Sibling influence.

When I was in Singapore in January, as I was walking down the streets in Little India, l saw a familiar head above all the other heads and my first reaction was to duck and hide. Which I did. That familiar head belonged to my youngest sister!

My mother’s modus operandi when she raised us was this ” your grandmother and her sisters were like karakka ( I have never seen it, but apparently the seeds in the same pod face opposite direction), you have to remember always that you only have each other” and then she did all that she can to make us fight with each other. Guilt and anger were the end results and It was a horrible thing to do to your children.

I know my mother is not alone in this. A friend tells me of his recent trip to India. He wanted to do some special Pooja at his family’s ancestral temple and requested his mother to help him pay for the Pooja and even sent her the money. Apparently, the Pooja is done on a special day and he took leave from his job as a senior Consultant and went home. The day of the Pooja arrived and he went with his family to the temple and the Poojari said under whose name the Pooja is booked. My friend’s younger brother’s name. I am not sure what possessed his mother to do this. No, the brothers don’t have similar names and she didn’t get confused as to whom she was booking the Pooja for, she remembered the naal of the younger one and had insisted that he follows the family to temple that morning. Clearly she knew what she was doing because from the time her sons were small, she has been turning them against each other and has always done things like this to ensure that the bothers will fight with each other. My friend is mad because it is not cheap to fly from here to India and the fact that he is the one who wanted to do the Pooja and he is the one who paid for it and his was not the name the Pooja was booked for or done. The end result is that my friend is not taking to anyone in his family and his mother is the cause of all this drama.

I had hoped that one day my sisters and I could overcome my mother’s manipulative games and at least have some sort of connection with each other. But the truth is, it is not going to happen. I refuse to have anything to do with my sisters. There comes a point in life, when it is easier to duck and hide from your sibling than make an effort to say a simple Hi.

History has a way of repeating itself and I worry often how will my children treat each other as they find their own niche in life?

My only consolation is that I never turned my children against each other.

4 thoughts on “Sibling influence.

  1. Sarah,it will not happen to your children as they were brought up differently by you with love and affection for each other binding themselves together. Yet at a later stage, as the years go by, the bodage and affection will wane, in most cases. One of my cousins still keep her love and affection for her elder brother at this age of 60. She talked to me over phone recently so sadly about 45 minutes how her brother died and how his wife not treating him properly and still belives that had he been with her he would not have died.
    So the childhood days treatment will have a effect on ducking and hiding but that alone is not the reason.
    Since you have successfully came out from the daibolic acts of your mother and family you should have shown the nobility to say Hi.

    • Bipin: I have the safety of anonymity. My family doesn’t know where I stay or my phone number and I prefer to keep it that way. Besides I have not seen my youngest sister for over 10 years.. I see my friends more regularly..and each year that I don’t see my family they become more and more distant. Before, at least I used to remember my sisters on their birthdays.. the past few years, even that hasn’t happened. I am not even curious to know anything about them.

      • I agree with Bipin, the closeness you have with your siblings/families does become distant when you get older (I think it’s mainly due to the fact that everyone has their own lives and families to deal with)-it’s a lot of effort to keep the closeness. Seen it in my family. When I was a kid, we were really tight knit, taking vacations together, getting together often despite being a little far apart. Now the contact is sort of breaking apart where only a few members are still in touch and despite the fact that everyone is moving extremely far apart from each other (I think it’s because of the typical attitudes my family has had, at least my cousins and my brother and I are making an effort to get together despite the fact we are all scattered all over..this past year was the most we had gotten together). Circumstances are different for everyone though, and to each their own. I do think your kids will stay close knit as you took a different approach to parenting compared to most Asian parents. I feel I have grown and learned a lot of lessons just by watching my families and the society we are in (both in US and India) and vow that if I have kids, I will not follow their example since I do know better.

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