Raksha Bandhan

I quote Wikipedia’s definition on Raksha Bandhan.

‘Raksha Bandhan is a Hindu festival that celebrates the love and duty between brothers and sisters; the festival is also popularly used to celebrate any brother-sister like loving protective relationship between men and women who are relatives or biologically unrelated. It is called Rakhi Purnima, or simply Rakhi, in many parts of India’.

The earliest memories of this festival are from school times, where we girls rushed to tie rakhis to a few ‘mischievous’ boys in our class and they ran away from us saying no, leave us alone. But there was one boy called Tushar Shetty, who never shied away from getting the rakhi tied and he very sportingly and lovingly displaced the maximum number of rakhis tied on that day.

Then, it was my maternal kid brother, Kiran, whom I tied rakhi every year. We were most anxious for the later part, the gifts given to each other. Every year it was coconut rice for lunch on that day and a fun filled outing to the chowpati. 

Years in college went by without a rakhi brother, but technology helped me find two lost brothers from school (whom I considered brothers, but never had the guts to go and tell them in school) on Facebook and our correspondence continued for 3-4 years. I regularly posted a letter and a rakhi to them and they acknowledged the receipt. It was good as long as they were single, once they got married, got busy in their lives and our correspondence ceased.

When I shifted to Bangalore, I met Dheeraj Joshi and he treated me as his younger sister. He called me ‘Sis’. But then as it always happens, we lost touch and wandered in different time zones altogether. In the present company, I met an old acquaintance, Amar and he treats me as his sister and I call him ‘mama’ (maternal uncle in Marathi) of my boy. Though I have never tied rakhi to him till now or have called him home for Bhaubeej in Diwali, we keep a tab of each other’s lives and often talk to each other on various issues. There has been any official acknowledgement of our relationship of being a brother and sister to each other, but it is very much in our hearts. 

Being the only child, I never had the joy of having an elder or younger brother. All the other brothers, whom I managed to find somehow, disappeared from my life. We were destined love, care and affection for only a short period of time, but we made wonderful memories. They gave me a feeling of being accepted and treated as a sister though we were not related by blood ties and this really means a lot to me.  

Thank you Tushar, Kiran, Saurabh, Alankar, Dheeraj and Amar.

God bless you all and may you have the best in your lives.