{"id":2598,"date":"2016-04-30T00:40:53","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T19:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2598"},"modified":"2016-04-30T00:40:53","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T19:10:53","slug":"elder-sister-parenting-your-sibling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2598","title":{"rendered":"Kabhi Elder Sister, Kabhie Reluctant Parent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

W<\/span>hen I was 14 and my <\/p>sister <\/span><\/a>was 10, we firmly believed that both of us were adopted. We arrived at this life-changing realisation after many weeks of poring over <\/span>family photo albums,<\/span><\/a> spurred on by relatives who kept telling us that we looked nothing like our parents. In those weeks, the more we looked in the mirror, the clearer it became: There was a striking resemblance to each other, but we had borrowed no features from our <\/span>parents<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\n\nAt that point, the weight of our conspiracy theory seemed so immense that we didn\u2019t think we could bear it alone. So we took an oath \u2013 officiated and witnessed by our favourite <\/span>The Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley <\/span><\/i>books \u2013 to be the A-team, unafraid of standing up against our parents. Like every set of <\/span>siblings <\/span><\/a>in the world, all we needed was an excuse to dismiss our <\/span>parents<\/span><\/a> as our common enemy, drawing clear mental battlelines that separated us from them. Every grounding, scolding, or whacking from them ramped up the animosity between the two camps and pushed the two of us closer together. <\/span>\n\nIt took us a few years to finally acknowledge how ludicrous our assumptions were and attribute it to our rebelliousness. (It was simply doltishness.) But even this newfound maturity couldn\u2019t dampen our bond. We remained inseparable, even though we now lived in different<\/span> cities<\/span><\/a>, had new <\/span>friends<\/span><\/a> and interests, and saw one another only for a few days each year. The four-year age gap never ever came between us. <\/span>\n\nThat is, until my 21-year-old sister decided to visit <\/span>Mumbai<\/span><\/a> during her holidays and I found myself morphing into a reluctant parent.<\/span>\n\nWhile planning her trip to Mumbai, the prospect of having free reign without being under our parents\u2019 thumbs had us both uncontrollably excited. She was looking forward to a rules-free weekend and I was looking forward to having someone who\u2019d double up as my <\/span>Netflix<\/span><\/a> buddy. <\/span>\n

I speak for all elder sisters when I reiterate our right to harass our younger siblings with impunity, or put them in the line of fire in case of a prank gone wrong<\/blockquote>\nWhat neither one of us accounted for was my inner parent, who\u2019d emerge to shadow every second of our time together. In a strange city, the four-year gap now ensured that we could no longer be on an equal footing. <\/span>\n\nI speak for all elder sisters when I reiterate our right to harass our younger siblings with impunity, or put them in the line of fire in case of a prank gone wrong. But as <\/span>Spider-Man<\/span><\/i>\u2019s Uncle Ben famously opined, \u201cWith great power comes great responsibility.\u201d So, apart from picking on our younger siblings (with love), we\u2019re also required to be their staunchest supporters and shut down anyone picking on their helpless asses. This also entails the unenviable burden of being the de-facto parent of our younger siblings when the real deals aren\u2019t around.<\/span>\n\nMy ever-thoughtful <\/span>mother <\/span><\/a>saw it fit to remind me of my parental duty via phone call only a day prior to my sister\u2019s arrival. She slyly switched the topic of discussion from emotionally blackmailing me about finding a (<\/span>Bengal<\/span><\/a>i) suitor to dramatically informing me that the well-being of my sister was my chief responsibility. \u201cTake care of your sister the way your father and I looked after you when you had typhoid. After all, when we die, you\u2019ll be her only parent. This one week can be practice, ki re?\u201d <\/span>\n\nThanks for the heart attack, Mom. <\/span>\n\nWhat no one tells elder siblings is that trying to parent your younger sibling sounds the death knell on your \u201cunbreakable\u201d bond. You\u2019re no longer a close-knit team, ready to protest outside forces, but a divided enterprise that can\u2019t stop infighting. All my attempts at ensuring my sister was hale, hearty, and not run over by a rickshaw during her time in Mumbai was ignored by her as ruthlessly as <\/span>Bollywood<\/span><\/a> ignores Uday Chopra. <\/span>\n\nMy otherwise logical sister saw my unwarranted parenting as a fierce personal attack. If I suggested that she should eat <\/span>lunch<\/span><\/a> by 1 pm, she would ensure she only ate at 5 pm, after the dishes were done for maximum inconvenience. If I made the mistake of informing her that empty chip packets belong in the dustbin, she would carry out a surgical strike to turn my bedroom into her messy playground. And, on the fateful day when I refused to let her venture out alone with some unsavoury dude I didn\u2019t know, she struck the cruellest blow. \u201cYou are embarrassing me, exactly like mom does.\u201d <\/span>\n\nI was suddenly reduced to the parent whose rules she was conditioned to protest. Betrayed by my actions, she redrew the mental battlelines we had set together all those years ago \u2013 only this time it was her against me. For her, the A-team had run its last mission. It didn\u2019t help that I found myself overreacting about every little plan of hers and trying desperately to<\/span> baby<\/span><\/a>-proof them. Try as I might, I couldn\u2019t shed the extra baggage of responsibility, and become the carefree partner-in-crime my sister remembered.<\/span>\n\nThe one thing I learned from this ill-fated<\/span> trip<\/span><\/a> (besides thanking my parents for tolerating our combined rebellion without actually putting us up for adoption) was that being an elder sister is fraught with as many challenges as winning the <\/span>Karnataka elections.<\/span><\/a> You have to be ready to take unpopular decisions that will get you a lot of flak. Sometimes, it requires letting go of our ego and common sense to give in to the unfeasible demands of our siblings. But most importantly, it means heavy-heartedly embracing the fact that from now on, everything we say to our younger siblings will be dismissed at worse, taken with a pinch of salt at best. <\/span>\n\nAs it turns out, as an elder sister, you don\u2019t get to choose parenting \u2013 parenting chooses you.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The four-year age gap between me and my sister never seemed to matter. That is, until my 21-year-old sister decided to visit me during her college break, and I found myself morphing into a reluctant parent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":2599,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[5278,5279,3016,4789,5280,5281],"class_list":["post-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modern-family","tag-elder-sister","tag-parenting-your-young-siblings","tag-siblings","tag-sisterhood","tag-teenage-rebellion","tag-younger-sister"],"yoast_head":"\nKabhi Elder Sister, Kabhie Reluctant Parent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The four-year age gap between me and my sister never seemed to matter. 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