GIVEN what a mouthy thing I grew up to be, it’s shocking when I tell anyone that I began talking later than most children do. But I didn’t need words. I had my older sister, whom I call Oppol. For those who are unfamiliar with the customs, traditions and beliefs in India, here its mandatory to give respect to elders while addressing them or talking to them by adding some suffix to indicate their seniority. In Hindi, we usually add 'bhaiyya' or 'deedi'. In malayalam, we suffix 'chettan' or 'chechi' to their names. My dad had only one sister and he used to call her 'Oppol'. This term is heard only in particular areas of kerala and Its a very old way of summoning one's sister. Digging dictionaries, one may be able to find what it means: "The one born together". I have to say, the term still carries a lot of old world charm with it. I was made to call my Sister as 'Oppol' even before the time I can remember.
The way my mother always recounted it, I’d squirm, pout, mewl, bawl or indicate my displeasure in some comparably articulate way, and before she could press me on what I wanted and perhaps coax actual language from me, Oppol would rush in to solve the riddle.
“His blanket,” she’d say, and she’d be right.
“Another cookie,” she’d say, and she’d be even righter.
From the tenor of my sob or the twitch of one of my fat little fingers, Oppol knew which chair I wanted to sit on, which toy I was ogling. She decoded the signs and procured the goods. Only 5 years older, she was my psychic and my spokesman, my shaman and my Sherpa. With Oppol around, I was safe.
Now, the mother of an incredibly naughty and noisy girl child, I am pretty sure she wouldn't have any issue understanding what the kid wants.
We marched (or, rather, crawled and toddled) into this crazy world together, and though we had no say in that, it’s by our own volition and determination that we march together still. Among my many blessings, this is the one I’d put at the top.
Three weeks ago, the calendar decreed that we pause to celebrate mothers, as it does every year. Three weeks hence, fathers get their due. But as I await my flight to meet my parents in a quick land and take off arrangement at Trivandrum on a Father's day, my thoughts turn to siblings, who don’t have a special day but arguably have an even more special meaning to, and influence on, those of us privileged to have them.
“Siblings are the only relatives, and perhaps the only people you’ll ever know, who are with you through the entire arc of your life,” the writer Jeffrey Kluger observed to Salon in 2011, the year his book “The Sibling Effect” was published. “Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.”
Of course the “entire arc” part of Kluger’s comments assumes that untimely death doesn’t enter the picture, and that acrimony, geography or mundane laziness doesn’t pull brothers and sisters apart, to a point where they’re no longer primary witnesses to one another’s lives, no longer fellow passengers, just onetime housemates with common heritages.
That happens all too easily, and whenever I ponder why it didn’t happen with Oppol and me — both of us so different from each other — I’m convinced that family closeness isn’t a happy accident, a fortuitously smooth blend of personalities.
IT’S a resolve, a priority made and obeyed. Oppol and her Husband could spend their yearly leave of around 45 days embarking on a voyage or a joyride rather than visit home town in this busy world. But they travel all the way from where they work - in another continent, in another time zone - every year, just to be together. We made a decision to be together, and it’s the accretion of such decisions across time that has given us so many overlapping memories, which are in turn, our glue.
I’m also convinced that having numerous siblings helps. If you’re let down by one, you can let off steam with another. There’s always someone else to turn to. This is from my own experience of watching my Mom deal with her 10 siblings. There are always gangs or herds within this herd which are attached among themselves than with the others in the herd.
It’s like a treasure chest: you have access to a lot of different personalities, Mom told me. “With my brothers and sisters, I turn to them all. But I turn to them for different things.” That’s how it is in our brood, too.
Perhaps because the two of us belong to the same generation — just over 5 years separate me and Oppol — each understands the other better than our mother could ever understand us, or than our father ever will. And while our parents gave us values, we inadvertently assigned ourselves the roles we play. Popularity came more easily to Oppol being the more obedient and controllable, so I resolved to be the more diligent student, needing to find my own way to stand out. Because Oppol and I made relatively conventional choices, Mom and Dad were always happy to compare us to each other for the things we were not so popular about.
That’s how it goes in a pack of siblings, and I sometimes wonder, when it comes to the decline in fertility rates in our country and others, whether the economic impact will be any more significant than the intimate one. For better or worse, fewer people will know the challenges and comforts of a sprawling clan.
Those comforts are manifold, at least in my lucky experience. With siblings to help shoulder the burden of your parents’ dreams and expectations, you can flail on a particular front with lower stakes and maybe even less notice. Siblings not only pick up the slack but also act as decoys, providing crucial distraction.
They’re less tailored fits than friends are. But in a family that’s succeeded at closeness, they’re more natural, better harbors. As far as I have observed in case of my Oppol, she isn't a person I would have likely made an effort to know or spend time with if I'd met her at school, say, or at work. And yet a reunion with her thrills me more than a reunion with friends, who don’t make me feel that I'm, “a part of a larger quilt”. My sister does.
With a friend, I have to be more articulate. With my sister, I can be my most primal self: inarticulate, childishly emotional. I’ll have a fight with my sister and say, ‘O.K., I know we’re in a fight, but I need your advice on something,’ and we can just put the fight on hold. They’re the only people in the world you can be your worst self with and they’ll still accept you.”
My sibling has certainly seen me at my worst, and I’ve seen her at her's. No one has bolted. It’s as if we signed some contract long ago, before we were even aware of what we were getting into, and over time gained the wisdom to see that we hadn’t been duped. We’d been graced: with a center of gravity; with an audience that never averts its gaze and doesn’t stint on applause. For both of us, a new home, a new relationship or a newborn was never quite real until the other has been ushered in to the front row.
This vacation, when she comes home, I have to decode what she wants. It won’t be difficult. I have decades of history to draw from, along with an instinct I can’t even explain.
