True Happiness is Pious

‘Wake up you doofus’, called out my elder brother. This is a regular occurence in our house where my elder brother is the ideal Ram of the house whereas I could never become my parents' Lakshman. Everybody in the house calls me ‘Kumbhkaran’. Well it seems to be true seeing that I hardly do anything apart from eating and sleeping. Comparisons have run in my house since my childhood days. Even though my elder brother is just three years elder to me, people have never stopped comparing us in terms of everything.

‘See, he is even good at singing what other hobbies are you pursuing?’Look he scored 9.8 GPA in his final semester what about you?’ ‘He secured the best placment from college itself and you are still looking for a job?’ and they kept on coming for the rest of my life and they even do now.

Coming back to the present situation I woke up to find that my parents were ready to serve me sassy comebacks for breakfast. Because their ideal son had already gone to work. As soon as I put the first bite of the day in my mouth my mother peeked from her newspaper reading and said, ‘ Do you even have a job? Why are you late? Look at your brother he is already off to work.’ See now this is what bothers me every day. The Ram of the house has an early morning shift while me on the other hand has a late night shift. He choose to sit for college placements while I decided to do something in a completely different field compared to what I had graduated from. I went on to follow my passion for being a Radio Jockey whereas my elder brother is the right hand of the company where he works.

We both follow our own passions why can’t my family understand that. It is not that my parents despise me but I sometimes feel that they don’t love me enough as much as they love my brother. It becomes very difficult sometimes to live upto each and everyone’s expectations. And I am proud that my brother could do that but I don’t think I will ever be able to do the same.

Ignoring my mother’s snarky remarks I leave the house in saerch for some motivation on my new bike. Well my brother could afford a decent sedan car with his salary and I could afford a bike with mine. I was quite happy and satisfied with what I had in hand right now. As I was going about in my bike I reached my favourtie spot in the city, ‘ The Olkahoma Gardens’. This place is quite serene and has a scenic beauty to it. It always calms me down when I am disturbed because of my family.

As soon as I went inside I noticed that my usual sitting spot or the favourite bench had been occupied already. And to say I was shocked was an understatement, the person sitting on my favorite spot was none other than my elder brother. As I got there I saw that he had been crying for I don’t know how long. As soon as he saw he wiped his tears and put on a fake smile the one that he gives to our parents.

I just sat there and wondered what might have gone wrong that made a person like my brother like the ideal Ram cry so hard. He did cry in the past a few times. It was not forced upon us in our family as boys to not allowed to cry. Every man of our house had cried when our pet dog ‘Dinko’ died.

As soon as I opened my mouth to ask questions, my brother cut me off. “ I have lost my job today and not only that my fiancee broke up with me.” Did I tell you that just four months back my brother got engaged to a girl from our community as per the wish of our parents. I was so jealous back then thinking that he even found love before me. But now I don’t know how to feel. Am I happy, I shouldn’t be but I am also not very sad but I should be. I was a mess right now.

“How did this happen?”

“Well, for the last four months since the day I got engaged I had been distracted the whole time. She had been giving me fits of not gifting her anything special or taking her to extravagant dinners. But I was quite busy. This led my work productivity to fall till my boss couldn’t take any more. Today morning he fired me and as soon as she got to know about this she broke up with me.”

“Well I don’t know what to say, I feel sad for you.”

“Yeah well don’t be but, I think it is good for me only I think I will get a change for my C.V . Also I feel I never really liked her so much.”

See this was probably the only thing I liked about my brother (apart from the fact that he shared everything with me), he always spoke the truth and moved on easily. And here I was not able to move on from my last relationship. Actually it was never a relationship because she friendzoned me the day I went to tell her about my true feelings.

Coming back to my brother. He never ever paid attention to all these comparisons and even told me to do so. But I couldn’t because he might ignore them since he was a hero in all of them but I had always been the villian. So they always bothered me. My brother’s voice broke my chain of thoughts.

“Leave my sad life, tell me how’s it going with that date of yours that you brought to my engagement.”

“First of all she was not a date, I introduced her as my friend and second of all even if I wanted her to become my date that would have been impossible because she friendzoned me the day after.”

“Ouch! I feel bad for you bro! But why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“ I would have if mom and dad wouldn’t have kept pestering me for four months straight to let them meet her parents.”

“ Ha ha. I know how difficult both of them get when it comes to you. But they love you the same way as they love me.”

“Even you know it is not true. So stop lying. They have always loved you more.”

“You see they might have favoured me more but they always have a soft spot for you. And I think they would even stop loving me after I told them what happened with me today.”

“That is so not true. For once they might stop loving me but they will never stop loving you.”

“You know I don’t like having this conversation of who is the favourite child of the house with you. You are always my favourite person.”

“Yeah yeah I know that. Let’s go now I have to go to work or else even I might get fired today.”

My brother just glared at me for a comment like that.

We went back on our vehicles and our own ways, he went back home and I headed towards my office. I just realized that never in my life I had been so candid with my elder brother and talked about his life in his own words. This was quite a rejuvenating experience for both of us.

The most exciting part of my day was about to begin. I was a RJ for a late night show but the show talked about motivation, passion, dreams and not what my family thought of. This show was the only strong pillar of my life. I talked with different people every day giving them adivces about their life and decisions. This somewhere helped me overcome my own fears and take rather smooth decisons.I was about to go live in fifteen minutes. I was getting nervous again. This happens with me everyday but then I relax after a few minutes into the show.

The very first caller was a girl. I couldn’t quite grasp the voice at the very beginning. But then later into the conversation I had fully recognized who she was. She was no other than my childhood best friend who had moved to the states after finishing school. She had called me asking for help. Seems that she had run away from her forceful engagement and was now waiting at the airport, looking for a place to stay. Then she saw my radio show’s advertisement board just near the taxi stand. So she decided to call that number. Also I feel she hasn’t still recognized my voice or has completely forgotten about me.

So I decided to drop the bomb. After hearing my short story speech on air she squealed with joy on the phone. I decided it was time for a break because the whole world didn’t want to know about my personal life. Very soon she was at my studio with all her bags. My show ended with a few more callers for the day.

“Hi man!I am so sorry for not recognizing your voice earlier. Such a long time. I didn’t knew you would become a RJ.”

“ Yeah it has been very long. No problem. So what’s next?”

“Well my parents know that I ran off but they weren’t quite happy. So they might be coming here after settling everything there after two weeks to take me back.”

“But why did you suddenly come back here, you could have stayed at a friend’s place there?”

“To be honest I don’t trust my friends there and also I had my tickets booked beforehand since my family is planning to come back here and start from the scratch again.”

“Oh nice then. So you can come with me and stay at my place till your parents come. I am sure my parents would not mind your presence.”

“Oh yeah! Thank you so much, that would be great. By the way how’s uncle, aunty and your brother?”

“Everybody is fine, they do mention your name once in a while.”

“ I know I have been so disconnected from all of you ever since I left but now I am going to make up for it.”

“I am sure you will. But for now let’s go it is getting late.”

Both of us arrived at my place and my family was quite happy to see her after such a long time and also after the bad news that my brother gave my parents earlier. They even laughed at the story of how she ran away and met me. This was probably the best day of my life. I got my brother back and also my childhood best friend back. I couldn’t be more happier. Sometimes in life some relationships matter more than having a certain job or a life partner. I would treasure the pure form of what I had today with certain people without any adulteration forever. This is my happy ending.