Second childhood

When I count my blessings, I never fail to include the fact that I live  only a stone’s throw away from where my sister resides.

It has not always been this way and, for a lengthy period of time, there was nothing to suggest that events would turn out the way they did.

We went to the same school, meeting the same teachers and friends and became confidants of each other. Our two brothers bossed over us with equal and impartial superiority, throwing us into a proximity that led us to improvise a secret language  and a world all our own. We did not look like sisters because she took after my mother and I my father. However, to our puzzlement there were those who thought we bore more than a little resemblance to each other.

There was a romantic streak in her and she peopled her imaginary world with the likes of Dev Anand, Clark Gable and Robert Taylor, the tinsel heroes and heartthrobs of that age. They lived in her hand-made albums of brown paper that were tucked far away from the prying eyes of disapproving adults. My interests were of a bookish nature and my treasured idols were Keats, Wordsworth and George Eliot. Our respective demi-gods did not divide us though, for often we lay straddled side by side on a huge sofa reading or talking companionably, each immersed in a separate but happy world of her own.

Little were we aware of the sea change that lay ahead. We aware of the sea change that lay ahead. Soon after my sister graduated, she became engaged to be married to an army-man. As was not uncommon in those days, they did not meet before the wedding. He was a very handsome man, with the looks of a Greek-god coupled with a refined manner and gentleness. This was enough to throw my sister into a haze of happiness. It was short-lived though for her in-laws proved less than accommodating. Another three years saw almost the same thing happening to me.

We rarely met or even exchanged letters and then came a hiatus of twelve years and it happened not on the strength of distance but rather of design. The long passage of years fortunately brought us both to Bangalore. The forces that had kept us apart had gone into oblivion and we were able to meet more often.

When my husband died, I decided to move from the house that we had lived into a flat. A deep desire to move near my sister took hold of me. Just when the search seemed futile, things fell miraculously into place.

Providence, luck, coincidence – call it what you will, but in the sunset of our lives we are together again and it is as if we have taken up from where we left off. Memories, hopes, opinions, friends crowd in and we share them all as in the golden years of a distant past. Who says old age is a second childhood, filled with heartaches and disappointments? A sister is all it takes to prove that this is not true!