Nina was born with grace. And looks. And brains. Pollyanna incarnate, she was ‘the perfect child’. Above joining in her junglee, younger sisters’ shenanigans, she was rarely found without her nose in her book. She was especially taken with the Reader’s Digest, from whence Varsha and I claimed she got 98% of her information. The 2% she did not know, she made up, with a fifty-fifty chance of being right. My expertise at math being as pathetic as my command over statistics, I shall leave it to you to figure out the percentage of what she did not know. When she was not reading, she was busy drawing, her pencil always moving, sketching models in varying poses and fashionable attire.
She always did what she was told and said what she was supposed to say and ate what she was supposed to eat.
Which is why, I always turned to Varsha for entertainment and diablerie.
Varsha was always game to play and always ready for a good fight. Being older, she thought it was her prerogative to tell me what to do and how to do it. It was not so much that I was bullied, as manipulated into doing things her way. It was always HER way. The highway was not even an option. After several games of playing TeacherTeacher, I would meekly suggest that I was tired of being the pupil, who was always scolded and given homework, and it should rightfully be my turn now to be the teacher. At this point, she would suggest that the game was boring anyway, and why don’t we play Airplane instead. She would be the flight attendant. I got to be the ignored passenger, who would constantly try to get her attention. This had its own advantage of training me for future air travel.
These games were minor torments in comparison to an annual summer event. Most kids react with elation when finding out the circus had come to town. They did not have a sister named Varsha. I am sure, had I suffered from bed-wetting, the servants would have been changing my sheets nightly during their sojourn. The days following our trip to the Big Top were the worst. She would be in a fever of excitement to copy all the stunts, and dragging me along on her wild, and oft dangerous flights of imagination.
The two of us occupied the bunk-bed in the Vachli-Room, or the Middle Room. The ladder of the bunk-bed, propped up on the back of a chair, became our tightrope. I would then be cajoled into ‘tightrope’ walking across it; each space between the rungs representing a wide chasm, and offering the frightening possibility of falling through. You would think, with so many people in the house, the servants or Ba would have stopped the insanity. Wily as always, she chose her time carefully, and the suggestions, or rather the orders, to comply with her or else!, were done during siesta-time, when even the flies left us alone.
Emulating a funambulist not being entertaining enough, she then decided to replicate the trapeze-artist stunts. After scouring the flat for a suitable spot, she settled on my father’s room. Next to his bed was a huge cupboard, reaching almost all the way up to the ceiling. After pushing a table against it, and propping a chair on top, I was made to clamber up and onto the top of the cupboard...the top of the cupboard where servants could not reach to clean of the dust and the cobwebs and the dead cockroaches. I crawled around, however best I could with a headroom of about two feet, and then splaying my arms wide, flew off, hoping to land on the bed.
What she failed to mention to a younger sister who had the brains the size of a pea, and the spine of a jellyfish, was to take care to steer clear of the fan - a revolving fan.
The dictionary definition of ‘trapeze’ is known as ‘disambiguation’. My definition would be ‘dislocation’. It was fortunate however, that the experience left me with no more than an emotional scar on my fragile psyche and a painful gash on my finger, which healed over time.
Nina was my ersatz mother, tending to all my needs and imbuing me with a passion for reading and the arts. My wardrobe was handled by her, as was my allowance (a whopping twenty rupees a month). When she started college, interest in me and my education/wardrobe dwindled to a minimum. All of a sudden, she started taking a little more interest in her clothes, her hair and her make-up, and a little less in her books and her drawings. When the phone rang, she would jump up and run to get it in the diwankhana. It didn’t take long for us to find out.
There being very few other ways to entertain ourselves, Varsha and I would quietly pick up the extension and listen in. A boy’s voice! Nina had a boyfriend! This was even better than the Mills and Boon books we read clandestinely. This was a real live romance!
The boyfriend also attended Sydenham College. It didn’t take long for him to pick out the cream of the crop. So I am biased. So sue me.
We became masters at picking up the extension oh so gently, till Varsha with her annoying allergies would sneeze. We would get blown away through the line with a “PUT DOWN THE PHONE!” - often followed by dire threats. Since we knew she applied the same ferocious intensity to every project, be it reading or drawing, we knew she would not hesitate to use the same passion in killing us both. We would put the phone down and run through the house, giggling and cooing: “You’re my cutchie-cutchie” and the other would reply, “No, you’re my cutchie-cutchie!”
Our favorite part was this treacly endearment. Our other favorite part was when they fought, which was just as often. It was almost entertaining to watch her slam the phone down, stomp to her closet, and gather up all the presents he had given her. She would sit morosely, playing Englebert Humberdinck’s “Please Release Me” over and over. Trust me, it’s true. You cannot make this stuff up.
A few days later, the presents were back in the closet, in addition to a few new ones and life repeated itself – the phone calls, the cooing, the shouting, the slamming, the present-gathering and the make-up.
Until Lobo found out. Lobo was our full-time driver and part-time spy. Faster than you could say cutchie-cutchie, Dad was duly informed and there was an eruption to rival Krakatoa. A meeting was called in the diwankhana. We filed in and the entertainment began. The explanations, the screaming and the tears were enough to daunt me into sitting there with my mouth shut...which opened in astonishment as I heard Nina say, “I am eighteen years old and I can do whatever I want!” Now whereas this sort of rebellion is commonplace in most western countries, this may have been the first time it was uttered in India. One too many ideas from Mills and Boons can undo you.
She was told in no uncertain terms that if she was eighteen and she thought she could do whatever she wanted, there was the door, and she could go do it outside. And outside she went, and had just about reached the ground floor, when my dad caught up with her and begged her to come back.
(Warning to kids of today: Don’t try this at home. Your dad may run after you...to hand you a packed suitcase and wish you good luck.)
It ended happily after all and the cutchies have been married for over 37 years.
My father got a break for two years, till he caught Varsha sneaking down to the third floor to meet a boy. This time Lobo wasn’t the snitch, but the gurkha, who became suspicious when the third floor bachelor’s best friend, also a bachelor, came to visit even when said Third Floor Bachelor was not at home. Krakatoa exploded again. And the drawing-room drama played out once more.
This ended happily as well and the bachelor has not been one for over 35 years.
The explosions ceased for seven years after that - I was a bit craftier with the sneaking around. To be honest, it was my father who did the sneaking around trying to find me a husband and I did the eruptions. He hunted for husbands the way most people look for a good mechanic/plumber...word of mouth. "Do you know anyone who can fix my car? Unclog my drain? Marry my daughter?"
He eventually found a ‘suitable match’.
This too ended happily, and I have been married over 28 years.
***
“A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost”, so goes a quote by. M. Garretty. It is a lot more than that. A sister is a friend, a triplet, a mirror image, a solace, a safety net.
A sister is a gift to the heart.
An ocean of water separates the three of us. A blood connection links the three of us.
Blood is thicker than water.
I love you both.
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