Sibling Rivalry

What is Sibling Rivalry? A misnomer in my opinion. It is anything BUT rivalry. It's a natural way of progression and evolution. We may not get it and we may not like it. However, it is THE organic way in a safe silo where we can find ourselves as the person we become later in our life. Antics and behaviour that sculpts us into the likeable or unlikeable people we become.

Me and my next sibling were the most immediate ones for a while and then there was a bigger gap. When we were children we used to fight like rabid dogs. Sometimes verbal and sometimes even physical. Heck I'm not sure how such kids ended up taking Taekwondo lessons. I mean at that age, it was arming us further. Regardless, it may not be obvious at those ages, but really it is just a natural progression and I am not sure why our society has started labelling it as some sort of rivalry. You tune into the discovery channel and I'd guarantee that you'd see shots of lion or bear cubs going through the same thing. It is natural and the reason I say that I know that we may have had our occasional differences, but we cared for each other a lot.

The stuff that we got up to, some of it was only disclosed to our parents just a few years ago. mean decades. Sure we would have our little spats, but then at the same time, when our mother would be taking her afternoon nap, in the scorching heat of the sun we would be out in the veranda, constructing a makeshift stove that was to be lit with wood (sticks) fire. We would then cook a daal or whatever in a mini steel pot, then enjoy the fruits of our labour. All of this just between us.

I have been somewhat adventurous all my life, me and my best friend (cousin) so we were in the habit of scaling walls and jumping off odd structures. My favourite being jumping off the roof of our house into our garden downstairs across the wall, It was exhilarating. So, one of my adventures used to be to climb a very tall closet in our house because it had space at the top. One day my sister said she wanted to climb it as well, so I got down and we both managed to get up there somehow. My sister then decided to dance around when she got to the top, as soon as I noticed and as soon I tried to warn her, she had already slipped and I still remember the image of her fall. It resembled that of Wiley Coyote <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Runner> from one of the Road Runner Cartoons <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCDKJQ3Z8bU>. The amount of worry I had knew no bounds. I quickly jumped off tried to wake her up but she was unconscious, so I picked her up and put her on one of our beds. Concerned and afraid (of the scolding I might get from my parents) I had no choice but to run up to kitchen yell at my mum about what had happened and quickly run back to our parent's room to hide under the bed. Back then we used to live in a small apartment, so I could still hear what was happening. Thank Allah, my sister eventually woke up and after a full day of pleading by my parents I eventually decided to come out of hiding. My sister had a black-eye for a few days but other wise she was A-O.K.

Another time during the portion of our lives we had to spend in a rural part of Punjab, we both had adjustment problems in school. As such, on one of these occasions, my sister had an issue with a senior girl in school. Being a very rural part of the province, civility, was rare to come by. The episode made me angry so I decided to confront this girl. I was furious and stomped up to this senior who was at least 6 years older than me at that time. I remember my intention was a verbal discourse, but the sort of person she was I think she maybe expected a physical engagement, which is why I, even before I could say anything, a monstrous slap went across my face and than she ran away. Normally, I would've reacted, but in all honesty, I was shocked and didn't know how to react. After that episode however I thought I would be ashamed and embarrassed but I wasn't. In fact I was content. The fact that this senior girl ran away after what she had done told me that she knew that I was protective of my sister in that way, and she would not behave the way she did. Rightly, so because we did not have that sort of a problem again. Good riddance!

Another instance, as I mentioned we got up to mischief, when our mum slept during the afternoon, when we had this really tall swing installed in our veranda, we used to play with it. Once we pushed it so hard that it wrapped itself around the top of the pole and I being the adventurous sort decided to unwrap it. This pole used to be the same height as our roof, so the plan was to go up to roof, hop across to the pole of the swing and unwrap the seat. Fast-forward I was able to do all this and was now almost done unwrapping, unfortunately, my grip was beginning to loosen and slip. My sister was anxiously observing and noticed something was amiss, There I was grabbing part of the rope with my mouth (idiot) and unwrapping with one hand until I was. However, I suspected that by now a fall was inevitable. So I asked my sister to drag some spare bedding, that used to be kept in the veranda and place under in order to break the fall. She complied. Holding on to my dear life I tried my best to guide her so that the position of the bedding was such that I would not miss it when I fall. As soon as it seem right, I could no longer hold on and fell. I don't remember hitting the ground. I had passed out. I came around after a while to my sister's face who was weeping and repeating "My brother, my brother". In that instance as always I was assured that regardless of our arguments, how much my sister cared for me. On side note, I had a back injury from that fall that nobody knew about and I lived with for at least half a decade. Time passes!

These are only some of the examples to show that there is no such thing as the said rivalry. And the time we spent as siblings (just not my immediate one) shaped us and carved us into the people we are today, regardless of this so called idea of Sibling Rivalry. There is no such thing.