Happy Birthday Sis!

I think it was the year when I turned 17 when I knew, she was, exactly like I had hoped for.

Till then I'd had her for about 10 years with me. Right from the baby she'd been to the 10.5 year old that she was then. And that particular winter of 2003, she had left for 2 weeks long holiday to our nani's place.

It was the year I had taken a drop from life's all pleasures.. except studying (!) .. and all my free time was spent with the cute little kid in my life, who unlike the others in family, was NOT growing tall like a beanstalk!

So anyways, she had gone. To nani's place. And we couldn't talk much cos', well STD calls weren't that cheap. And cellphones weren't very popular either. In any case, she didn't have a cellphone, so no use of me having a cellphone on me anyway.

When the plan was being made, I was secretly thrilled, cos' that meant I could hog on all the yummy food and not share with her, and I could play with our pet dogs, and not have her telling me how to have a ''better'' make believe game. And I could sprawl on the bed completely without her scolding me in the night to stop kicking her.

Within first 2 days I realized, my dogs weren't that interesting till I had her weaving out a story and we acted on it. I remember one such act; we used to pretend me and her are two strangers, and both of us carried each one of the two dogs we had... we would walk towards each other like two snooty British women (shimla inspired us tremendously) and make rude comments at each other's pet dogs, or clothes, or accent...

Some other fun "plays" we had was laying out all our books for sale, while we pretended to be the seller or the buyer, and this transaction involved us haggling in the most eastern UP accent that we could muster up.

Sometimes we would just sit and talk about the day, or what all fun we plan to do when we "grow up", read Harry Potter together, or just reminisce about our solo experience (till then) of vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate!

Delicious cuisines were no fun if not to be discussed with, and shared with her. She was the biggest source of genuine fun that year I had before I joined college, so needless to say, when she went on a vacation for 2 weeks, it became very very dull!!

And so for days I contented myself with chats on phone, or looking at her pictures. Suddenly, it felt unreal that I had such a cute, loving sister. I had her! I was actually the big DIDI of this angel looking child!

So on the gushing went, as I silently went on crossing the days in my calendar, awaiting her return eagerly, so that we could resume our routine of play-acts.

When she did come back, however, the first thing we did was not a tearful hug saying how much we had missed each other, but rather a big fight, over something which I can't recall now, but am sure would have been a trivial issue. But at least we were back to acting like the sisters that we were. 

As we grew older, moving to our respective hostels, communication dipped. But obviously, the bond remained. The age gap between us became a little more glaring, as I had my college talks, while she was still a class 7 child. But the cute voice, the talks, just the simple word "Didi" helped make the memories of the play-acts even more cherished.

Having reliance to reliance free calling has helped a lot. Now that she's matured much faster than I did (!), we have been able to understand each other a lot more. No day is complete without having updated each other on the most general of activities of the day, or having dissected and discussed our "feelings" regarding various places/events/people/tom, etc...

Luckily, some innocence of childhood has continued in our talks. Like for instance, we can still discuss Harry Potter for hours on end. We still think about the first time we had vanilla with hot chocolate. We plan impossible trips, events, thinking that now that we're "grown up", we can have the fun we thought of so many years back.

And we still love to talk in various accents, eastern UP being our most favourite.

Today my kid sister has turned 18. New ventures await her, and our life's paths may be totally tangential, but I hope we continue the bond even when we're 80...

...well her 80 and me 87!