Sibling!

One of the prominent memories of any individuals childhood is the bullying between siblings...ok, maybe, i might be wrong in generalizing this, as i have seen quite a few of my friends who seem to have had a very amicable relationship with their siblings from childhood.

guess, i was an exception...maybe because it was between a sister and a brother or maybe because of the middle class lifestyle. i still remember the days in 5th and 6th standard where the only mission after school was to formulate a plan as how to hit him or annoy him or irritate him...the fights between us used to be quite intolerable for my mother and we were always forced to sit on the different parts of the house. nothing got shared between the two of us without a fight. there were days when i had torn his book covers, spilled ink on the shirt and days when he had soaked my socks in water, hidden my shoes, ribbon :)

i still vividly remember one incident...it happened in 5th annual leave. it was the time when we had got a new cycle and the stupid brother already knew how to ride it...i didn't. In one of the best moods, he agreed to teach me how to ride the cycle. so, there we went with the cycle...after few minutes into the session, the cycle had fallen on top of me, some metal rods on the side had ended up scratching the left foot and i don't know what else happened...but within few minutes, whole left foot was covered in blood.This was enough for me to lodge an accusation against him and i was all prepared to walk back home,crying, threatening him how he had wounded my leg resulting in blood all over the foot. He was in complete panic...and he even made a promise that i could use the cycle how much longer i want and he was trying to cover my foot with sand to cover the blood. Still, this was one such moment which was too difficult to be passed on for any favours, so i did end up crying in front of my mother complaining and we both ended up getting the shouts and scoldings.

Then,somewhere down the lane, i realized blackmail worked better than direct complaining...so there used to be a list of things which were got done with blackmail :) (I would really suggest watching "Children of Heaven" to understand about blackmailing :)..that too the scene, where she gets a new long pencil from her brother :)) infact last month, even my brother confided that he hated me in schooldays :)

After so many years, this same guy on one fine day in 2004, lost 40k in a 30min trading of Infy shares and called me up to tell the same. It took me 2 hours to really come out of the shock and think in some sane manner...Eventually, i did pay that 40k extracting a promise from him to payback the amount through some good profits, which he did. Till date, the news is only between us :)

Last year, this same guy was talking about an exam called CFA and how great future would be for those who passed these exams. So here i was, all imaginative as usual, convinced him to write the exam so that he can payback to me in millions :) This week beginning, the results were out and he wasn't among the 35% applicants who cleared it! What was his response --a verse in tamil which means,"People who fail to try,die.So eventhough we fell, we will rise and try again" (or goes something like this)...so he's going to try again this Dec but with his own money...which did upset me slightly, as he doesn't seem to require my support, but i was quick to recover from this upset though, as i am free with less dependency :)

Today this same guy, when called up and asked what i was doing, i said,"i was looking at this IAEA approval for Indo-US Deal and i am trying to understand why US is hell bent on supporting India thru this deal. So, i am googling and trying to read frontline article dated 2005".
He continues telling that US is well aware that these guys will not stop with using the fuel for electricity but it is trying to make India an alternate power in this region against china.So the discussion proceeds as how cunning US is, which leads to the dollar dominance in the world, how bretton woods system started, how US cheated out of that system and how US fell to Saudi to make dollar as denominated currency for petrol thus creating the term petro dollar, how Iraq tried to fight against petro dollar, how now Iran is trying, who'll benefit from this nuclear deal...and eventually he started giving his doubts as maybe US is the real hidden creator of the current subprime crisis, how US is cunning and every successor is worse than the previous ones which finally concluded in blasting YV Reddy for raising interest rates as it will only halter growth as the credit used by people for day to day buyings is very less in india when compared to US, so the only people who'll get affected in the hikes is SMEs and how YVReddy seems to have acted on IMF's advice, for which he might be rewarded with a posting in IMF in some country after his retirement next month!!!
i ask,"so what exactly will happen with US?", he says,"It will get destroyed one day and with that many other economies including ours will collapse...see, these systemic changes are difficult to happen.maybe, a war should come to really change completely" and i ask,"so, maybe is it better if we try to earn more and have all money in gold...it might help us when crisis strikes, right?"...and he ends up saying,"it's all very confusing.you see at the end of the day, i really don't know why we are trying to work so hard, you, in particular. what is the use of all these worrying about office? why are we trying to work like this in the first place?", i reply, "because of the society". he says,"exactly.so at the end of the day, nothing is in our hand"...
and i am really stuck with knowledge fatigue at this moment, as already there are so many things to read about after this conversation...so we wish goodnight and end the call.
i am sure he might have slept peacefully...here i am, trying to read all the above stuff and also my latest awareness, Pakistan, as well as writing this post!!!

I really wonder, when did we really grow up, with the childhood hatred giving away to a mutual friendship and trust...guess, difficulties in life always help in mending and strengthening one's relationships!