Talk of taking your own sweet time, of paying no heed (actually quite ignoring it) to the calendar! Yes, here I speak of the very late setting in of the much-awaited Delhi winter. Till last Sunday, people had not shed their T-shirts and thin cottons, and air-conditioners remained at full-blast—a rather dispiriting feeling considering half of November was quite over. Yes, and so have been in the grips of the fish-out-of-water feeling. Would we be skipping winter and heading straight to another prolonged oven-hot summer?! With all this going on in my head, and with my deliciously warm winter wear staring back at me when I’d open my wardrobe, I had not for over the past many days been able to gather my thoughts, or rather collect thoughts of any kind, to sit down with pen in hand to fill up this space. And then, yesterday morning while thankfully being able to plug in the electric chimney in the drawing room—the one that showcases orange-red flames I knew exactly what my pen wanted to fill up on the blank white sheet. (Before letting this pen, raring to go, must mention how lovely it would be to have a real fireplace to toast one’s hands instead of this out-and-out artificial one!) Now say we at last get started…Sibling rivalry has, I guess been there, to sound clichétic, since time immemorial and it exists, even thrives, in cataclysmic dimensions but then now the contention has been compounded with sibling indifference! Now don’t even begin to wonder how apathy and envy can go hand-in-hand! Dried out sponges, that couldn’t care a rat’s tail if the brother on the bunk above is coughing himself hoarse or didn’t have the time of the day to ask the sister why she was contemplating a divorce…Emotional dehydration, an off-shoot of being on social media—Insta, Snapchat, X and all other possible platforms. It’s a common sight—phone in hand, gormlessly walking while uploading “stories of one’s life” heading straight into a railing—at thigh height. By the way, the above eyeful, pertains not to youngsters but to humans of any age. Age no bar, as far as the mobile goes. It’s quite common to see elderly people WhatsApping away, gone near deaf to the goings-on, a smile that could pass as a giggle while their eyes are fondly caressing the screen. And what’s this about taking phones to the bathroom while going “long time”?! Guess it is about utilizing one’s time while parked in the toilet for a good ten minutes?! Anyways, back to detached, disengaged “near and dear” ones… The aloofness, does not, however, prevent or rather put at bay, the feuding, the bickering, the brandishing of swords. Is it my imagination, or are, of late, so, so many brothers at each other’s throats, sisters taking jealousy to an all new high, as well as brother and sister getting together, exasperatedly so, on Rakhi day wishing that they had lived in different cities so they could clinically get done with Raksha Bandhan virtually…(Yes, virtual reality saves one from shuffling past each other!) And the animosity, or call it what you will, has nothing to do with your economic status. Some snapshots viewed from close quarters: Two of my cousins, brothers to each other, to quote my uncle, the father of the duo, are “ready to shoot at sight” one another. Both live in different continents, Australia and America. The one in New York, even after over ten years, still is gunning down his parents for having thrown his Aussie counterpart, co-equal, a Big Fat Indian Wedding while he, some four prior years to it, had to make do with a church wedding followed by a Reception boasting of a mere 100 odd people! How is it that the New Yorker, forgot that his bride did not want to be in India for the big day, that he too had abandoned the land that was his for 20 some years, announcing that the country was about macro-miseries, mess—legions of them. Plus, why fly down the extended family to the Big Apple when the money spent on their fare and stay could be his, as one more of the wedding presents that the parents were bestowing on him?! Funny, how one can make amnesia work in their favour! The Aussie offspring, on the other hand, has his own share of selective memory…Nearer home, two cousins of my Significant Other, live in the same sprawling building, one above the other on the top two floors, and are not on speaking terms. Reason: Dispute over a smallish apartment owned by their long-gone-to-heaven father. Yes, it is all about money! Money, the great divider, unlike Death the great equalizer. And how about the neighbour who post his parents’ death, when Covid was in full swing, has put an absolute embargo on his two sisters from entering the house and yet his wife’s family seems to be perennially parked in this three-and-a-half storeyed home?! This house, he says, is all his, since he’s the only male. Talk of the fruit of one’s loins! Pinky, my soft-spoken maid has not spoken to her sister for over a year. The same sister, who happens to be her sis-in-law since their respective husbands happen to be brothers. Reason: Preeti, Pinky’s elder sister, has gnawed into a part of the common pathway to increase the space of her two-room house. That’s in their village, here their cramped living quarters are divided by a grazing wall. The brothers, too, are following their wives’ cue. And then there’s a dear generous friend who carries on, chin up, despite carrying a deep emotional wound—she’s been made the victim of “pervasive cancel culture” by her brother and sister. Uninvited to family functions, mocked, jeered, sneered at by both siblings. Reason: Her son had gotten into drugs, and despite being in and out of de-addiction centres, the lad was relentless, the daughter was withdrawn and academically speaking, showed little promise and so was branded both anti-social and not-in-the-running.
Given these heart-sinkers, time to do a rethink. For one, this seismic overhaul in sibling connections must make one reflect over the old saying, “Blood is thicker than Water” and secondly, it’s time, don’t you think, to follow China and adopt the One-Child Policy?!