My brown-eyed girl...

Twas baby sister’s birthday a little while ago. So, she turned twenty, and I know that doesn’t really qualify her into the ‘baby’ category, but I belong to that large group of individuals for whom their younger siblings will always be babies. Even when she’s eighty with yellowing dentures and I’m ninety in a squeaky wheelchair, or at some such age differential.

For her big day, I much lovingly made her a pretty card and sent it in a recycled stamped envelope across the seas, via Airmail. The attendant at the post office who weighed the envelope in for me is a regular buddy. I often send letters to folks in Ohio, and he always mentions how him and his wife got engaged in Delaware, OH. So ever since that connection was established between us, I make it a point to try to sneak into his line. He always offers me his wide toothy smile, and I offer him a chatty minute or two on the current post office traffic conditions. I really do like post offices....and stamps, pretty stamps, are my special friends. My favorite set yet that USPS has come out with are the Navajo blanket patterns in bright rectangles of orange, red, blue and yellow. Make a person’s day, any day, every day.

When babysis was born, I apparently called her a mouse. Right from day one of her life, I harbored notions of grandeur, both in terms of larger physical size and girl-fight winning abilities. I always stayed much taller than her....she would end up at the front of her class assembly lines, and I always toward the back. It was fun to wave to her if our lines ever chanced to pass each other as we left the morning school assembly extravaganzas. And she always had her charming smile reserved for me…she still does. She’s stayed short, and her smile has remained precious.

Our’s however wasn’t always the perfect relationship my parents thought it was. Early on, I noticed three major areas of concern in which my notions of superiority had potential to be disturbed. One, was in the world of singing:

Pre-singing session:
Music teacher: So girls did you practice the Keerthana?
Me: Oh yes, three times
Babysis: Promptly presents charming smile (always an indication that silence is better than lying)
Post-singing session:
Music teacher: Well…that was wonderful, babysis, kshamatha…and you, next time practice with your sister so that you are in the right pitch.

Two, she was a much better dancer than me. At family functions, I ended up being the choreographer, and got pushed toward the back to partner some large-sized pick from the cousin menagerie, while everyone insisted that babysis stay up front all by herself. She was the point person, and the whole troupe revolved around her, you see. Hrrrumph, who taught you dodos the moves in the first place?!

And three, she had satisfied parental units by looking exactly like Daddy. They felt truly that she was theirs, while I was, well, me. I was different, well-loved, but unlike anyone of them.

Rich aunty from USA with one too many gold rings on her ever-so-slightly chubby fingers with bright red nail paint: Ooooh, babysis looks just like her father! How darling! And (looking at me) you…you…(turning to Amma jokingly) are you sure you didn’t exchange her at the hospital, you know how horrible this country doctor’s are! Hahahaha….

This signaled the exit of us kids from this rich aunty’s presence. My sister was just plain anti-social, and for me, her laugh was just a bit too taxing on my eardrums. We were, however, smart enough to ensure we left with some Toblerone's stashed behind our angelic smiles. I must mention that there was an advantage to this type of joking about hospital-crib-exchanges. Babysis and I sat for hours and imagined up stories about how indeed I was an exchange-case, and who my ‘real’ parents were, where they lived, what their jobs were, and how we were going to find them. We, of course, relied on our A-grade knowledge of Bollywood movie child-mother reunion storylines to come up with some of our own romantic milan scenarios. So exciting I sometimes even laid up extra-late in bed staring at the fan and dreaming away. About how my ‘real’ parents would want me back very bad once they found out what a good girl I was, and I would very solemnly tell them no....that although I was happy to know them, I wanted to stay with my current family. All such stories were much fun.

Luckily for me, I was resilient enough to put these three sources of conflict safely behind me as we got older. I just stopped these music classes, I wasn’t going to get any better, and babysis became doubly interested in them, so my parents were pacified after my withdrawal. And we had gotten too cool to dance at these family functions anymore. Now we sat in our specially tailored green long skirt-blouse outfits with our hands in our laps, and honorably embraced the giggly-girl stage of our life instead. And to top it all, finally at age 12 or so, someone suddenly realized that I had my uncle’s nose. And just like that, that was that. I looked like a family member, and all things were settled, no more crib-exchange stories for me! Personally, I see no resemblance between my uncle and me, but hey, if people wanted to live in pleasurable ignorance, who was I to invade?

Having babysis around also presented me with distinct advantages. For one, since her toddler days, Daddy had sung her to sleep on Pal pal dil ke paas from Black Mail. She was soon addicted and couldn’t fall asleep unless that song was sung. And once we got our own room, Daddy always came in and sang her to bed, and I free-rided along and slept to happy Kishore Kumar melodies.

Two, when Amma came to pick me up from school every afternoon, all my teachers would drool over babysis and how cute she was. Consequently, I achieved exalted status because my babysis was super-cute. Teachers insisted on asking me about her....and do remember this was before she could string two words coherently together. And my, was I always proud to talk about her latest adventure: She crawled down two stairs all by herself today, really she did! And over the weekend Amma took us swimming, and she never cried once as the instructor floated her chubby frame around, my babysis is super brave too!

Third and most important, my babysis loves animals, of all kinds. So when I wanted to raise cockroaches in our room, she supported me 100%. She stood by my side when Amma would find our bowls filled with painstakingly collected cockroach eggs and toss them down the drain. She held my hand when I wanted to feed every stray dog we found on the street, while Amma tried to drag us to Bata for new sets of shoes. She understands when I tell her of the earthworms I throw back into the mud after a rain shower. And her support in this regard has been a definite plus through my trials and non-tribulations.

And then in all the medley of life, you get to a point when all you feel for your babysis is love and concern and a warm glow of positive feelings. And standing in this embrace of warmth, it’s nice to reflect back, look around, and look ahead. The embrace will be with you no matter where you go.