Like a fountain, her love has sparkled on without a thought of what might happen if her flow gets stuck somewhere!
Today when I find my sister staying all by herself, not daring to open up to anyone, keeping herself mostly to herself; when I find her going up those frighteningly slippery steps of 41, carrying those bottles – her hands full- I don’t even pray to God for her safety anymore. I learnt an important lesson, having observed Mejdi in the last couple of years of her life from close quarters. The lesson is that all the lucky people of the world do not always have siblings. What’s the use of having them, if they don’t amount to much?
When I find my daughters, Akanksha and Anushka, in a playful mood, thinking of spending the rest of their lives glued to one another, I can hear someone screaming inside: Enjoy these days to your heart’s content, for they won’t last for long, my friends. My Mejdi spent the last few years of her life so very lonely and alone. She would be frightened staying all by herself. Once she even fell down in the bathroom and bled profusely from cuts all over. Luckily for her, her neighbour staying on the first floor, a doctor by profession, came to her rescue. Thank God for he had an extra key to her ground floor apartment!
So when I find my youngest sister, carrying water up, uncomplainingly, I don’t blame anybody. How can I when I’ve been occupying one room in the ground floor of my ancestral home myself. My wife has tried all kinds of persuasion to have me buy a flat somewhere, even far from the maddening crowd ( my economic means wouldn’t allow me to buy a flat in a posh area like ours), but she has met with a wall in me till now. I haven’t shown the least bit of interest because, despite the pathetic end of Mejdi, despite my youngest sister asking me to “forgive and forget’, I simply CAN’T. I still remember a promise to myself, standing near Baba, that no matter what happened one would have to literally walk over my dead body to dislodge me from Deblane. If I become well-to-do in the near future, I might shift to some other place paving way for someone else but not untill I’m sure that there are well-meaning people in the world, that despite problems a plenty, my close relatives believe in Love, Compassion, Fair play and, most importantly, in Justice. Till then, 41, you will have to bear with my insolence.
Anyway, to cone back to my sis, I can’t do anything for her like I couldn’t do anything for my Mejdi. But I love my Sis for being a good human being. I haven’t seen a lot of people in my life with my sister’s kind of love for her siblings. If she has changed over the years, we, her brothers and sisters are responsible for it. I remember the day when a brother was about to slap her for she had spent a few minutes more in the common bathroom at 41! I remember another occasion when another brother warned her threatening ”I’ll see how you step inside 41 again!”. A third brother might have cursed her saying, “She deservingly gets back her dues…”. GOD! We call ourselves siblings! SIBLINGS!! When our sole purpose is to try to stab one of them or the other with a smile on our face!
Anyway, before I get anymore dramatic or emotional, let me tell you that I have always felt and I still do that my Sis has a genuine love for her siblings. I have very rarely seen someone taking so much pride in the successes and achievements of her nephews and nieces as my Sis has done. Devoid of any sense of envy, jealousy or call it what you will.
People tried to get her on her knees, they tried to defame her spreading what not about her temper, mentality, arrogance and shrewdness. But there is a God after all. When she left the person, who made her believe in fairy tales, in her mid-fifties, anyone in her place would have been all shaken, battered and broken. But God showed her the light at the end of the dark tunnel and provided her with the strength to overcome the obstacles of Life. She started working as a Matron- cum- teacher at 52! Let me wind up today. dearest sister of mine, with the forecast that so long as you show steadfastness of character and purpose, so long you go on doing good, being good and thinking good, no power on earth can bend you down, irrespective of whether your youngest brother prays for you or not.
