Oh B(r)other!!

Has any new year ever drastically changed your life? I mean drastically as in extremely, severely, excessively, extaordinarily etcetera? No? Well mine did, very drastically about 21 years ago. I wasn't my parents' sole laadli anymore, nor my grandpa's only aankhon ka taara :-D. Yup, you guessed it. That was when my beloved brother Darsh was born :).

I don't remember being jealous of him in the early years ever. I was only upset that I didn't get the sister I wanted ;-). I guess I wanted a baby living doll to dress up and carry around. But I got a different doll - a boy doll. I remember when I was 5 and Darsh was 1 year old, I used to carry him every damn place. He was chubby and one of the cutest babies I ever saw. I can't believe he's turned into something we***, oh lets just say something other than chubby and cute today :-p. Don't believe me? Take a look yourself of the then photo:




As we grew older, we didn't grow any wiser :-p. We fought a lot. Lot as in many number of times, more, often, always :-D. God!! Darsh still had milk teeth and he used to bite my arm, real hard. Also due to my long hair, I was easy target. One day, mom adviced to bite him if he bites me ever again. Needless to say the bite marks on my arms vanished. But the fights weren't obviously the only part of our childhood. I had a bus pass and Darsh loved watching the bus driver. His dream was to become a driver then ;-). I would take him along for bus rides. I would proudly show my pass and Darsh would enjoy watching the driver. I would also buy him 25-50 paise lollies :). As time grew, we both learnt to ride bicycles and would always go together to a park nearby. It was our favourite activity on weekends. The next favourite would be to pester dad to take us to Jayanagar 4th block for bhel puri, ice cream cones, sugar candies and balloons :). Meanwhile the physical fighting continued. It stopped suddenly after one day, when mom saw our scratch marks and said in a sad voice "Should I go to work or not? Maybe one day you'll kill each other?". After that the fight continued in arguments and never in actual beatings :-D.

Darsh was a very active boy and was into lots of stuff from early on. I guess I was never like him in those ways. By the time he was in high school, he was in the basket ball team, he was into JAM and Dumb charades and guitar playing. He was also the head boy for the school in his 10th. He taught me the basic rules of basket ball. I watched him win Dumb Charades twice, though he actually won many times. His dumb charade team was named, get this, "Phantasmagoria" (!!!) and consisted of him and his best friends Pritam and Amit, who are best friends of his to this day :). Once the prize he won (1st prize) was a ladies watch ;-) and I enjoyed the fruits of his labour :-D >:). We had a computer at home in those olden days and I can shamelessly say that I got the hang of it only due to him. I learnt DOS, Basic and later Windows\Word\Excel through him (I didn't have computer classes then like the kids do now and he used to pick stuff from his friends). We used to play 2-player games and basically have a great time on the comp. And since he played guitar, I would be the singer for him. We both were into English music by then, but he was the first one to get into metal. The first time I heard that, I almost threw the head phones off. But slowly I got adjusted to it and I would sing songs of Metallica, Guns n Roses, Eagles etc while he played the guitar. We both worked well as a team, though I'd get scoldings from him if I got the pitch wrong somewhere and likewise he'd get scoldings when he missed a chord ;-).

Extra activities didn't mean he was any bad in studies. Good marks in 10th ICSE and better in 2nd PU. He got 100/100 in Maths in 2nd PU public examinations. I was and am proud of him. But he has become a bit negligent of his engineering studies, but what the heck? He has already secured a good job in a good company through campus selection :). After working for more than 3 years, who else but me can know that none of the bookish knowledge is of any use in our practical s/w engineer lives?

Meanwhile, I also learnt about Soccer and F1 through him. He was and still is crazy about Barcelona and I learnt to appreciate the players and their techniques (nope, I'm lying, I still haven't learnt to appreciate soccer :-D). F1 became a rage only because he'd support Mika Hakkinen of McLaren. Just out of spite, I started supporting Michael Schumacher of Ferrari. We'd watch the qualifying sessions and the final races together, never letting anyone else near the TV during that time, shouting at our respective idols to win and basically having fun. Later, I admit, it got boring when Hakkinen retired. But we'd somehow still watch those together.

In engineering college, one of Darsh's long time dreams came true. That was of forming a metal band. I am proud of the songs he wrote even though they are titled "Come back to death", "Hallucination theory" and what not!! Its a deep-rooted philosophy that any metal song should bend towards the tragic :-p :). He was the rhytm guitarist of the band and the back-up singer. I always thought that he should be the singer too, but he always insisted that singing was too much work for a rhytm-guitarist. I was obviously not a member of the 4-membered all-guys band, but I was still the first listener of his experimentations, major critic (mouthing off whatever I found wrong in it :-D), sometimes trial singer (after 100 corrections I'd croon the song exactly the way he wanted it sung :-p) and major fan :). I saw him and his pals Vicky, Subbu and Bhaskar on stage only twice, but I was oh-so-proud :). Right now the band's on a break what with these guys in the final year of their studies, but his guitar still shouts in his room through the electronic amplifier and computer speakers and is still the source of major ear aches/head aches to my parents ;-) :-D.

Now, I am far away. Never thought I'd miss the rogue so much. Darsh is careless, has a loud voice when things don't go his way, is totally insensitive sometimes and is downright a pain other times. But somewhere along the way, he became much more than a boy doll/enemy/brother. He became a friend, a pal, a buddy who I'd watch english thriller movies with, listen to the weirdest songs and sing them too, see football/F1/tennis/cricket with, share a pizza (He was/is crazy about pizza while my parents and I weren't, but I still would share a pizza with him) and even later learn his bike with him as the tutor. Talking of his bike, here's the now photo (not exactly now, about 2 years ago one):




Life changes oh-so-suddenly sometimes. I'm so far away from him and my parents now. But I still chat with him, talk to him, get ragged by him. In fact the jeeja-saala combination of Sri and Darsh sometimes gets after my life :-o, but its fun nevertheless. And today, 31st of December, is his birthday. New year has always been special to me not only because of the obvious new year - prosperity, hope etc, but because of the fact that new year, is the beginning of a whole new year in Darsh's life. Moreover, this year is special as he turns 21. Darsh, buddy, now you can get married anytime you want to ;-). I couldn't resist the marriage gibe, because Darsh always claims that he'll never get married, ever!! Me and mom always retort "Kalla Sanyaasi" to that ;-) :-D. Ok ok, here it is, the birthday wish:

"Happy birthday pal :). Hope your birthday brings you lots of new joys and a bright new start of career. Hope it also gives you enough brains so that you don't trouble dad and mom so much and take more care of them and yourself (couldn't resist that either :-D). Love you and miss you, man :)."

And as for the rest of you,

"Wish you a very Happy and a preosperous New Year :)."