Summer after tenth year my brother joined us here in Mumbai. It had been almost a year and a half since we had seen him and my favourite (and least favourite) person in the world had come back. He was the typical big brother – protective of me, taking my allowance and always needing “space”. My fondest memories of him are when we were both quietly playing Need for Speed – with such intense concentration that it didn’t matter that we missed Drake and Josh’s new episode. The silence of car rides with our parents were filled with a game we’d invented – one of us would recite a part of a film or show we had seen and the other had to guess where it was from, or would have to pay the ultimate price – having our ego kicked to the curb. The most intelligent and hard working person I know – someone, in my mind whom I always compared myself against. Abhishek seemed infallible in my eyes – he was, after all, the golden boy of the entire family. I never expected what happened last summer.
My parents and I went to the airport to pick him up, long flight from Pittsburgh. In typical fashion he emerged from the crowed, grey T shirt, shorts and flip flops – the typical “I’m- this- genius- geek – cool- person “attire. As he got closer he was easily 20 kilos thinner than he started – and he was always skinny. His cheeks made shadows, as did his eyes. Now his 16 year old baby sister weighed more than him. Smiling none the less, he came and gave us one of his famous bony hugs, although they hurt more this time. A few weeks passed and my parents paid not too much attention to his weight loss, he was stressed, people lose or gain weight when that happens. Now, the point was to stuff him with buttery Punjabi food until he regained his former thickness. But now he ate less too. A lot less.
We would laugh and talk as usual, until he pushed me out of the room because I was “breathing down his neck”. The pieces had fallen back into place – at several intervals one would hear “SHAILUUUUUU GET OUTTTT”. What can I say? I was clingy – he’d been gone for almost 2 whole years and I had missed him more than he could ever know.
One day we got a call from my dad’s office, which was conveniently across from our apartment. There was a boy in our building standing on the ledge, smoking. This is where I should mention the ledge was wide enough to be the floor to a balcony. We were the only people in the building who were a family – no one else had kids in the house. So naturally, my mum and I investigated – smelling clothes, searching drawers – looking for some evidence, hoping against it. To our relief, none. We got another call a few days later for the same thing. This time, Abhishek was called out to ask.
“Abhi, someone complained of a boy on a ledge smoking. Is it you?”
“Nope, I wouldn’t do that, you know that.”
And that was that. Face value. We trusted him and he really wasn’t the type to smoke – he hated that my father did – why would he?
One night, I heard him crying. It was late and in typical teenage fashion I was using the summer to watch every movie I could find. I found out that it was true… he had been the boy on the ledge. He had been crying every day for the past few months, he couldn’t eat – not because he wasn’t hungry but because he couldn’t, and he had been smoking to stay awake.
“CS is a difficult major and there wasn’t any other way for me – it’s better than the pills everyone else takes!”
I can’t say I wasn’t angry, I was – extremely so. I judged him, he had disappointed me and I wasn’t going to hide it. I told him exactly what I thought of him and what he was doing – and I wish I had taken a moment to understand… to not be so single minded and to acknowledge that the problem was not black and white.
A day or so later, by the time I managed to be able to say a few words to him other than how terrible I thought he was, we went for a walk together – because I couldn’t trust him to go alone. It was getting dark and suddenly he broke the silence between us by telling me the whole thing.
“Now that you know, you may as well know this too – it was nicotine to stay awake and pot to go to sleep.”
Computer Science in CMU had gotten so rigorous that my brother had to do the one thing he said he never would. He didn’t like himself. He didn’t like that despite the effort he still was drowning. He hated calling our parents because typically they would question the B he’d gotten – not knowing that he’d given up 4 days of sleep and numerous meals to just be there. He was being crushed under the expectations that him and my parents had unknowingly built up together for years. How could he disappoint the man that had spent every penny he earned for his education? It would be easier to fall in your eyes than to fall in the eyes of those you love the most. It would be less painful to have them love the version of you everyone knows and loves, rather than accept that even you are not perfect. I was beginning, only just, to understand.
“I’m up to two cigarettes a day and a haven’t had even one since you guys found out, I’m just about to explode. Shailu, please understand, I really need this.”
I nodded.
We walked to a faraway street corner where no one we knew would find us and he lit the single cigarette that he had at the bottom of his shorts’ pocket. I watched him take a slow and long drag, sallow cheeks casting shadows on themselves. I watched something I never thought that I would see.  We were quiet the whole walk home and I wish I had said that I loved him and that I was sorry. He did make me promise I wouldn’t tell my parents though, because they didn’t need to know more.  I knew he would tell them in his own time and so I nodded again.
My brother has always been my hero. I never wanted to be like him, but I always looked up to him. We were both special in our own right but to most he would be a diamond and me a sapphire – it was fine with me, I like both diamonds and sapphires. He seemed perfect – the perfect son, brother, friend.  We never thought he was fallible…
I consider myself to be an understanding person, non-judgemental. People from school come to me to ask for advice or tell me all the bad they’ve done. I’ve heard worse than what my brother did but the response he got from me was one that he neither deserved nor needed. I have treated everyone who ever told me of a dark part of them with love and care and acceptance. “It’s okay,” I always tell them, “we’ll fix it.” Why couldn’t I show that same kindness to my kin? I love him more than anyone else.
After much thought, I realised it’s because of the pedestal that both my parents and I put him on. We hated the fact that our expectations of him were not met; our image of him was shattered. But he did not ask to be put on that pedestal, we created that image. And then crucified him for it. How much more cruel can you be? What I did was the same kicking him if he was down. And I have wished so many times I hadn’t. Those people I showed love to was because I didn’t bother to put them on any pedestal – they were just people, completely capable of messing up and it would have been wrong of me to judge them, I thought. Why not the same for Abhi?
I was a judgemental hypocrite. Too ignorant to ask the right questions and too stubborn to listen to the answers when they were handed out to me. I have never been more ashamed of the way I acted. The kindness and empathy I prided myself on was absent when it was needed most. Since then, I try consciously to take a step back and understand the people around me. My family, friends, peers, teachers … everyone is fighting their own battle and has their own share of issues to wade through – as do I. Who am I to pass judgement? We all make mistakes, big ones sometimes and sitting on my moral high horse dictating terms to everyone around me just makes me an a**hole.