Thanks for giving me this wonderful opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings.
After 34 years of being a single child to my aged parents, I would definitely say a big “NO NO” to being born and raised as the only child.
I am going to support this with real life examples…
- My parents were not young when I was born, moreover it was a luv marriage. In a strictly caste conscious society, they didn’t have any of their relatives visiting us. This means no cousins to act as my siblings. Maybe, my ill-luck. Still, in the later part of my life, when I started to get in touch with my cousins, there was a clear line between cousins and siblings. When there was a need to search for alliance for marriage, nobody would take any steps. Whereas, when it came to searching for their own brothers and sisters, they spent all their effort and time in searching for one. I had to struggle all alone to broadcast my profiles on the net, prepare a marriage bio-data and give it to marriage agents etc. It was such a pain. My parents could only search for those profiles on the newspaper or known contacts as they were not computer savvy. Also, the money needed to do the marriage was all solely earned by me as my father retired way back when I was still in school and could manage to only provide for my studies. Whenever I see a elder brother or sister doing the marriage of their younger siblings, I feel why didn’t i have one to take care of me. Why should I face everything all alone in my life?
- Being born alone as a girl child, had its own problems. When my father had an emergency in the night, I had to rush down all alone walking in the middle of the night to the nearby hospital looking for help. I couldn’t ride the bike then, so had to walk. I was so scared the whole way and upon reaching the hospital, they asked me to get the patient. I had to beg the cab driver to help me carry my dad into the cab so that he can be driven to the hospital. That is when I really missed having a brother in life.
- When I was 10 years old, there was a aunt of mine who was talking to her sister on the phone about buying sarees and jewellery. I was simply listening to them. She suddenly started talking about me. She said that i was closely watching their conversation as I had no sisters to talk closely like that…It hurt me deeply coz at that moment I was hardly thinking of that. Maybe, being born alone makes the world have these kind of ideas on us.
- Whenever we make a childish mistake, the world says that “Oh, if he/she was born with sisters or brothers, they know how badly it hurts”…
- There is always a feeling of insecurity lingering in the mind. Parents can’t be with us our whole life. So siblings with whom we grow from our young age will surely stay a while longer than parents. You need a person who has seen you from your young age in life. Even a lover, husband or wife only gets introduced to you after 20 or 30 years in life, but parents and siblings are the ones who know you in and out as they have seen you from childhood… They are the ones who are aware of your true qualities and the good and bad in your character. They know what makes your happy/sad, what gives you peace and security.
To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. (Clara Ortega)
