Friday, April 13, 2012

The Curse of being the youngest


The Curse of being the youngest
          By R. Akhileshwari

            The sum total of a personality is arrived at after a highly complicated process of accretion of experiences, involvement in simple and complex circumstances, the mistakes committed as one lives and lessons learnt from those experiences. I firmly believe we are born with certain inherent advantages or disadvantages by which I don’t mean the socio-economic or the pre-determined genetic inheritances. The most deciding factor of what you become depends on your rank in the family. The woes of being the eldest of are different. Worse, I think, are those of the youngest. The thesis I propose is that the first borns become the autocrats of this world and the youngest the democrats. At least in our society where hierarchy--familial, social and economic---is most pronounced and implemented fanatically.
            Being the youngest in a family of eight children, I should know. The unwritten rules governing behaviour in a family are inherently unjust and followed implicitly. All rebellion is promptly crushed, nipped in whatever stage it is: in the bud, after it has flowered or in full-fledged adulthood. The curse of being the youngest haunts you to your last days.
            The youngest fetches and carries all that can be fetched and carried for the older siblings, from shoes and socks to a glass of water. If salt has to be fetched from the kitchen when the family has begun its dinner at the table who should get up to get it but the youngest? And should the elder forget to take the towel to the bathroom who should rush to the rescue of the dripping older sibling? The youngest, of course. And is there is a word of thanks? A gracious smile for the pains taken? You must be joking.
            The youngest is often an object of experimentation for the older siblings. Your older brother has learnt to ride a bicycle. He sweetly offers you a ride and you fall for the generosity. The next moment you have fallen on the ground and as you yell the loudest yell of your life it is gratifying to see the autocrat begging you to lower your voice so that the Pater or Mater don’t turn up at the scene and give him what he dishes out regularly to the lesser of his siblings. My experiences on the pillion of the cycle are all at once horrifying and painful. At one time, my foot got entangled in the rear wheel of the cycle ridden  by an older sister. At another time,  I narrowly missed being trampled over by a herd of cattle as an older sibling, a learner on the bike, lost his nerve on seeing the herd looming ahead and crashed into it headlong. The bicycle became such an object of terror that I never even tried getting on to it and as a result, have had to suffer the ignominy of admitting that I couldn’t bicycle. I got on to one only when I was nearing 30 years of age, and that too only to learn “balancing” to be able to ride a scooter.
            The youngest or younger ones are always given the tasks nobody else wants to do. These include borrowing sugar or milk or even Rs.100 or whatever amount is needed to tide over the month end, from a neighbour, or getting some urgently needed stuff from your neighbourhood kirana store whose bill has been overdue by several weeks.
            The younger ones are victimized in many ways. I recall I was once walking my older sister to the bus stop. I was in high school and she in the university and since it was a holiday and I wanted to do a good deed, I accompanied her to the bus stop. As we were rushing at great speed to make it to the bus stop before the bus did, I heard a horrified shriek. My sister stopped in her tracks and seemed paralysed. As I followed her stare, I was equally horrified. She had worn a blue slipper in her left leg and a yellow one in the right. Those were the days of matching slippers and we had a collection of slippers of rainbow colours. You can guess how this tragedy ended. She cajoled me, begged and made extravagant promises. I had to give in; there was hardly any choice. As she walked away triumphantly in my pair of slippers, the saree hardly showing her feet, I in my short skirt, walked a marathon race, head bowed, heart-beating with shame of people noticing my feet dressed in two starkly different coloured slippers. You will get my point if you picture the scene with the roles reversed. Would elder sister have suffered humiliation for her younger sister’s sake? Or would she have ordered her to go home change her slippers, take the next bus, and assign the special class to hell? And then top off with a lecture that she needed to learn to manage her time better, that this was an appropriate lesson for her not to repeat such stupidity again?
            The past was recalled with vengeance when Amulya, my younger daughter contradicted her Didi’s contention during a gossip session with a friend  that she did not believe in riding roughshod over the younger sibling as some other elder sisters did. “Oh-ho, don’t tell all lies,” said the 10 year old Amulya who was a quiet audience till then. “I don’t tell lies,” retorted 17 year old Dipa with the superiority of an older sibling. Stung to the quick, Amulya shot back:“You think I have forgotten what you did the other day? I have not.” Amulya has the memory of an elephant (in true tradition of the youngest). “You stood outside and made me go into the meat shop to buy kheema. And I saw a dead goat there. Its eyes were open,” said Amulya, ever perceptive, shuddering at the recollection. Poor Amulya. She has already learnt that the younger ones don’t have choices. At least not when ordered by the older ones.  
Ends

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