A Falcon's Fly

My sister was in class second when she was told to speak something about me…a school elocution competition…where she hardly managed to spurt out a single sentence…reason she din sleep for the past 48 hours, as I was born … but managed to receive the loudest applause amongst all other competitors….

“my sister is a treasure box, with lots and lots of “nice nice” things for me”

The whole crowd first laughed at her for 15 minutes when the teacher announced her failure to continue the speech as she din have any idea of what to speak about “something” which is few hours old… and then clapped for the rest of the 15 minutes.
Why’d they laughed she still fails to understand and why’d they clapped ..well, guess she has come to know about it after 21 years.

When my dad asked her , from where did she managed to say something which has dropped her into an overnight fame; her reply was…. ”papa you only said she is a gift to me, aint she?”

Well she was right for at least one thing. I am a treasure box stuffed with many precious “things”, and she being one.

But this isn’t about her, this is about someone else who equally belongs to the same league of stuffs…we cal her fondly mad!

I remember I was overtly fused up with my eleventh standard school exams when she dashed into my home with a loud noise….”happy birthday darling” … well I surely din find any big gift following her so I was pretty sure she had just come to wish me “without a gift”…anyway, in a morbid tone I managed to fake a thank you smile…for I being very much drowned into my math paper!....she sat, chatted with the other people and in between sighed a sympathetic smile for I had to study on my birthday…as she was about to leave she bumped into my room…went to my mirror and stuck something right on top of it…a paper note…and said “isko nikalna nai, samjhi”..(don’t take it off.okay)…I was relieved when she finally took leave…for then I could study peacefully…surely when I was young “we din gel well”…so I hardly bothered to read what she stuck at that mirror of mine. As the next day I was rushing for school for my exams …I saw what she stuck ...it was written bold and clear with a red ink.

“No matter where u are...or what u do…il be always there for u”

A sudden rush of guilt plunged through me, as soon as I came back from school I rushed to see her…but she was already gone…to join her new job as an economist at one of the biggest banks in India”…I felt ashamed and sad…for something in me knew that what she had written write at that piece of paper…she actually meant it.

Years passed… I grew up to be in college and due to some work I had to rush to Bombay for some family deeds…. It was again she helping me…to let me stayed at her place… as I entered I could see the same glowing face welcoming me as if I was the only sister..only friend…only guest she ever had. We went for midnight buffets… stop-at-snack-bar luncheons….home delivered pizzas and long long hours chats…suddenly there was a different dimension of relation that we shared…way more than that of a little sister and an elder one…something of being friends…and mostly like what a woman shares to a woman… may be I grew up. On the day I was about to return we went for a morning drive….fortunately the day was way different from usual Bombay days…clouds were lowering…we went to bandstand….walked…felt the cold mist …listened to good music. and had coffee at barista…when I was about to get up for the car…she held my hand and said…

”u know baby…I came to see you when u were born…I was there when ur sister blurted out that infamous line about you….and today I see that you are actually a treasure box to us…coz not only u are the little sister I never had… but one of my best friends I will ever have”

For a second I felt like crying…as of my 20 years I din think of her anything more than my best friends elder sister….she always came "after" somebody….after her brother..after her mother…as they were more important to me “till then”…but as I stood that day in the middle of cold winter morning that same guilt of mine…hugged me hard.



The feeling was same…as yesterday I stood all decked up to attend her wedding…clouds enveloped my city and the mist same as that day….almost one can feel it!...at the end of all's I returned from her wedding the next morning…I stepped inside my room and I saw the loosely hanged paper note from the top of my mirror…
I stood reading it for almost half an hour…realizing all that I had never told her…and would never get a chance again….
Realizing that there might not be another person to hold my hand and say that Im special.
Realizing that I might never get to say that “no matter where you are, what you do…il be there for you”

Realizing that she was one of the most important keys to my treasure box.

“Sometimes you realize what u had when u actually seize to have it”.
And today when she flew off to some far lands….happy, more than she ever was…here are the innumerable fragments of me that went away with her…that guilt which I felt five years back…that friendship that we shared at bandstand…and that unknown bonding that we had till date!

Maybe one fine day…I’l get to tell her that all her home made cakes….her drives..her cares…have shaped me what I am today…and made me another of her part…an another of a “mad”.

Cheers to her and her happy life!