Emerging Victorious

I thought that she would live forever, or, at least, as long as I did. As a child, I used to nag her, pester her and play with her—my older sister. ‘When I was five, she used to run behind me with a plate in an attempt to feed me dinner. I was plagued by the feeling that maybe my parents were paying more attention to her than they were to me. Therefore, I was constantly on the lookout for shreds of evidence to prove my hypothesis. She had a bigger room than I did and by whining continually I convinced her that a swap was in order.

As I came home from school one day, (I was thirteen), my parents summoned me urgently to the hospital, but they would not tell me why. I was a little puzzled. I knew my sister had caught a cold and was leaving for America the following week. I thought that taking her to the hospital was an unnecessary precaution, but my father had always been very cautious when we fell ill. As I settled on the couch at the hospital, I noticed that both my parents looked exhausted, but their expressions were stem. My father looked me straight in the eye as he declared, “be brave for what I am about to tell you now. Your sister just suffered a bacterial attack in her brain and her chances of survival are slim.” I did not lose hope, however, and turned to God with a series of pleas, prayers and promises that I would turn into a shining model of goodness if only she survived this ordeal. He did not keep his end of the bargain and she died two days later. Consequently, I too was forced to give up any aspirations of sainthood.

Beyond a deep sense of loss, grief and regret, I also experienced a strange sensation now—a great deal of guilt. The night she died, I slept in her room (the smaller one) and I spent a long time gazing at the wallpaper. I remembered how a few weeks earlier when my parents had just put brand new wallpaper in her room, I had argued at length with my sister, trying to convince her that I absolutely needed my old room back right away, even though she was moving out in a few weeks. I realized that through all the squabbles and quarrels, I had always attempted to outmaneuver her. I wanted more than she had, and I had always striven to surpass her academically and in every other respect. I was bothered by the fact that I had viewed her as a constant source of challenge in my life. I realized that such an attitude was unhealthy and had spoiled my relationship with her as well as others. At that moment, I decided that my challenges would not come from the outside world but from within me. Since then, I have been motivated not by the thought of outdoing others, but by simply pushing myself beyond my own limits. Every time I am caught in a struggle with other people, I remember the lesson learned from my sister—my relationship with other people is more important than emerging victorious.

~Harsh Kumar, Manhattan