~~~
The Gift
It was one of those blissfully cool days in January. The kind of day when cycling back home was worth all its pleasure, even with a bag, heavy as though it had been filled with logs.
Ria sighed inwardly as she went past the ‘goodbyes’ from her friends and walked toward the red iron gates. She was embarrassed that she had to go home with her dad, after a note arrived in the middle of their last period. She longed to go on her blue cycle, with the wind beating against her face.
She waded through hordes of little kids who were running around with glee. She made way past the tall akkas and annas who were fidgeting with their cell phones.
“Hi.” She said to a man wearing a dhothi as white as his hair, as she waved half-heartedly, with just the slightest hint of surprise.
“Congraulations, big sister!” he said, as he put his arm around her and guiding her to the white Ambassador.
She did not know what to feel. For the past few months, nothing in the house was about her. It was always ‘the baby.’ The baby’s sister was overlooked, and always invite to any conversation as an afterthought.
But she knew it wasn’t right to think that way.
She wanted to be happy.
*
Through layers of glass, she saw him. Her brother. Tiny and fat, his fists were clenched and eyes shut. He was as pink as her teddy bear.
She remembered the first time her mother told her that she was pregnant. Up until then, she just thought her mother ate a lot of fatty food. She had touched her mother’s growing stomach, asking her why a baby would want to grow inside her. She eagerly waited for the visits to the doctor in hope of finding out the baby’s sex. She had stood, eyes transfixed on the ultrasonic, looking at grey smudges of her sibling. She had hoped for a boy.
The incubator was a difficult word for Ria. She called it the ‘inugator.’ Her brother was in the ‘inugator’ for a long time. She wanted to touch him, but the doctor told her only the staff could enter the ‘inugator.’ It was a sacred place, she thought.
She wanted to be a doctor.
*
It has been a few months since her brother came home. Ria fought with her parents to name him Lokesh. She didn’t like the idea of siblings having their names begin with the same letter. She wanted to be different.
He was on the bed, gurgling. There were Cerelac stains on his clothes. He clenched and unclenched his fists, repeatedly. Come. She neared the edge of the bed, smiling at the fact that he had called her. He had never yelled at her like her parents did. She tickled his feet knowing that her mother wasn’t around to say anything. He rolled around, making little laugh-noises. Ria fell on the bed with a content sigh.
And the next thing she knew, she was lifting up a crying baby from the floor.
“Ma, I didn’t know.” Ria cried. “Suddenly I heard a thump and he was on the floor crying.”
“You were supposed to look after him. Why do you always cause trouble?” asked her mother, rubbing the lump on Lokesh’s head.
“But, it’s not my fau-“
“Ria, I don’t care. You should’ve made sure he didn’t fall.” Her mother cut across, her voice louder than the baby’s cry and Ria’s whining.
Ria walked to her room, and sat.
She wanted to be invisible.
*
Ria’s parents were worried that Lokesh had never started to speak at what would be considered a normal time. Her uncle’s efforts of bringing Einstein as an example did not help her parents. Ria just wished that sometimes they’d worry about her. Her un-ironed clothes. Her uncombed hair.
As she returned from school, Ria sat next to Lokesh, on his bed. She was still in her uniform. She smiled at her brother who seemed far more interested in the lunch box in her hand.
“Ka. Ka.” He said. Sister. His first coherent word.
She smiled. It was the best birthday gift ever. Even if it was late, it made up for not getting a present from her parents. It made up for the number of times they had gone to the doctor, leaving her at home. She hugged him and he tactfully held onto her lunch box.
She wanted to be a sister.
*
A cute chubby-faced boy with close cropped hair stood in front of Ria and instinctively she bent to pinch his cheeks, careful not to bruise them. She stood next to him, in their matching white uniforms with ties, as she gave a wide grin for the camera.
In another month, this captured moment would be proudly sitting in the shelves.
Ria was glad that her parents put him in the same school. She felt proud to go to school in a car, for once, and that she could guide her brother to class. Holding his hand, she led him along the all too familiar gravel path across the school grounds in to his classroom. It was a cacophony of kids with running noses, all crying for their parents. Perhaps, inspired by them, Lokesh’s eyes welled and started crying for Dad. Ria tried making silly faces, and hushing him. Thankfully for her, an aayaa came by and lifted Lokesh into her frail arms yet very strong with maternal tenderness.
With the new colourful pencils, the kids were sword fighting. A few girls, with their well oiled plaits, folded in double, were drawing flowers. Ria watched her brother brandish his ‘sword’ until the teacher forbade them and started their lesson on drawing squiggles.
With one last look, Ria bounded up the stairs to her own class.
She wanted to be a role model.
*
Lokesh was a late speaker. And, when they began their second language in UKG, he found it terrible to cope. Ria sat with him every day, holding his hand and guiding it so that he could form the squiggly jilebis of Tamil. She tried to teach him the concept of addition of numbers. Sometimes, Ria became frustrated that she couldn’t make him understand.
The details of the social reforms movements went over her head. She didn’t seem to care much for history. She just cared enough to give out her strong views on sati. Ria was inconspicuously doodling in her book, when received a note asking her to go to her brother’s class.
Although Ria felt important by this task, she hoped her brother wasn’t in trouble.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Ria to the one teacher she hoped she’d never see. Though Mrs. Jessie had never taught her, Ria feared this tall, built teacher. With a dark face a protruding eyes, and tongue as quick as her hand that beats a child, she was a person no one ever wanted to cross.
Beckoned inside, she walked over to the teacher’s table next to which stood Lokesh, his eyes red. She sighed, hoped that whatever pain was inflicted upon him, it didn’t hurt as much.
Mrs. Jessie thumped open a few test notes in front of Ria.
“Look! Look at what your brother has scribbled. He can’t even write his numbers inside the boxes. What are you doing at home? Why can’t you teach him something? Don’t think that just because you’re smart that doesn’t mean you can do as you wish. Look at his Tamil! He can’t form one word. And I’m not even going to look at his English test. As an older sister, it’s your responsibility.”
Ria was staring at the white canvas shoes, splotched with brown, nodding ever so slightly.
She wanted to disappear.
*
The phones started ringing at midnight. A beaming Ria picked each one up to reply thanks, and that she would enjoy the day. Of course she would. It was her eighteenth birthday after all. A large chocolate cake was waiting at the dining table as she bent over to blow out the candles, hoping wishes do come true. She cut out a large slice, on which rested a large chocolate-curl flower, and instead of giving it to her parents, she stuffed it in her mouth with eyes sparkling with mischief.
That morning, she slipped into her new purple T shirt. Not too sparkly, but comfortable enough and it didn’t show her flabby tummy. Her hair, just cut in layers, fell on her shoulders, her eyes matched the fine line of kaajal; she put on her glasses, and looked at herself in the mirror. She smiled!
Her mother came inside the room, her blue nightie matching the walls, and wished her now adult daughter.
“What’s your big birthday resolution?” she asked, aware of Ria’s ritual.
“To be a happy kid forever,” Ria replied, in jest.
And the talk shifted to Ria’s career plans which Ria only had a vague idea of which she tactfully shifted to that of her brother’s. She knew his interests varied from being a painter to a footballer to a game designer.
“Listen, dear…” her mother started, her voice taking on a more serious tone. “You should know that Lokesh, he’s uh… he’s a special child. The doctors told me, when he was a few months old, that, that his brain will not develop properly. He will always find it difficult to understand things. That he must not know this and that he must be treated like a normal child. They don’t know the cause. They have no idea of a cure. I’m sorry. Oh God! Did I sin so much in my previous birth?” By the end, she was in tears.
Ria held her mother’s hand. Her thoughts racing at a millions kilometers. The fall. The teasing him. Was it her fault? She clenched tighter, pain coursing between their hands. She felt as though she had never known her brother.
It was the worst birthday present ever.
She pulled herself together.
She wanted to be his friend and his protector. It was her birthday resolution.
And I hope I stick to it.
~~
Notes
Ambassador is a car. Old, and huge.
Aayaa = servant for want of a better word.
Jilebi = sweet.
Thanks for reading. ^^
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