Don't Remind Me

Chapter 34: The Heartless

Azaan:

One of the perks of having a superstitious mother is that many of my childhood antics, injuries, bad grades were blamed on evil eye or "Nazar".

Ate too much candy and fell ill right before my exams?

'Nazar lagi hogi.' (Must be nazar!).

Tried to win a bet by doing wheelies on Amaan's bike, subsequently leading to a broken ankle bone and 35 stitches?

'Nazar lag gayee meray bacchay ko!' (Evil eye must have touched my baby!)

As a kid, I grew up believing that Evil Eye was a real life villain screwing up my life. And then Amaan actually explained what it meant.

"When you want something that doesn't belong to you, and you're so jealous of the person who has it, that you wish something bad would happen to them, just so they wouldn't have it anymore. Then evil lasers go from your eyes to the other person, and the person may get hurt. Or lose their special thing."

Okay, so maybe his logic wasn't exactly on point, but it made a lot of sense to 5 year old me.

Years later, this explanation haunted me.

When I say that Amaan was the best big brother out there, I'm not throwing out hyperbole, and generalizations just because my brother is dead now. When I say it; I mean it. I mean it from the bottom of my black little heart. Whenever I screwed up (which was every other day), he was there sharing the blame, taking punishments with me. I don't remember a time where he didn't have my back. This instinct to 'save' and 'protect' made him an excellent soldier, when the time came. 

As far as shared family traits go, my brother and I were similar in looks only.

He was slightly stockier than my wiry frame. By the time I got my mid-teen growth spurt, I was slightly taller than him. But our facial features were pretty similar. Dark, buzz-cut hair, courtesy of strict army schools, and colleges. Same heavy set eye-brows, framing our angular faces. He didn't have my dimples though, and his eyes were a lighter, mocha brown, rather than my almost black ones.

But if you were to look at our individual personalities, we might as well have been born to different species of animals, let alone borne from the same womb. We were very different. Something I was constantly being reminded of, since childhood.

Oh, don't get me wrong. This isn't that type of a story, where I tell you that I was the black sheep/Heathcliff type of my family, being constantly targeted and taunted, to change himself, and be more like his brother. No...

Thankfully, my mother adored me, with my imperfections (and there were many, as my family loves to remind me!)

My father, a stellar, Dad, also accepted early on that not all children are created the same, and hence I never felt that I had to change myself, in order to be worthy of my parents' love, and support. I knew their love was unconditional. Ma's love was a bit more demonstrative than my Father's austere, reserved one, but I always knew that it was there.

This isn't to say that I wasn't punished, or even thrashed whenever necessary (and in retrospect, I admit that it was very necessary). But I never resented Amaan for being the 'Good' son, and making me look bad by comparison.

At the risk of sounding like a douche; I was very happy with my own self for the most part. I loved being myself. You can also say that my hyperactive behavior as a kid, was mostly out of my inherent scientific curiosity, rather than actual malice.