The Big Brother
I was sitting on the balcony, leaned back in my foldable chair with my hands folded behind my head, legs stretched out straight and resting on a table. A thick hardback book with a thin bookmark stuck into it lay closed on the table. There was a half-drunk cup of tea beside the book. And, there was an old radio at the edge of the table, playing Chopin’s nocturnes.
The sun had been out all bright and shining, but a thin blanket of fog hovered in the air, which made the Sunday morning warm and cozy, perfect for a day of rest. It was a day that makes you want to lie back and enjoy a good book with some classical music all day long.
As I lay there, lost in Chopin’s haunting music, a ball flew into the balcony and hit the radio. I sat up straight and looked at the table. The radio lay sideways on the table, still playing. The ball was rolling slowly to the edge of the table, then it fell down on the floor, jumped up a couple of times, then rolled a bit more until it reached my feet and stopped.
I got up and put the radio straight. Then I bent down and took the ball in my hand, and looked out on the street below. There was a bunch of little boys standing, looking up at me.
“Hello, uncle,” one of the boys said. “It’s our cricket ball. Please throw it back to us.”
I went up to the balcony railing and leaned over it. Then I counted them. There were six boys in total, all seemed to be about 7 or 8 years old, and one boy was holding a cricket bat leaning against his shoulder.
“We are so sorry, uncle,” all of them said in chorus. And the kid with the cricket bat said, “We will reeaaaaally make sure the ball won’t come into your house again.”
A broad smile spread across my face, knowing that they wouldn’t take any such precaution, and I threw the ball back to them. I went back to my chair, sat down and looked down on the street. Watching the kids playing cricket filled me with nostalgia. At that moment, though I was just in my early forties, looking at those kids shouting and running across the street, I, sitting in a chair, sipping tea and listening to old music, felt like I suddenly aged hundred years.
It was a quiet and dull neighborhood. Except for the kids playing, there wasn’t anybody out on the street that morning. Even then, that street wasn’t an ideal place to play cricket. It was a narrow street, and so, every time a vehicle came that way the kids had to stop and move aside to let the vehicle pass.
I recognized two of the six kids playing down — Arun and his little brother Dev. They lived in the house opposite mine across the street. Though I hadn’t spoken to any of the two kids or their parents other than an occasional smile here and a nod there, I thought theirs was a normal but happy family. Father was a clerk at some office and Mother was a schoolteacher. Home sweet home.
Their house had a small front porch, and two thick pillars stood supporting it. The kids had drawn three thin vertical lines on one of the pillars and used that as a substitute for the stumps.
I picked up the book and resumed my reading, but I kept glancing down at the kids from time to time. About an hour or so later, they started to leave one by one, and at one point I noticed everyone had left except Arun and Dev. Arun was standing in front of the pillar and batting while Dev was bowling.
I looked down again the next time when I heard Dev shouting “Howzat” in his squeaky voice. But there was no umpire to decide if Arun was out or not.
“You are out. Gimmee the bat,” Dev said, jumping up and down.
Arun didn’t move from his position. “No. I’m not out,” Arun said. “Did you really look where the ball hit? It didn’t touch the stumps at all.”
That’s an argument you’d eventually get into if you use three lines on a pillar as the wickets. At that moment, I saw myself on the street there, as when I’d been a kid, playing cricket with my little brother, and fighting with him that I was not out, even though I knew I was.
“I saw the ball hit the stumps,” Dev said. “Gimmee the bat. It’s my turn to bat now.”
“No way,” Arun said, leaning against the pillar.
“You liar,” Dev shouted, and ran to his brother and pushed him.
Arun stumbled a bit and Dev tried to pull the bat out of his hand. But he couldn’t, as Arun was a lot stronger than Dev. Arun lifted the bat up and swung it down towards Dev’s head. Dev closed his eyes and tilted his body to the other side, and stepped back into the street on an impulse. Everything happened so suddenly, that nobody had noticed the truck coming that way and the driver hadn’t expected the kid to step into the street suddenly.
And the truck hit Dev.
I ran down. Their parents rushed out. Several other people came out.
But, Dev died in a moment.
Nobody played cricket on the street after that morning. The street was always empty and depressing as if Dev had taken the life and vitality of the street along with him. His parents always looked tired. The mother’s eyes were puffy from all the crying, and the father looked like he had aged ten years in just a week. But that didn’t scare me.
I saw the entire life of a little boy vanished in a moment like a rabbit in a magician’s hat. Poof. That didn’t scare me either.
What scared me was the face of Arun. The face of his after he saw the truck hit his brother. Even though it all happened twenty years ago, I still remember that face. That face haunted me for several sleepless nights over the years. It was not remorse or grief in his face that scared me. Instead, there was nothing in his face. His face was devoid of any expression. It was hollow and vacant as if some demon had sucked his soul out through his mouth. He started to see everything around him like he was looking up from a bottomless well as he kept falling down and down for hours, without knowing where he was.
It was like he didn’t believe what had happened that morning. Or, he did not want to believe.
I saw Arun less and less after the accident, and he was alone all the time. Every time I saw him, he looked paler and thinner than the previous time. He even stopped making eye contact with anybody, as if he was afraid that if he did people might fish out the truth he’d been hiding inside him through his eyes.
I knew he never told anybody about what had really happened that morning. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that Dev was hit by the truck because he stepped into the street suddenly. But, nobody knew he stepped back because his brother had swung the bat at him. Nobody except me and Arun. It was our little secret.
About a month or so later, the street started to look like before. Nobody had forgotten Dev’s death, but they’d come to terms with it as a part of life. His parents started getting better. The three vertical lines on the pillar started to fade.
But, Arun stayed the same. He still had the vacant and hopeless look in his face. He became so thin that his collarbone started to show on his body, and his eye sockets were sunken which gave his eyes a bulging appearance, like his eyes would pop out anytime. His face was paler than ever, but except under his eyes, where it was dark like a no-moon-night. He didn’t want to leave the bottomless well.
I was sitting on my balcony one night, drinking scotch. It was dark and eerily quiet outside. In that darkness, I saw someone was sitting on the street, leaning against the pillar, the pillar that had the three faded vertical lines. I knew it was Arun.
I watched him for a few minutes. He was sitting like a statue, with his gaze fixed on the spot where Dev had lain dead.
I gulped down my scotch and went down. I walked across the street and sat beside Arun. He turned his face towards mine. I expected I’d hear a creaking sound as he turned his head. He looked at me for a few seconds. Then he got up without saying anything. I grabbed his wrist and made him sit again. He looked at me with the same vacant look in his face.
“I know,” I said, looking into his eyes.
His eyes grew a little wide and I saw a glint in his eyes. Just for a split-second. “What?” he said after a full minute, as if he had forgotten the words and had to try so hard to remember them.
“I know,” I said. “I saw what happened that morning. I saw the argument. And I saw why he stepped back into the street suddenly.” I looked at the same spot on the street.
For the first time after Dev’s death, I saw an expression in Arun’s face. It was shock and embarrassment.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, his voice trembling.
I pulled him closer to me and hugged him. And I whispered in his ears, “It’s all right. It was just an accident. It wasn’t your mistake.”
He started crying. All the grief and remorse and tears for his brother’s death that he’d kept shut inside him came pouring out.
“I killed my brother,” he said, his voice choking with grief. “I was his big brother. But I killed him.”
“No. You didn’t kill your brother. It was an accident. You have to accept it and move on.”
He wept loudly now.
“It’s all right,” I said, and hugged him tightly. “It’s all right.”
