MEMORIES

I had to write today, to look back at those beautiful memories I cherish of my brother, to look back at all those fights I had with him and to just try to reach out my hand into thin air and try to feel his physical presence. The last part, my heart knows, is absolutely impossible because when people move on to their onward journey from Earth, they never return back......

Fourteen years ago on this very day, early in the morning I was staring at his motionless body, waiting for him to jump up and start behaving like himself. He didn't.... and after all the rituals had been taken care of, I got to hold his ashes in a small urn and I kept on thinking all the way to Haridwar that, "Is that it?" And as I mulled over the incomprehensible secrets of life and death, somewhere inside me my reflexes told me not to look back AT ALL......as looking back meant breaking down and that would have been a hindrance to the tasks he had left behind for me......I had to keep running his company as long as I could, and had to take care of his young sons, and to try and heal his mother...our mother....who must have been absolutely shattered after losing a part of her, but refused to show her grief to anyone.

But how long can I hold myself back.....as I started treading towards the ensuing dawn of my life, I one day just turned back and looked... and there, I could see myself riding with him on his bicycle, being brought back from school after waiting for a harrowing one hour outside the school gates, while everyone else had left. I was dying to reach home and complain to my mother and satisfy myself with the scoldings being bombarded at him.

My ears were ringing with his voice singing all the great melodies of Kishore Kumar, while I was sitting there on the bar of his bicycle. Till today many times I listen to Kishore Kumar songs to feel my brothers voice kissing my ears. His was a voice exact copy of the legendary singer and very few people know that he was a trained classical singer.

I can hear him recollecting the mishaps he had had with me because as an infant being 11 years younger to him I was absolutely at his mercy. He would tell me how, inspite of being a frail clumsy boy, he would love carrying me around in his arms and one day just dropped me into a gutter full of..........well you can guess what gutters are full of!!!! I would go urghhhh.....and he would enjoy my displeasure with his full throated laughter.

He was the first boy to pull at my long plait and though it hurt me, he always enjoyed it. Maybe that is why in the past years I have preferred to have short hair, because there is no one around to pull at the plait anymore. We fought like animals, like many other siblings, but the strange part is that I always won the fights instead of being so much younger and smaller than him. He got me into the best school of Chandigarh, after dad thrust the responsibility on him.  And I enjoyed him coming to pick me up from school, because my friends found him handsome...they never said it, but I could see it in their eyes.

Oh for those long sessions of playing cricket...and hockey and football. I always preferred playing cricket though...and sticking around with him wherever he went. He would get tired of me at times. Which young teenaged boy wouldn't, with his sister, sticking around him like a sore thumb, when all he wanted to do was enjoy with his friends and flirt with the girls on the street. That too a sister who would spurt out all what he did to mom and dad, the moment we returned home. Wish I had the decency of keeping his secrets.

This place is too less to go on talking about what we shared and what all we disagreed upon. But still after so many years, I am happy I made the attempt to refresh his memories and I am sure he is smiling up there. I wish he could give me his bear hug and pull at my plait once again....oops! I forgot I don't have it anymore.

But today I want him to  be at peace wherever he is and to be in the best of his spirits, no matter if he is in any physical form or is a divine soul. And as I look at his two young sons and try to find him in them....I wish to get one more chance to tie Rakhi to him and look forward to him reminding me to touch his feet, because he was older to me and we happened to be Bengalis. The only difference being, that this time I would throw myself at his feet to pay obeisance to all that he has done for me and to hide those tears rolling down to cry over the fact that his was a life of a genius cut short by the game of destiny. And more so a life today not remebered by many which otherwise,  had he been alive, would have attracted loads of appreciation because he was on his way to reaching out for the skies.......