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 [...]
Read more…
Lesley Thomson author of ‘A Kind of Vanishing’ winner of the 2010 People’s Book Prize for Fiction. Now no 1 on Amazon with ‘The Detectives Daughter’. I am a novelist. Is my success due to my being an only child? Without siblings I doubtless had more time to myself. I remember many contented days when I read, painted pictures, moulded clay, constructed collages with electrical components donated by my father who built radios in his own, fewer, quiet moments. I had a happy childhood packed with people: my friends, my parents’ friends and many relations and those in stories. It was rumbustrous and busy with adventures constructed by myself and friends. In addition I had ‘imaginary friends’ whose lives I related to myself in bed at night. Thus I taught myself the principles of continuous narrative, no doubt influenced by The Archers to which my parents were regular listeners. I [...]
Read more…