Under The Clear Summer Sky

22 | vineet & shrest

They were seated on the floor at the foot of the bed in Anu's room. She waited for him, to tell her anything at all. They each sipped on the hot chocolate she made.

"I.."

She waited.

"I told you about how...I didn't talk to my parents for a long time. I moved back to Pulan only for Shrest and my grandma. I didn't really have much interest in talking to my mom again. My grandma's health condition was bad a year back. I came back to help take care of her."

A pause.

"She, my mom, pretended nothing happened between the two of us. I decided not to dwell on the past. I went on with the...charade, if you can call it that.

But, there was a change with Shrest. I suppose it was an understandable change. I hadn't talked to him in 8 years. Not because I didn't want to but because he didn't have a phone and I'd have to reach out to my mom to talk to him. I didn't want to do that. My pride didn't let me do that.

When I saw him again, he wasn't very happy to see me. He didn't talk to me much either. I had put it down to awkwardness and thought with time, things would get better again. It didn't."

He let out a soft breath. Anu felt the pain in her chest increase with each word.

"The more I showed in front of him, the more colder he would be and the more he avoided me. Until now, I never realized why. At least not completely. I had an idea. I thought my mother...she probably compared me and him. I knew...I knew that she wasn't going to go easy on him on the studies front. But I really thought she wouldn't be as strict with him as she was with me."

"I thought that...you know, because I scored high in the IQ test my dad brought me to when I was 5, they all thought I was a genius. My mom needed me to live up to that expectation and that's why she was so harsh on me. Shrest wasn't a genius. I'm not, either. But Shrest...he had talents not in academics but art."

"I thought...I thought given that I..." A sniffle. "I rebelled against her and told her that I wasn't interested in Computer Science, she would learn from it and she wouldn't force Shrest to do anything he wasn't interested in."

"When I heard that he was planning on taking the science stream in 11th from my dad, I really thought he was probably interested in it and that's why he was taking it. It...It didn't register to me that...that my mom was doing the same thing again."

His body shuddered.

"I was so caught up in my naivety...I didn't even realize that he was going through things...even worse than me."

He recounted what Shrest had said to him.

"It's only now that I really realize the severity of things. My father...he's never at home. He's constantly at office, working hard to try and move up the ladder. He wants to be a director. He's caught up in that. My grandmother is at the old age home. She...probably doesn't even know that this is happening.

But I..I came by often, to see Shrest and how he was at home. I was...I was there, Anu and I didn't see it. I didn't help him."

Anu shook her head. "I don't think so, Vineet."

Vineet shook his head, vehemently. "No, I made it this way for him."

"No. That's your mother's fault." Anu said, firmly. "Don't blame yourself for what your mother is doing. The problem lies with her."

Vineet remained quiet. 

"I think that you can't change your mother. She's old now. She's at an age where she has a fixed notion of things and she firmly believes in that notion. But, what you can do is talk to Shrest. He was still very young when you had to go to college and the fight happened. He may not even know why you had to leave him. Maybe...maybe, his mindset is warped after constantly hearing your mother's point of view about everything. You should let him know what your own perspective was."

Anu watched Vineet. He stared at his empty mug.

"But that's up to you. This is your relationships with your family and I don't have any place interfering in it. If you need someone to just listen to you, you can always come to me, anytime." Anu stood up.

"Sleep here for today. It's pretty late already. Just let your mind at ease and sleep it off."

Anu patted his shoulder. Then, she left the room.

Later that night, she checked on him at midnight. He was sound asleep. A little content, she closed the door and plopped down on the dining table.

She poured herself a glass of water and her mind wandering back to the revelations she had heard only an hour or two back.

"Sister, are you really getting tutored by my brother in Physics?" A young, little boy tugged on her shirt. She bent down a little. "Yes! You're his brother, yeah?"

He seemed to contemplate it a bit.

"My brother...he's a genius! He's very good at studies! He even helped me get good marks in English! So..." The brother seemed to have some difficulty in getting his words out. Finally he blurted it out, "please be good friends with him!"

"I'll definitely try."

"He doesn't seem to hang out or play with anyone. So, I hope you can hang out with him."

From that Shrest to the Shrest that said he hated his brother now. Anu's fingers tightened around her glass. She swallowed. Her eyes teared up.  Anu knew about Nina. She had already understood the sort of person, the sort of parents she was.

At first, Anu hadn't seen anything wrong with it. She saw it as a parent wanting the best for their children, wanting them to live a good life.

But what was the point of wanting them to live a good life if they never let them have a life in the first place?

Her fingers tapped the glass. 

No wonder, Shrest had behaved that way. Constantly getting compared to a person was hard in itself. Getting compared with his own brother and to the extent where he starts developing negative feelings...She couldn't begin to imagine how Shrest had lived in the past 8 years.

That night, she wished the two brothers would reconcile and talk again on better terms. That one day, she would see Shrest smile on seeing his brother, again and hug him, freely.

✿

word count: 1101 words