Demanding Little Sister.

Ever since my little sister was born, I have been very jealous of her. Until my mother’s tummy protruded, I was the only subject of attention for everyone but thereafter, everything changed. My mother suddenly started to ignore my talk about the happenings at school and told me that she wanted to sleep because the baby in the stomach tired her out. My friends at school told me that she was doing so because I may have been adopted. Whenever daddy came home from work, my mother would only talk about the baby and it seemed that she had absolutely forgotten me; this somehow convinced me even more that my friends were right.

My sister was expected to come to this world on the sixteenth day of June, back in 1997. But she, being the restless kid she turned out to be, decided to come into the world almost a fortnight prior to the expected date. The clouds had poured the entire day and night. It seemed to be a battle between the demons and the angels. The thundering clouds well mirrored the storm inside me. I was already planning how I would never let her sleep in my bed and how I would choke her.


Several years of her childhood had passed and my attitude towards her did not get better. My mother would spend the entire day making faces at her, feeding her, changing her nappies bathing her and to sleep. The only hope on which I would face the day would be my daddy’s return but it seemed to me that he too would enter the home just to hug my little sister and offer her a bunch of balloons. I used to feel as ignored as the orange marigold among a bunch of red roses.

*

It was an odd afternoon when she came back from school and despite my evident indifference towards her, hugged me. I tried pushing her away but then I noticed some warm liquid oozing out of her eyes.

‘What happened, Piya?’ I was concerned.

She tried explaining the problem to me but as always did not succeed. This was another problem with Piya. She was always very strange with her actions. She could never put her worries into words. We always had to make an estimate and decipher what it would be. Had it been any other day, I would have told her to stop disturbing me.

But that day was different.

Piya was crying a lot. The sister inside me was worried for the first time. I started noticing her hands and expressions to understand the complication. Just when she was about to give up, I saw a strange mark on her hand. Somebody had hit my little sister. I was suddenly filled with a sense of anger and rage. I called up my mother and she came back home immediately from work. We had put Piya off to sleep, and decided to visit her school for further investigation. The kindergarten teacher told us how she had ‘accidently’ hit her because Piya would never be able to differentiate between M and W.

We obviously wanted to report her; but then, that was not what my mother was concerned about. Our priority had to be Piya.

*

“Your daughter is diagnosed with PDD-NOS and ADHD,” the lady in white coat declared. My mother and I looked at each other with question marks on our faces.

“Piya is suffering with autism. Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them. People with Asperger syndrome are often of average or above average intelligence. They have fewer problems with speech but may still have difficulties with understanding and processing language.”

Everything had become very clear. “Piya stares for too long and expresses too little” “Piya is not able to draw a straight line” “Piya always hums songs and is least interested in listening to others.” Every complaint, every imprecation had become very clear. We knew what was to be done.My mother, as I thought she would, should have started shedding tears but she did not.

Appointments for the therapy sessions were taken even before I could realize.
Piya would obviously demand more attention now, but that did not make me jealous anymore.

*

Today is Piya’s seventh birthday and she has improved by leaps and bounds..

I have left home to pursue higher studies.I never thought I would miss Piya so much until I moved away to the university. I can speak to most of my friends and family when I miss them, but my sister Piya doesn't like the telephone. She would only be able to manage 'Hello didi' and 'I'm good' when I ask how she is, before dissolving into a fit of giggles and running away. It breaks my heart when my parents tell me that she asks spontaneously if she can see me, as she doesn't quite understand why one day I was there and the next day I wasn't. I try to make sure I spend time with her when I'm home. I just hope she doesn't think I've abandoned her or that I'm not ever coming back.

My heart aches to see her struggling with things we don’t even notice. Though, whenever I meet her, she never fails to put an instant smile on my face by pointing towards the poster in her room which reads “I am not dumb, mad or deaf. I am different and different is good.”