Your best friends do not have to be necessarily your spouse or people not related to you by blood.
Today, let me write about someone who has been my time-tested best friend through thick and thin. She is my sister, Mrs. Tapasi Ghosh Bhattacharyya. My earliest recollection of my Sis is the day when I was in Class-IV of a local school. After the breather, I raced to the attached bathroom of our classroom but before I could use the Indian-style latrine, I had shitted in my pants! I was terribly frightened for the Massi (attendant) was a ferocious monster by nature and would spank us or berate us without mercy at the slightest opportunity ( Corporal Punishment was very much in fashion in those days!).
I was out of my wits not knowing how to disentangle myself from the awkward situation, standing in the middle of the bathroom with my pants all wet and unbuckled below the knees. I had tears streaming down my eyes when the Massi entered and started ranting like hell was on fire! I do not know who had informed my Sis back home but when I saw her, I heaved a sigh of relief. With her arrival, I knew, things could not be as bad as I had anticipated as she had studied in the same school and was a darling of the school.
Years rolled by. I got admitted in the local Boys’ School first before moving on to college. Sis got married to her sweetheart against the wishes of the family. The family was in shock the day our father, the Principal of a private collage in Kolkata, breathed his last. His demise coupled with the tragic end of another brother years later, could have jolted the family but we all remained united during the troubled times.
In due course of time, I landed up with a teaching job in The Happiness Country. During one Winter Break when I had come down to my hometown, I heard our Ma telling my Sis, 'Try getting Swagata (my nickname ) married. He’s 37 now. What will happen to him when I’m gone?'
Sister and my brother-in-law, who had become more than a brother to me by then, ran an advertisement in the leading Bengali daily, ABP, seeking a matrimonial alliance for me. Till then, I never knew that someone like me could be in such a demand! Though reluctant, I had to accompany Sis to another sister’s place to meet the father, who had responded to the advertisement, along with the daughter.
I was just getting off the taxi when someone yelled from the balcony of the sister’s apartment that he wasn’t coming due to the disruption of the train services. I was livid and told Sis that I wouldn’t go meet any other prospective bride’s family during my stay in Kolkata. It was at the request of my Sis again that I had to change my mind to go to the same girl’s maternal home. Having spent some time with the girl, I decided to marry her.
'We’d be the best of friends,' I told her in the end. It is another story that Fate willed otherwise!
Ours was a whirlwind marriage. Having been very fond of my Ma, I wanted to leave my wife with her at our ancestral home in Kolkata but my newly-wedded bride was adamant that she must accompany me and see the place where I lived and worked. It was again at the request of Sis that I decided to let my wife accompany me on my return journey to Bhutan.
'She hasn’t said anything wrong. Any girl’d love to go find the place where her hubby stayed.'
There were problems galore though in the following years in our marriage. On the day of our wedding, it transpired that my wife-to-be had a past! I, in no way a wet cat, felt betrayed. Unfortunately, my Sis, who had been my greatest strength all through those turbulent years of my marriage, did not get along very well with my wife either.
Things came to such a pass that my wife left me one afternoon with our two daughters after a ‘scene’ with me. She decided to live on her own with the daughters at Patuli, some 45 minutes distance from my ancestral home. I’d have been shattered by what had happened but for my Sis. Sis, who had been working as the Matron at a PG Hostel, returned home on holidays and supported me all through! She did the shopping, cooking, cleaning – almost everything for me, noiselessly.
In those 3 months before I got reunited with my family, my Sis proved a tower of strength for me. And I could undergo a cataract surgery because of her presence in my ancestral home at that time.
It’s not that my Sis and I never fall out, but we always make it up in the end. I do so thinking about what my Ma told me a few days before her death :
'The way she loves you, is unimaginable.'
And now when my wife and daughters are on their way to Bangaluru ( and to think I never went anywhere without them! Agreed that my elder daughter asked me if I’d accompany them but I declined her offer) in connection with my elder daughter’s job-transfer, it is my Sis, who is back to our ancestral home in Central Kolkata lending me moral and mental support, advising me for a patch-up with my family, trying to convey through her actions that all is not lost yet.
As long as there are sisters like her, there is trust, friendship, love and hope brewing for a brother in this world. And my friendship with and respect for my Sis spreads over an inaccessible horizon altogether.