Little Bhau
I’d say that life before having a younger sibling was pure bliss. It’s like what Hugh Grant said in that movie “About a Boy” – I was the star of the Natasha Show. A show where I was the star, the sole attention was on me, other supporting characters were my aai, baba, and a few others but essentially the Natasha show was a stellar performance by me. My parents, my school, my food my life. There were no guest appearances that took the spotlight away from me. That was, until DoomsDay happened. My little bhau was born on 1st January 2000 (yes, he even had to make sure he had an “I’m a millennium boy and I’m going to show that off” birthdate); but my transformation from Natasha king of the castle to Natasha the “older sister” started months before…
DoomsDay
It was a perfect day; I was 8 years old and I had just passed a maths test at school, I was looking forward to coming home and scoffing on aai’s kheema that she had obviously only made for me because I was her world. I cheerfully walked out of the school gates that Tuesday afternoon swinging my lunchbox and smiling, walking up to baba who was waiting to take me home. And then it hit me like a tonne of bricks, things went very quiet and I had assumed that this meant there was no kheema at home; but instead baba said “you are going to have a little brother.” It took about three minutes for that to sink in. The problem with this was that I had always said how much I wanted a sister or a brother…but I didn’t mean it. Suddenly hundreds of questions started flying through my brain:
“Is this real?”
“Why didn’t you ask me if it was ok first?”
“How long is he planning to stay with us?”
“I thought we were all happy together so who’s he?”
“Logistics-wise does this mean he gets to play with my toys and watch my Disney videos?”
“Are we going to fit in the house? Is he planning to live in the same house?”
I think these are pretty mature questions for an 8-year-old to think about, I suddenly felt like the mature one, as if my parents had made a decision that they obviously hadn’t thought about properly. It was very irresponsible of them to make this decision without consulting me I thought, so I spent the rest of the day being very quiet. I still went for the kheema when I got home of course, god knows if this brother person would let me have any when he arrived.
The following months were a blur. There was phone call after phone call, dinner after dinner of people fawning over aai, as if she were carrying Wonder Boy who was prophesised to save all mankind. They gave her flowers, lovely fluffy baby clothes and plenty of hugs and kisses. What did I get? I got a “Atha tula aaichi kalji ghayla lagnar! Shaani ahes tu, mothi ahes tu atha” or “So Natasha ready to be a big sister? It’s a big responsibility!”.
I was more concerned with playing games with my friends and brushing my barbie doll’s hair. Not waiting for the next Jesus to arrive so I can become his protector. I could feel the attention slowly moving from me to this baby and the worst part was that he wasn’t even alive yet.
Happy New Year
Thankfully I wasn’t there during labour, I think it was wise. Watching my aai writhing in pain like the antichrist would have been the last thing I would have wanted to see. At that age I was under the impressions that when people have babies they burst out of your stomach like an alien so I just stayed at home until it was ok for me to come to the hospital to see…”them”.
When I got to the hospital, I saw aai lying in the hospital bed like she had just ran a marathon and this little cot next to her. What was lying inside the cot resembled a snoring, pink coloured prune. Lots of people will look at a baby and exclaim “OHHHHH he is the splitting image of his mum” or “AHHHHH what a straight nose he has”. These people are all lying. Babies all look the same. This baby looked like a baby. My parents did consult me about what to name the baby, and in the end, they called him Ved. I prefer Natasha but we couldn’t have two of those.
The first time I held Ved it was just really weird; he was incredibly fragile; his hand was the size of a tiny bakarwadi and I was terrified I was going to drop him. I have to admit, I did have a warm fuzzy feeling, after all it was a baby and I didn’t have a heart of (total) stone. This feeling disappeared however when he started to cry. A shrill, shrieking noise like a cross between nails dragging across a metal door and an owl yelling at the top of his voice. January the bloody first and while my friends were celebrating the first day of the new year with McDonald’s I was stuck in a hospital with a yelping baby human. Happy New Year indeed.
Survival Instinct
When I look back now, I honestly do regret the way I felt towards Ved for the first few years. Most children when they become older siblings tend to fawn over their baby sisters and brothers, they don’t mind sharing the love and they get on pretty well. But you see I was smarter. I knew that now I had competition for my parents and I had to fight. I had to make sure the Ved Show wasn’t as popular as the Natasha Show. It had to be the occasional “Koffee break with Ved” not constant episodes of “Comedy Nights with Ved”. My survival mode kicked in and I have to admit, I was incredibly mean. The problem is, I knew that Ved was born with tricks to hypnotise people into thinking he was innocent and sweet and just wonderful. For starters he made sure he was born on new years’ day so instead of people buying baby gifts and baby clothes for him, they bought “millennium baby” gifts and clothes for him. His face also eventually developed from prune to adorable with huge eyes and a big smile, at one point he looked identical to the Parle-G kid:
He started to develop a personality…he was morphing from baby into human slowly and steadily, and while everybody else fell for his spells and marvelled at him, I watched from my tower.
Stalker
Ved had this habit of following me around a lot. He would crawl and slither around the house after me if I stopped playing Lego with him and eventually it all started getting a little tedious for me. He also started to want to eat anything that I liked, it was like he wanted to steal my identity. I was too young to be a mother and I eventually started running out of ideas of what to do with him.
I read an Instagram post recently which completely sums up how I felt about being a new older sibling:
A: “First borns are always the meanest”
B: “Because we became parents of children we didn’t make. So yea, we’re very angry.”
Eventually I started to realise that Ved was incredibly afraid of heights, so in order to make him stop chasing after me at all hours of the day, I would place him on one of the window-sills in the house. And he would sit there in total silence.
It didn’t work all the time however, especially when he started to grow and learn how to climb off. I didn’t really understand what he found so fascinating about watching me do the dishes or finish my homework, but he would just be sitting nearby fidgeting with toys or scribbling on the walls. I started to think that Ved was hyperactive because I don’t remember seeing any other child feel the need to constantly move around as much as him. So I thought I best put his energy to use and teach him things. I am responsible for teaching him a number of survival skills e.g. how to convince the parents that we should get a Chinese takeaway without them thinking it came from me, or how to carry a cup of tea from the kitchen to my room, or how to take the blame for losing things around the house. I realised that my parents didn’t have another child to hurt my feelings, they had another child so that I could have a mini servant.
Overtaking
Ved transformed from tiny useless baby into hyperactive child to lovable band-geek teenager so quickly that it took me a while to start seeing him as a young man rather than weak younger sibling. Things started to shock me – things like how his arms seemed to have muscles now and they were helping him beat me at arm wrestles. He started to wear this hideous smelling spray called “Lynx”, a body spray that all male teenagers wear (they think it makes them smell like Jean Claude Van Daam but it just makes them smell like male teenager). The most annoying thing was that his face started to develop an Angelina Jolie jawline that I was and still am incredibly jealous off to the point where I am seriously considering injecting fillers to have it to. The only reason why I haven’t actually done it is because I’ll look too much like Ved and I can’t allow myself to let him think I want to be him.
I refused to believe that Ved ever turned eighteen, it just never made sense to me. On one hand he had matured so much and become a little man, and on the other hand he was still a child sometimes. There was one specific situation where I reminded him that he was still a child – when he had passed his driving test. When I had taken my driving test a year ago, I passed by total chance. In fact, my driving instructor was horrified that I had actually passed, so Ved didn’t trust me behind the wheel at all (even if I had been driving 8 years longer than he had). The day had finally come when he passed his driving test and he was so happy that I was able to convince him to drive aai’s car to the shops with me. I had never seen him so excited – he really felt like he was an adult doing his braking and his parallel parking. After we reached the car park, I again convinced him that we did not need to buy a ticket to park (I totally made this information up I just wanted to go shopping). After spending an hour shopping, we returned to the car park and saw a bright yellow “PENALTY” notice wedged into the windscreen wipers. I froze in my steps while Ved, shaking, walked up to the car and began to read the parking penalty notice. In this moment, Ved went from confident teenage driver to an egg-timer because he started shaking and shrieking like he had just been born again. Men are so dramatic, they really are. He started to cry in manner of Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai when Rahul left her for Tina, “YOU DID THIS DIDI I AM IN SO MUCH TROUBLE HOW COULD YOU DO THIS I HAVE JUST PASSED MY TEST, I JUSTTTT PASSED MY TEST AND NOW I HAVE POINTS ON MY LICENCE. HOW COULD YOU DO THIS. MUM IS GOING TO KILL ME I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE I CAN’T GO HOME WHAT IF MUM SEES THIS WHAT HAVE YOU DONE”.
Dramatic much.
I knew very well that it was my fault for not checking (but I wasn’t going to admit that to him) so I calmed him down as best I could and told him I would pay for the penalty charge. After he stopped huffing and puffing, he was eventually able to drive home… but somewhere inside I felt somewhat happy that he still needed me to guide him and save him from the world. It made me feel needed and I was loving it.
He’s Okay
It took a long time but slowly and surely, I realised that Ved and I had a lot of similarities in the way we were growing up. As I watched Ved grow and go through the same things I did it made me develop this bizarre protective feeling towards him, I couldn’t really explain it when I was younger but I suppose that is what they call “sibling bond”. It’s not like I had a choice but I started to see the amazing advantages of having not just a younger brother but him in particular.
I had also by this time developed a liking or respect towards him, unlike when he was a baby, Ved turned out into a pretty ok-ish person after his brain fully developed. It is extremely evident to people however that Ved and I are polar opposite personalities. While I am totally irrational, Ved is completely rational. I tend to overreact to everything, Ved doesn’t react to anything. I have an incredible sense of style, Ved shops at Primark. But Ved also possesses personality traits like stillness, utter sincerity in everything he does and PATIENCE. This is probably why we have had so many spectacular arguments, we just think from two different ends of the same stick. But being siblings, we have always sorted it out, normally by Ved knocking on my room door, popping his head in and saying “yo didi food is ready downstairs”.
University
I never believed that Ved would go to university. Not because he wasn’t capable but I just never wanted to believe that he would grow up one day. When the time came for Ved to stay in university accommodation I do admit I was incredibly happy for him, I couldn’t wait for him to spread his wings a bit and just get out there and be a lad for a while, I also couldn’t wait to take over his room at home. But on the other hand, I became that grieving over-emotional older sister/wannabe aai, I worried that he would die of starvation because he couldn’t even cook a fried egg. I was scared he wouldn’t cross the road properly etc. Ved had grown up and I hadn’t even realised it, and I didn’t like getting emotional about it.
The irony is that nowadays when he comes home, I find myself walking into his room asking what he is doing. I find myself wanting to tag along if he is going out to do something fun. While he watches movies on his laptop, suddenly I’m the one sitting near him trying to annoy him. Thankfully he doesn’t make me sit on window-sills to get me to be quiet but it just amazes me how things can change so quickly and feelings can change even quicker. Twenty years ago, I thought that Ved was a danger to my very existence and today I can safely say that I am proud to be his older sister. All the fighting, the nagging, the Lego was worth it and he is one of my most precious gifts that my parents ever gave me.
I’ve never really thought about it but it must be hard being a younger sibling especially a younger brother. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him having to live with a lovable yet menacing sister but he did incredibly well and that’s a testament to his character. Ved has been there to make me cups of tea when I clicked my fingers but he has also stood beside me and supported me in my darkest times. He never asked questions he just made sure he was there. He has an ability to look at the bigger picture and take the mature road unlike me where I just throw myself into the road and hope for the best. I think all of us who have been lucky enough to have a little brother can agree that we hate watching them grow up.
If I was 8 years old again, I would have jumped around in circles laughing with happiness when baba told me I was getting a human. If I could have re-winded the time, I would have taught Ved some fun games and spent more time with him instead of sit him on window sills. I wish we could have had one more morning of throwing cereal at each other; I wish he was still a baby so I could rock him to sleep again.
The point is that I became a parent when I became Ved’s tai, and I am proud of him as if he were my own son; it’s not the Natasha Show anymore, it’s a family ensemble.
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