Born in the year 1944 to a family that traditionally belonged to Punjab province of pre-independent India, I was the second child to my parents. I had a two year elder sister, Maneka. Though my parents gave birth to more siblings, unfortunately they couldn't survive long and died as infants. Post independence there was so much turbulence in the life of our family that, like any other family of partitioned India, that it was only Maneka and I, who were left alive to continue the family's bloodline.
Like the usual brother-sister duo, we shared a sacrosanct relationship between us. If we had twelve hours a day of fight, then we had reserved the other twelve hours when Maneka and I would talk, care, share, played and enjoyed together. Today when I take my mind to those past lanes of life, I remember and laugh on those trivial issues for which we fought. There were many such reasons for the fratricide to happen.
One such bone of contention was her hating my habit of being skeptic, as she would put it. She often argued that I behaved arrogantly and was stubborn. She also believed that being the youngest member of the clan, I 'intelligently' took soft corners whenever I was at the gun point. And then it was she who had to face the brunt.
My reasons for calling dhawaas at her were that she tried being an amma to me- yeh nahi karma, who nahi kar, isse aise kyun kiya, isse vaise kar. Pathetic! Couldn't she mind her own business or lest become a BTM, an acronym for 'Behenji Turned Modern'. And when the matters became worst, Maneka being a scorpio would use her stings, her long, sharp nails, to attack and defend the paws of Leo, my kicks and punches. Whenever both of us fought, we became so oblivious to our surroundings that we became determined to make each other bald. Poor old Mataji, our grandmother, on hearing the howls and cries, had to come and adjudicate. But she was a different species altogether. Rather than doing a patch up she would try and ignite more fires in our mind, against each other. She would shout at both of us
“Khasam nu kha! Le aau ik-ik daanda, te maaro ek duje de saar vich hor phod do ek duje da saar. Syaapa mukega.”
(Slang in Punjabi! Both of you bring a rod each and hit it on other's head, so that the story ends here forever.)
(laugh). Both Maneka and I, like many kids of our age, were disobedient to our elders. We never practiced her advice.
If the above mentioned twelve hours were so bitter, so sweet were the other dozen of hours., when we shared that special bond of our relationship. Whenever Pitaji or Maa scolded me for my notoriety, Maneka would be the first person to provide her shoulder to me cry on. Since I was a little weak in Mathematics, she would also help me to solve those mind-boggling problems. In the same way even I supported her , whenever she demanded something and Maa would refuse her by saying “……log kya kahenge.” She collected money in her terracotta gullak and would break it on the eve of my birthday to buy me a present. During those days, people sitting along the roadsides for some annaas sold lyrics of film songs. I would regularly buy her that as she was very fond of them. I still vividly remember her sitting next to the Bush Radio that Pitaji had purchased in the late 60s. She listen to the song being played and then would quickly write down the words of the song in her copy. I still have one of her copies. Maneka was a very creative girl. Besides being fond of lyrics of the song, she was also in a habit of making human faces out of kulfi sticks, aam ki guthli and wrapping papers. One thing for which I admired her was her restlessness. She was always onto doing something creative- humming, stitching, painting and the strangest thing about her was that she never kept her creation to her self and would rather pass it on to someone else. Reasons for which I still don’t know.
One evening, while we were still in our teenage, half lying on seti, she surprisingly outburst at me and began abusing me with the most vulgar words that ever felt to my ears! I sat confused there. Firstly were talking about something that could have hardly started uproar. Secondly I had never heard her or any family members of our to have used those words. She was abusing me at the highest pitch of her voice. Her eyes became big and red. Her gestures were scary and later she even began sweating. There was no one at home and I sat paralyzed watching her ‘never seen’ behavior. Ten minutes later, Maneka eyes began expressing her exhaustion her voice spoke tiredness. It seemed she was running out of air as she began grasping the same from her mouth, but her verbal discourse continued. Finally she fell on the ground and a minute later she urinated in her dress while lying on the ground. She woke up some seven hours later and she remembered none of her antics.
Epilepsy- A disorder of the nervous system causing periodic loss of consciousness or convulsion; doctors gave the most plausible cause of the act. Its cure? None as such. Epilepsy is a thousand year old phenomena but has no cure and the only reasons put forward for the cause since ages has been taking over of body of the victim by some evils. This and all sorts of other stories related to that of amaavas ki raat, etc were put in connection to Maneka when we consulted all those ‘bhoot bhagao’ and ‘jhaadu waale babaas’ sitting along the banks of Ganga near Haridwar, Rishikesh and Varanasi. Most of them suggested us that the only way to get rid of them is by making them weaker when they dominate over the body. They suggested to harm them then by hitting Maneka physically hard when they are in charge of her. At first we all hesitated. How can we hit our own dear without any of her fault. In the mean time her activities became worse. Besides abusing she often tore away clothes of Maa and Mataji. She also tried and harm Pitaji and me with a knife. At nights she would runaway from home only to be found amongst the roadside drug addicts, enjoying with them in the most shameless manners. We no more could go out or call anyone home fearing the humiliation that we shall go through. But Maneka was unaware of all this. When back to her full conscience she would not remember a thing and was back to her good old nature and creativity.
Finally a day came when I decided to get her rid of those ‘evils’. When she had another fit, I made her lay on the ground and beat he vehemently. All the elders stood bewailed closely but none of them stopped me because they even knew that it was the only way out.
Today I regret that I started off a tradition that no one will agree, but took her life. Maa, Pitaji and even followed my act. And for poor Maneka, she was being given something that she never deserved. Her goodness lay in the fact that she never complained for anything. She would lock herself in barsaati, whenever guests were at home. She would never insist on going out with family as she never wanted her family to face humiliation. I sill remember, during those days, a film was released in which Nargis Dutt played the role of a victim of Epilepsy. She would laugh along with us, when we told her that it was she on the screen.
She got married to a family in Gwalior, who knew about her torment history. Her ordeal worsened there. While her husband was very caring, her in-laws would wait for their Son to go office and then they would beat her up with a leather belt and a hockey stick. At times even then when she was in her total senses. Maneka called me up once after eight year of her marriage to narrate her hardships. She wrote me a letter also where she wrote that her in-laws even tried to give her an electric shock. What made my blood boil that my parents knew all this and still they remain inanimate. I at once packed my bag and went to Gwalior. My brother-in-law was out on a tour. I took out my leather belt and took the hockey stick kept in a side and beat both her father-in-law and mother-in-law, till they bleed badly. Then I took Maneka’s father-in-law to the meter box of their house and made him feel the scare of an electric shock by making him almost touch the naked wire that was hanging there in the box. When I came back home everyone fumed at me, included my wife, that I was determined to create problem in my sister’s house. They charged me that I wanted to see my sister sad.
Six months later, Maneka wrote me letter from Hyderabad that she has given birth to a baby boy and that she was very happy. She was no more ill-treated by anyone. A year later, a telegram dropped in our house that wrote MANEKA DEAD SLEPT LAST NIGHT DID NOT WAKE UP. Reading this I broke into tears. I felt as if I lost a body part of mine. But I was also assured that there was some mystery behind her untimed death that they were hiding. But Pitaji warned me for my behavior and accepted the told story.
We reached Hydrabad three days later. All the rituals had been performed without our prior consent and presence. I was denied to see the face of my sister for one last time. After this incident I intentionally lost touch with my brother-in-law. Last heard he had remarried and is back in Gwalior.
That was 1978. This is 2008 and I am 64 now, just retired from my job at Thiruvananthapuram. I am going back to my hometown to spend rest of my life there. Sitting in a train when I gave a thought, I wonder, I will have only her letters and her creative items that she once gave me to cherish my childhood days with her, nothing else. Sitting lonely today, I wish, I had not taken a decision to raise my hands on her, a decision that later took her life. I wish, I had not fought with her for her ‘ammapantee’. I wish, I had agreed to her that I am skeptic and arrogant. I wish, I had shown her how much of love I had and still have for her. But only, if wishes were horses……………..
I MISS YOU, DIDI.
P.S. On this Raksha Bandhan, let us take a pledge to respect and protect women be it married or unmarried or even if they are not related as a sibling. Let parents instill in their sons, the virtue of respecting a women whether related or otherwise.
