My sister asked in the car, “It’s Rakhi tomorrow, will you stay in town so I can tie a rakhi on you?”
“Yeah, but I have a lot of work to do,” I said, looking at the rows of condominiums hidden behind the thin patches of eucalyptus. Rakhi is the day when your siblings and cousins tie a bracelet, purple and glittery, or sometimes red and shiny gold, around your wrist, and in return you promise to protect them and give them a present. But for me, the rakhi is tied around my bãva’s wrist, an elder sibling if I had one. I asked my mother once who my bãva was since I didn’t have an elder brother, and she told me that he was my cousin who had died a long time ago, the year I was born.
A couple of months after you were born we went back to India. Everyone wanted to see you, so we went everywhere so they could see you. When we were in Podili, your bãva was going to school in a hostel about 10 kilometers outside of town. He was studious, like your father. He really wanted to see you, so he left at night in a hard rain. He didn’t see the electric wire that had fallen on the road, during the storm.
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Nov 28, 02:21 AM