I found her
I am an only child. She is the closest I have ever come to having a sister. She is four years younger than me and we lived in the same neighborhood as kids.
I teased her, pulled her leg, and made life miserable for her just like one would with a younger sister. We travelled in the same rikshaw to school everyday and I told her stories on the way to and from school. The stories were based on lessons we had to read for class. I always made sure to time my narrative so we were at the climax of the story when we reached home. She would beg and plead to know what came next but I would make her wait till the next day to finish the story. My friends and I invented a secret language, the 'ch' language, to discuss our important plans in her presence. It meant that we preceeded every word we spoke with 'ch'. We often used it so that she wouldn't understand what we were saying. I recruited her, along with her friends, to dance at the annual cultural functions in the neighborhood which my friends and I put up. We played 'school' and she was my student and was 'punished' for not doing the 'assignments'l. She followed me around and always wanted to be 'on my team'. She looked up to me.
I also loved her like a younger sister. I didn't know it at the time but its become more obvious over the years.
I don't remember how old we were when her family decided one day that they were moving out of the neighborhood, and out of our town. They were moving to the big city. I was 14, I think. I remember feeling sad about her moving away, but at that age its hard to be too sad about anything. A year later my family also moved out of the neighborhood and I started a new life in my new neighborhood. At that age, boys and getting into college started becoming more exciting and important. I thought less about her and moved on with life like the typical teenager.
Over the years, I thought about her with increasing frequency and wondered if she remembered me and the times we had spent together, the games we had played, the stories I had told her, the sweet memories of our childhood. I wondered what the chances were of me ever finding her again.
Recently I joined a social networking tool which is very popular in India. Long-lost friends found me. I was hooked for hours looking up friends from my hometown, gasping at the wedding pictures of girls I knew in pigtails in high school, marvelling at how my friends had grown up and matured since I had last seen them. And then I searched for her on the network. And I found someone with her name. I sent her a message asking her if she was the same girl I grew up with and if she remembered me.
She replied two days ago and I couldn't help the tears. She remembered me! She remembered all those memories from our childhood. She had tried very hard to find me on the network and through common friends. She put up her picture on her profile and she looks the same, only older. I felt ecstatic. I felt pride in the young woman that she has become today, almost as if I had a part in it. We exchanged messages and email IDs. I can't wait to hear more about her life. I found my sister.
I teased her, pulled her leg, and made life miserable for her just like one would with a younger sister. We travelled in the same rikshaw to school everyday and I told her stories on the way to and from school. The stories were based on lessons we had to read for class. I always made sure to time my narrative so we were at the climax of the story when we reached home. She would beg and plead to know what came next but I would make her wait till the next day to finish the story. My friends and I invented a secret language, the 'ch' language, to discuss our important plans in her presence. It meant that we preceeded every word we spoke with 'ch'. We often used it so that she wouldn't understand what we were saying. I recruited her, along with her friends, to dance at the annual cultural functions in the neighborhood which my friends and I put up. We played 'school' and she was my student and was 'punished' for not doing the 'assignments'l. She followed me around and always wanted to be 'on my team'. She looked up to me.
I also loved her like a younger sister. I didn't know it at the time but its become more obvious over the years.
I don't remember how old we were when her family decided one day that they were moving out of the neighborhood, and out of our town. They were moving to the big city. I was 14, I think. I remember feeling sad about her moving away, but at that age its hard to be too sad about anything. A year later my family also moved out of the neighborhood and I started a new life in my new neighborhood. At that age, boys and getting into college started becoming more exciting and important. I thought less about her and moved on with life like the typical teenager.
Over the years, I thought about her with increasing frequency and wondered if she remembered me and the times we had spent together, the games we had played, the stories I had told her, the sweet memories of our childhood. I wondered what the chances were of me ever finding her again.
Recently I joined a social networking tool which is very popular in India. Long-lost friends found me. I was hooked for hours looking up friends from my hometown, gasping at the wedding pictures of girls I knew in pigtails in high school, marvelling at how my friends had grown up and matured since I had last seen them. And then I searched for her on the network. And I found someone with her name. I sent her a message asking her if she was the same girl I grew up with and if she remembered me.
She replied two days ago and I couldn't help the tears. She remembered me! She remembered all those memories from our childhood. She had tried very hard to find me on the network and through common friends. She put up her picture on her profile and she looks the same, only older. I felt ecstatic. I felt pride in the young woman that she has become today, almost as if I had a part in it. We exchanged messages and email IDs. I can't wait to hear more about her life. I found my sister.
No comments:
Post a Comment