It was love at first site for me!
I was just over three years old and that is how early I understood what it felt like to be possessive, protective and motherly. I can barely remember having felt insecure around him. In fact, as we grew up, my sense of being protective towards him got stronger. I loathed this one particular cousin and openly picked up fights with him as he would bully my sibling. I would weep hopelessly when my baby brother got hurt, yelled at or didn’t do well academically.
One such incident of me being protective of him has made it to the list of top ten achievements of my life! In the year 2008, my brother decided to take a trip with his boys to Spain and Portugal. I had an exotic travel plan too, but I was obviously more excited about his trip as it was his first ever individual holiday. Just as the excitement was soaring, he heard from his friend that 2 out of the 5 boys who were to travel, had been denied the visa. And he was one of the two.
I was shocked. We were a fairly travelled family and I could barely see much logic in his visa being rejected. That was it. My first reaction was a few minutes of helpless howling, while everyone around me laughed exclaiming, “what’s wrong with you”? He himself was extremely calm (that’s how he usually is too and hence everyone’s favorite. I am the fierce one).
The following day, I decided I had to do something about this. Why should my baby brother not get his visa? On what grounds was it rejected. I gathered my thoughts together and started looking for the contact details of the Spanish Embassy, online. That time the Spanish Embassy was situated only in New Delhi. I immediately dialed their number. It was apparently shut due to something and all the recorded messages were in Spanish. Well I would have learnt Spanish too, for my brother but I was pressed for time. I called frantically the following day too. Again, only recorded messages in Spanish which infuriated me further.
I was to leave for my holiday in precisely three days and I knew I couldn’t do much once I left. So I managed to get the official email ids from their site. There were two of them and one more confusing than the other. I sat down at once, gathered my thoughts, aggression, vocabulary, sarcasm and verbalized them into an immensely shrewd email. My email consisted of everything from giving them his background, to questioning their decision of rejecting his visa to letting them know that he isn’t going to miss out on too much if he never traveled to Spain but they would lose a tourist with a bad taste in his and his family, friends and well-wishers mouth.
I calmed down once I had finished writing the email. When I showed it to him, he almost jumped off the chair. He refused to even give this email sending, a thought. I was so determined that I told him anyway the visa had been rejected, his passport was with him and they couldn’t further re-reject it, so there was no possible harm. Finally, a day before I left, I managed to convince him to share his credentials with me and sent the email from his email id as though he had written to them.
The next day I took off with a heavy heart, knowing my brother wasn’t getting his holiday. I wanted to call him every day from across the globe just to make sure he was alright. But then on the eighth day of my holiday, he called.
With mixed feelings I started talking to him. He was somehow laughing hysterically. When he stopped laughing, he said, “Guess what”? Softly I said, “What”?
What he said next made me jump, scream, laugh and fall off the bed. He said, he received a call from an unknown number that morning and the person on the other side said, “Hello, Mr. Gandhi, I am so and so. I am calling from the Spanish Embassy, New Delhi.. Blah Blah Blah.. Please confirm your Passport number… Blah Blah Blah.. We request you to please send us your passport. Your visa will be processed at the earliest and the passport will be sent back by courier”
I suddenly felt light. My heart fluttered and my mind screamed ‘Gelato’. The rest of my holiday felt more exotic than it was meant to be.
Today my daughter knows she’s my universe but she also knows that my brother will always be my first child. The best gift my parents gave me. As obviously there are endless number of times and incidents when HE stood up for me, held my hand, hugged me and told me through his silence and gaze that he’s my pillar, which hopefully I’ll be able to share through such stories!
- Kalamwali