My Brother

My Brother

Tapas was born fifteen years later. I grew up almost alone but on the year I wrote my board, he, suddenly announced his arrival. I thought his birth was mistimed as neither my parents were ready for another child and nor did I need a kid brother at fifteen to give me company. Nevertheless, he arrived, unwanted, unwelcome.

Just after birth, he looked like a shrivelled baby monkey with big ears sprouting out of his puny head with eyes that had oblique slant. He didn't cry for a long time after birth that made everybody wonder if he was really breathing, and when he did, he didn't sound like other babies. Like an abandoned fledgling of shalik, he squeaked till a nurse held a piece of moistened cotton to his lips.  Later, when my mother came home with Tapas, I was relocated to my study room finally to make way for him. I wasn't angry, neither was I jealous. The tiny baby, who hardly cried and rarely threw its limbs, seemed too gentle to me. Nevertheless, he grew up slowly, never reaching the adulthood, both mentally and physically. We knew he was like a blighted seed; his DNA missing its sequence in the long haul of meiosis and that he would remain so for the rest of his life.

I grew up, finished my studies and joined a job while Tapas still learnt the alphabets and the nursery rhymes.

One day about a week before my marriage, mother called me in her room.

“You might find this a little disturbing, but I feel I must tell you this.” She said in a sombre voice.

“What`s it ma?”

“So far we three have been good and caring to Tapas. Now a fourth person is going to come and she might not be as considerate as us. It`s your duty to take care of your brother. Don`t let him feel that he is a burden to you.” She said and began to sob.

I didn't know what to do. Neither could I imagine what was going on in her mind on that particular day. Tapas was fifteen year old then, but he still played with my old stuffed toys and rhyme books.

“Don`t worry ma, I`ll take care of him.” I said.

Since then, Tapas remained as a fully authorised member with a fixed chair allocated to him at the dining table. My father passed away at seventy and my mother followed him a couple of years later. On both occasions, Tapas accompanied me to the crematorium, performed all the rites but in the days that followed, I found him aloof and hiding in the bedroom that he shared with mother in her last days. Finally he stopped coming out of the bedroom even and remained holed up under the bed. I tried to talk to him, cheer him up, but he gave me a frightened look of a mouse caught in a mousetrap.

Next week we had to shift him to hospital.

The doctors said he had fever, a chest infection perhaps, and there was no reason to worry. But I had my doubts for his eyes that were always cheerful, appeared blank and glazed. Despite all those strong antibiotics, he didn't improve and we were called on one evening to take a decision.

“I am afraid, your brother hasn't responded to anything we have done so far. His blood pressure is falling, urine output is decreasing. We are giving him oxygen by mask, but soon he will need assisted ventilation. He won`t be able to sustain himself.”  The attending doctor said.

“What do you want me do doctor?” I said.

“Unless you tell us specifically that you don`t want your brother to be put into breathing machine, we will put him into ventilator if required and keep all our resuscitative measures on.”

“Is there any chance of recovery?” I asked.

“See, it`s difficult to predict death.” He said.

I looked at my brother. His tiny body was hidden under the green bed sheet; only his head was visible, his face under a transparent cone, pumping oxygen to his stiffened lungs. I went close to his bed and put my hand over his bald head. He opened his eyes. I heard him say, sign up brother, it`s time to go.

I got the final call in the morning. The doctor said he passed away at four am. I could take my time and reach hospital after eight.