Deepti, my sister

Deepti

The day my sister was born, in the evening of a cold yet sunny winter’s day, everything in my life was as it always was.  My father was happy, my mother was happy and my grandmother was happy.  My father and I and Babumama went to an uppity dhaba in Karol Bagh and had a nice dinner and I remember having keema curry and roti.  We bought some sweet packets and drive back home to the Lohri fire and the neighbourhood families sitting around the fire, my father had a wide grin and distributed the sweet packets and everyone is certain that its a boy only to be told its a girl.  Many tch’d tch’d, another girl!!

From that day I became Deepti’s caregiver in spirit.  No one told me to, no one even hinted at it but I became responsible for her and so I remain to this day.  I am 10 years older than Deepti and I totally used to feel in-charge of her. She was this sweet little apple of my eyes till she was about 3 years old and then her mind began to work and oh my oh, it was terrible.  At 6 months her ears were pierced and because she moved during the process, she had the hole in one year a little higher than the other, a fault she corrected a week before she got married.  She got stitches on her forehead because she was running around after my cousin Sunil and I and crashed into a chest of drawers when we had made a poor joke of the drawer being broken but soon shut up when we saw blood.  Madame was born on a Monday and as the rhyme says “Monday’s child is fair of face” and she was rather proud of her looks her beauty and almost always had a scarf around her neck, totally contrasting in color to the frock she would wear.  All of us humored her and went along.  There were days when she stuck her head into the balcony grill and I and my friend Nirmal had a good laugh till my mother realized that her head is stuck.  She being the super mom she is, pressed her head and slowly got it out, it was a long 15 minutes.  Other days, she would be playing hide and seek and she goes to hide and we lose her.  Madame is hiding long after her playmates have gone home and its dark.  Soon the whole neighbourhood is looking for her and we find her hiding in a building under construction.  She would go to Raghu’s house down the lane to have tomatoes because aunty used to cut them, add sugar to it and pick her up and feed her.  All this was good and she was an angel.

Between the age of 5 and 10 years, she was naughty but bearable.  She had this uncanny knack of vomiting in the school bus just when we were about to reach the school and then the teachers in the bus would have the bus stop, clean her, and we would all go back to drop her before heading back to school.  Very thoughtful indeed but think of me, the elder sister, I nearly died of shame.  I told my mother not to give her milk in the morning. She had lots and lots of  friends and when she went out to play she went with a water bottle for the fear that if she comes back home for water my mother will hold her back for her studies.  She started eating a lot and became rather chubby, if she missed her school bus, she would come back and have another round of breakfast.She drove away her Carnatic music teacher in 3 months……she would hide when the teacher came for lessons.  That was rather regretful because Deepti sings very well.  She however liked to dance and learnt Bharatanatyam with me, she performed very well and has received multiple awards from our dance school.

The poor dear, despite being 10 years after me in school lived in my reflected glory and was always known as Preeti’s sister.  Preeti was the head girl in school and Deepti was the cultural minister.  Raja and I have attended many of her PTM at school and I used to love it because I got to meet my teachers though Deepti hated it because I would go after her if she got poor reviews.  She was an average student till standard 12 but had this dream of living in the US and then from graduation onwards she worked had.  aFter her mBA form India she worked in the company, Coca Cola.  She went to work early morning came back late at night but got up at 3 in the morning to prepare for her GMAT exams and to work on her essays.  She has a lot of grit and staying power, she is determined and extremely hard working to this day.  She reached the US and was there for more than 10 years but came back to India to get married to the man of her dreams.  She is now a mother to 3, Avyukt, Advay and Arihant, they are blessed to have her as their mother, she is so devoted to them.  Abhi her husband is indeed a lucky man!

She is also the aunt to my precious Veda and what an aunt she is.  She would dress Veda in clothes same as hers and they would parade around, Veda went to stay with her for 3 months and visited a lot of places in the US,  she always wore clothes brought by her aunt and Raja who travelled a lot outside of India as Veda was growing up.  Memi as Veda calls her is her soulmate, they have conversations that probably go beyond what my little one tells me.  I am truly thankful for this magical tie they have.

This my sister, is written for your birthday on 13th of January 2020.  Have happy birthday and may we keep fighting and keep loving each other.  Many people say that you are like a daughter to me but I have now started seeing you as a sister that you are, not being responsible for you but being a partner in sisterly crimes with you.  Lets be carefree, lets be naughty, lets be sisters.