by Vani Viswanathan
The bags were all packed, and dad was doing the final count. ‘Six bags,’ he declared. ‘SIX!’ he repeated, as if we hadn’t heard it the first time. ‘She’s going to live there,’ mom interjected. ‘What did you expect?’
My sister was going away. To study in a university thousands of miles away. As an 11-year-old younger sibling, this brought me endless joy. All parental attention would be on me, now, I reckoned. But somehow it felt different. My sister was making last minute phone calls to those elderly relatives who weren’t able to join the massive crowd that had come home to see her off. The house was buzzing – aunts were fussing over my sister, feeding her this sweet or that favourite tidbit of hers; uncles, not knowing what to say, were discussing the latest Championships Trophy match which India had lost in a shameful way; cousins ran about from room to room playing some game, and in the midst of this all, I felt miserably alone.
My 11-year-old brain attributed this to the fact that my parents were leaving me for a week to settle my sister down in her new place.
It was time to leave. The whole party went downstairs and my sister’s bags were loaded on to the trunk of the car. Sis got in without any fuss, and that was when I – the jealous sibling, the fighting, demanding one – broke into tears. Sis looked shocked and clambered out of the car, and hugged me close. I buried my head into her chest. ‘But you’re going away!’ I cried, my pickled brain finally understanding the reason for my intense gloom.
Pic : http://www.flickr.com/photos/twodolla/
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