Sibling mail order

Dear SRjr,

“How are your studies going on??????” Ok, if I start a mail which begins like this you will surely claim me to be the most God-awful, boring sister you could find on earth. Ok then, so let me start by asking “Found a girlfriend yet????” Well, that makes me predictable and such a prying nosy parker! If I ask about your health you might think I'm nuts because no one apart from me knows how exactly exams can abet deterioration of one's health. The next option for me is to start off the conversation with something shocking by telling you “KEVIN JONAS IS GETTING MARRIED TODAY!” and you'd reply by saying “Urghhhh, psycho teenage sisters and their obsession for cute boy bands” rolling your eyes in mock disgust and exasperation in spite of the fact that you don’t mind them and love their songs too and well you’re as shocked as I am but you will want to be all manly in the gangly, unsure way most teenage boys are and say something cliché like "Do I look like someone who cares????" Then in an attempt to redeem yourself in my eyes and sound more humane you’d mumble a “Good for him”.

If I try for off hand-casual and start with “So how’s school????” You'd grunt and shrug and then with a little more prodding on my part {I was always great at wheedling stuff out of people} you'd start grousing about all those crazy kids in class and give me the details on who did what and update me on school scandals. And I am supposedly the older sister.

If I ask you about sports day in school you'd whine {such a typical Virgo} about how cold it is {which is only expected since your doing march past in the middle of a desert country in the middle of winter} and how unnecessary the whole charade was but you had to put up a face and bear with {instead of bunking it like I had done for as long as I could remember} it since mom and dad were the parents this year who were invited in the guests of honour category to distribute prizes at the event even though you'd be bubbling with inexplicable pride and joy inside of you. {I am too. Though I’d very well like to ask the principal why she chose to bestow this honour after I passed out.} If I ask “How are mom, dad and gran?” you’d start off on how they nag you to study and how you had the upper hand when the marks finally came because it proved you do study and do it well too. Maybe if you are in a good mood you'd pitch in about how you outsmarted all those smart alecks from the IGCSE section twice your size, weight, age and height when playing basketball with a lot of repetition of the words basket, dribbling, travelling and something else that sounded as foreign as Greek and I’d smile inwardly thinking 'my lil’ macho man!'

Then you'd ask me if I had my violin class which 90 out of 100 times I wouldn’t have had because you know how busy with concerts my tutor is and how he has a forgettory for a memory. Then you'd tell me about stuff that you learnt in your music class, about the new tunes you can play on the guitar and the drums. I’d say something like “lucky you” to hide the slow emergence of envy inside me and then lord on you the tunes you should learn to play and the sites you should go to because if Bev can do it on her own and {Bev is such a musical whiz without lessons} then so can you. You'd say something along the lines of ‘Shut up and mind your own business’ in a more respectful way acceptable to me and grunt a reply that’s neither affirmation nor denial since most tunes I want you to learn would be a JB song.

If we are speaking around mealtime then we'd ask each other what exactly we are going to have for lunch or dinner. You’d name something exotic and even before I can reply about the meal at my end you'd pitch in about what I am having and be right 99.9% with the answer of rice, Sāmbhar or chapatti and some veggie dish and smile smugly {How I hate that!}.

Then you would tell me about how you downloaded all those movies I’ve been dying to watch and the songs I’ve been dying to hear although I can watch and listen to all of those only when I come down tothe UAE next March and you know how much it irritates me that you can and I can’t. But it’s like a cat bringing a dead rat to its owner. “Look I had fun doing it but it’s all for you”. Even though it repels the owner they adore the gesture of love. Nothing I typed here implies to you being a cat and me your owner. {I’d like to though, but no thanks. You’d scratch the hell out of me}

You call up on Raksha Bandhan and bemoan the fact of how you are not earning, you’re dependent on mom and dad and so can’t gift me a thing and I’d say that’s totally fine and send you the Rakhi through our cousin who’s here for a visit only to receive a courier package with the book “THE HOST” that I have been dying to read.
It’s only been 2 and a half years since I got myself a phone and its been doing pretty well until last month when it became terminally ill and start dying bit by bit. First the screen blacked out and then I couldn’t hear a thing: blindness and deafness. Sigh…… I was mourning the slow death of my loyal cell and you were jumping for joy. You buggered mom and dad into getting me some hi-fi phone with touch screen, Wi-Fi and god knows what by letting slip things like “She needs a phone quick. How else will she keep in touch with us??? Alone out there…… and it needs to be good to look at. She’s a college going kid, isn’t she???? And her birthday’s in 2 weeks and you can’t make it to be with her this time and she most probably won’t get any gifts from family.” As a result I have a splendid phone now: the envy of all around me. One, I treat with as much care as I would a work of abstract art {I don’t really understand abstract art}.

We fight over juvenile things like the remote control and escalate it into something serious and end up brutally beating up the other {scratching, punching in the stomach, banging the other on the wall etc are included}. Our respectful form of love lasts only through the first week of my visit. No one incites mad rage and violence in me like you do. If you tell my friends in college about how violent I can be they would take you to meet the counselor.

You keep grumbling about how mature I am in all other aspects except when it comes to the JB and how I start acting ridiculous like a giggly schoolgirl but you will still record their show for me since I can’t watch it here. You coerce dad into getting me their latest CD before it releases here in India so I can gloat about it and make Bev go green with envy. You’ll complain about how I totally forget you when I meet up with my friends and hate the fact that mom and dad send you along with us incase we have plans to hang out in the mall till late in the night. Still you’ll talk to them and gang up with them to pull my leg {it’s appallingly the same length still, though dad would have been happy had I grown a few inches taller}.

Still when we are making our way out of the mall you will shepherd me and my friends and shoot dirty looks at any male species daring to look our way. And then when you hold my hand involuntarily like a reflex action and keep falling onto me in the course of walking and keep doing so until you have achieved the desirable proximity that assures you I am not going to gather my skirts up and run away somehow you’re once again the little chubby, curly haired toddler who’d hold my hands and look up at me with eyes full of trust that said “my big sister bestest”.

I still remember the time when you were in kindergarten and I was a first grader and after school while we were waiting for dad to come pick us up I was making most of my left over breakfast when the school bully decided to push me over and drop my food. You went and shook the guy, your little hands hardly catching hold of more than his blazer. Later, I also remember standing at the supervisor’s office, the bully being yelled at and me administering a cold, wet handkerchief to your fair soft cheek red with the imprint of that idiot’s hand, all the while emphatically shrieking out to the supervisor about how " he slapped my little brother!”
I also remember coming home once and fuming away to glory, venting out a 7 year old kid’s frustration at mom {which mostly included tears and crying and gritted teeth} because "that lady” {your class teacher} asked me not to visit you at break time because after I left you’d be sad and want to come with me. My anger was justified, I guess because who are teachers to decide when brothers and sisters meet??????

You always get me gifts. For birthdays, great results, some achievement or the other. But just remember {and revel in the fact since I don’t give you a single thing in return} that you are my most cherished gift. Thank God mom and dad had a baby boy…… Thank God he gave me a little brother who is almost a foot taller than I am.

This is exactly why I don’t call you up because I know what our conversation is going to be like. So why waste time and money?

And before I forget I just came to know about how you messed up your French paper….Such a careless boy…..Call me up, we have to revise the grammar rules again….. God! How many times do I repeat the same things before you understand how to go about it?? Do you know  that your mule headedness drives me over the wall? Well, just call up ok…….. Or do I have to do that too now????

Well, at least sending a mail to you has its perks. I can post it on the blog.

Yours the eternal bossy big sister {who Loves........ to boss You around}

Falak