When He Was A Baby –

The Baby Brother

 He was born with a little less weight than us, and so mother thought he was delicate, and couldn't return to work leaving him as an infant with her mother as she had left us all our childhood, and she gave up work for good. Not that there was any shortage of work at home - she lost the glamour of dressing and going out, mostly, but other than that it might have been a relief instead. Those days not too many women worked, especially not those with children, especially not as other than in a few - very few - professions, or even jobs; what work she had done last involved different shifts, and while there was no danger - it was not only a government job, there were vehicles to convey people who worked in any shifts other than 9 to 5 - there might have been stress of working, with little relief at home from ever more work. It must have been a relief in other ways too, not just psychologically. She never talked about that, but if I had thought about it I should have known. Not then - I was only eight - but later. Perhaps I knew, on some level. 

 I had discovered her one day when she was asleep in the afternoon, tired, exhausted, with the baby son by her side. I had been playing and came in and saw red, and thought it might have been normal, but nevertheless asked grandmother what it was. It was her stitches from the operation - they had not been done properly, and had come undone, perhaps due to some strain for some reason. 

 He had insisted she have the operation, not being willing to have one himself and not wanting children - he had wanted the last one aborted as late as second trimester or later - so she had had the operation, having refused an abortion at any cost, and she had been not in any renowned hospital either. This was the first time she had not gone back to our - her - hometown for a childbirth, where she might have had better care, where she knew people and they knew her. She had been home for hardly a week when the stitches came apart. 

 Grandmother had sent for the one neighbour who spoke our language - it might have been me who was sent to call her over, the very beautiful and elegant, friendly and courteous MG who was the only friend I knew that my mother had as an almost personal friend - and she came forthwith, and made the necessary calls; and then the ambulance arrived to take mother for the second time in that short interval. Then the baby was still less than a month old or so. I don't have a memory of whether he was taken too, since she breast-fed all of us through each one’s infancy, and to separate them for more than a few hours would have been unthinkable. But then under the circumstances I don't know, I don't remember. 

 She came back home and there were no more mishaps, at least with her - not that I know of. Perhaps a couple of months were free of incident - but then the baby was taken ill with diarrhoea, and no longer chirped or smiled, for quite some time. He was four months old before he recovered from that. That would be summer. 

 It must have been around this time that there was yet another frightening day. I was in the house, it was not only summer holidays but afternoon in the region of extremely hot summers. Sgk went on playing outside in the front veranda, all by herself. After a little while Aajie asked me to go look if she was all right, since she had heard whimpering. I had checked a moment before, having heard it too, and she had said she was all right, not looking at me. The second time I found she was badly hurt, having fallen down and been hit at her eyebrow with a stone, bleeding profusely, and scared she would be scolded, and in pain. She was taken to be treated, had stitches before long, and was much applauded for being such a heroine she had not cried when she was being stitched so close to her eyes. 

 The baby had been ill with diarrhoea. He lay in a crib, quiet, silent in his suffering, for about a month or so, with only mother and grandmother tending to him. Then one day Aajie - grandmother - said, it is your little brother, and he is so unwell, why don't you look at him, do something! I asked what I could do, and she said, well, take some oil and rub it into his feet; so I went with a little bowl of oil. 

 He lay quiet, eyes closed. He was always a very beautiful child, large dark eyes, and apart from this illness had always a smile lighting up the room and inner spaces of those around. But that day he had his eyes closed and we had been unsure if he would survive, and neither mother nor Aajie had let us suffer from the worry, the terrible sense of how they must have felt. He was just about four months old. And he wasn't fighting for his life, he was lying there, quiet, resigned. No crying, no sound had emanated from him for a while now. He must have been exhausted physically but it was more, he had always been quite capable of letting his pleasure or displeasure known even as young as two weeks old. He smiled at less than a week and had roared with anger if he was late being fed, refusing to feed and screaming with hunger and anger red in the face, until mother apologised - and then he quietened and condescended to allow her to feed him. This quietness was not natural to him. 

 I began to gently rub his feet with oil. and after a few minutes noticed he had opened his eyes. Then he was looking at me. Then he smiled. I went on rubbing oil, smiling back at him, encouraged, happy to have a good effect, happy the baby was connecting and smiling at me, happy at a recognition from such a little mite. Then he let out a chuckle, and it got better. I went on rubbing, and he began to giggle. And then he was laughing with all his heart, and I was amazed with the effect. It took me a little more time to realise he was also being tickled, and that contributed to the laughter, but it was the therapeutic help of that oil massage just as much. 

 Then on we had a connection. I carried him around when allowed to do so, frequently, and took him to see things around neighbourhood. A neighbour had chickens, with small chicks - that was most interesting for him. He developed his own pat song - he would go "patyaa, patyaa, patyaa, patyaa, chupchayyyyy" and often he would take a breath and repeat the "patyaa patyaa" while we had been waiting for the roar of chupcheyyyyy. And we would break into helpless laughter. I don't remember if we knew he was just making the sounds of the chicken coop. I know now of course. 

 He played with the other two, who would run around the house while he would crawl fast to catch them - and he was smart enough to figure it out and just turn and sit and wait as they ran straight into him, having come a full circle from the small room through the back veranda into the middle room and so into the small room again. I wasn't a part of this, being between eight and ten, and was usually reading. 

 At lunch, when he was old enough to sit and eat with us there was a special chair for him so he could join us at the dining table. Before he was born we sat in the kitchen on floor on paat - wooden, very low, platforms - and ate, the Indian style. The dining table must have come around the time of his infanthood, and so when he was ready to sit by himself to eat we were equipped with all that was needed to eat together. Not that we all did - mother and grandmother always ate later, after everyone else was done, since they were not only serving but often some things - chapati, or puri, and so on - were served fresh from stove-top. 

 In summer it must have been just as hot for him as for us, and he had found the way to have fun and cool himself all at once. He took the rice and yogurt mixture from his plate and spread it around his face, and then laughed at us seeing our face at his naughtiness. He loved to be naughty but was a nice child, unlike Sgk who was naturally naughty and Mgm who was silent and observing everyone, rarely reacting. So he learned to do this simple trick - often he would be eating, all saintly little boy, and then we were busy and no one paid attention to hm just for a moment - and he would overturn his plate of curd-rice on his head, and laugh at us with his victory. One had to laugh at that. I still remember the sight. 

 He was bought a small car all for himself when he learned to walk. there are photos of us together, with him sitting in the car and us three standing by. He had lovely curly hair like our mother (- mine did not curl then, and it was only in my thirties that I discovered they did -) and generally was very beautiful, with his large dark eyes and ever ready smile and laughter. 

 When we were taken to Pune for the year so our parents could go abroad, he and the slightly older Mgm at three and five years old went to live with our Aajie, at the house where the rest of us had been as babies, and my mother had grown up and lived till she married, with our (adopted) grandfather - Aajie's brother, mother's mama - and his wife. The two little ones were secure and had the sole attention, but he had more of it I suppose, and she played the elder sister to the hilt, under Aajie's gentle care. He was not unaware, though of little age. 

 When later parents visited before leaving, mother held him and said very lovingly - "I don't know how I am going to leave you, I will miss you" and he coolly replied "if that is so why don't you just take me with you anyway", nonchalant with no clue that he would miss her, merely advice for someone who seemed to be suffering, rendering her speechless with no ready reply. 

 Perhaps some people were discussing how the couple could go away and leave their children behind, and he said - "they probably don't want the "byaad", us" - a word that I knew but the other siblings did not - and the adults were again amazed speechless. 

 Grandfather was telling him something one day and he listened without reaction, looking elsewhere; a little piqued, and to make sure he understood, grandfather asked a little forcefully "did anything enter your head?" and the little one goes "head has no hole". 

 All this while we the two elder siblings lived in the other house that was about a ten minute walk away, and visited sometimes. When Sgk visited she and Mgm had fights - they were only two years apart and Mgm now felt she had the right of her place, and told the elder one to go to " back to her own house" while Sgk just as righteously replied it was her own house just as well - since they were our grandparents, and it was the home of our memories. Once Aajie found Mgm sitting quietly while Sgk was trying to insert her - Sgk's - toe into the younger one's nose. It was not torture as much as a theoretical dispute between the two over an old proverb the elder one had learnt newly, but Aajie was much alarmed and besides had every faith in the destructive powers of Sgk, having seen her through many years too - so she was sent walking back "to her own house". 

 He - the youngest one - was called by more than one name, and that still is true - but it is only Mgm who remembers and still calls him Baby, the way we did when we were children together.

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 When we returned to a new house, a bit larger and quite new but in the same old neighbourhood, there were new toys from US and from our hometown, and we had different ones each, some shared and some individual. He played the longest with dolls, with elaborate stories and drama conducted alone, spied on sometimes by Sgk. I was busy with school and study, and the other two went to school together, so he was alone quite a bit every day. One game he played was to wear my old girlguide uniform and the cover to our old washing machine and go about pretending he was Shivaji, since the year we were in our home town a new well researched biography of him had been the rage, and I had read it. Some neighbours were surprised he informed them his name was Shivaji, and mother had to correct it when askede by them.

Soon we were all worried about his education - I had begun reading at three and deciding which books I could ask parents to buy economically enough, and had my own little suitcase full of books and subscription to three magazines at five, and the others were not to hold back in anything they could compete, no way, so they read early enough too - but this one showed no inclination to begin to read. Soon enough there were five of us - everyone else in the family - trying to teach him, and he evaded us with patience and tricks and diplomacy.

Eventually though he did learn the letters, so it was turn of whole sentences and small books for children. That began the fun - he would correct a sentence if he thought it did not conform to the structure used normally, and no variation was acceptable to him, no matter what he read word by word - for the sentence he came out with the corrected version.

Once his pop told me, in exasperation, that he was asking the little one what A+I was (A as in align, I as in inform), and the little one came up with E (as in Hey or Hay without the aspirate sound of H) rather than I (again, I as in inform); I reminded him that was correct according to grammar in Sanskrt, and he was quite astonished the small child would do this intuitively and nonchalantly, naturally. Of course Sanskrt being completely scientific it is not a surprise one could find the rules by oneself, but normally a child or even an adult attempts to guess what answer is expected and then gives that. I am sure the baby knew all that, and couldn't care less, but gave what he came out with, and let us figure it out.
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It was less fun when school began for him, and he got busy playing with boys his age, and every day needs of money to buy more stuff for whatever the season's play was - marbles, kites or tops.

 My last memory of him as a baby brother seems of one time he tried to take a milk bottle from the fridge - he might have been six, perhaps seven - and it slipped and broke, with glass shards and milk all over the floor. He called out to me, scared, and I was across the hall, told him not to move, went and scooped him up and deposited him across the hall in a chair and made sure he was safe before clearing up the glass and the milk. This was not too long before I had to leave, and I remember him once later when I visited secretly clinging to me.

Then he grew up, and that changed. 

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