We were 5 siblings in total out of which 3 were sisters and 2 brothers. If you pick my siblings and analyse them one would find what a work of art each one of them is.
My elder sister Rama didi ; she was the ultimate elder sibling as she had all the features of a typical Indian elder sibling. She was smart and caring , like really caring . She used to switch off all the fans and then force us to cover ourselves with thick razais (sheets) , the ones which are used in extreme cold in and for the cherry on top of the cake , this happened even in the summers . How cruel ! She even used to tell us tales about orange ghost who lives in the fridge and eats whoever disturbs its sleep by opening the fridge door at night . These tales would be bedtime stories for us . After listening to one or two tales about it , we stopped asking for bedtime stories. After the story , we won't even think about opening the refrigerator at night or sometimes even in day , sneaking into the kitchen in night for a midnight snack and cold drink was far more drenching and scary for our brain muscles to imagine about . Well it was kind of nessecary because if she hadn’t we would have finished all the bottles of cold drinks kept in the fridge. If you haven't realised yet , she was the most mature and responsible of all of the 5 siblings.
My second elder sister Rashmi, what do I say about her .This girl left a school just because someone told her that the tree beside her school was haunted and the tree didn’t even come in the way from school to home.
Then comes my next elder sister , Manvi the ideal child and a perfect student. So I don’t have much to tell about her creative and extraordinary mind like others but it can be assured that she too wasn't totally normal . As you can envision “normal” was just a mere word in our dictionary not something that comes in our mind when we can see each other's actions .
Then comes the next person with whom crossing ways can only occur once in a century . This was My bhaiya who comes fourth in the line and is a walking art exhibition . Anyone as clumsy as him , he could literally eat the spiciest mixture( ………..) even after biting his tongue off and here I am who isn’t able to eat food after getting a tiny blister in the mouth.
And at last here I am , I am the youngest sibling and the most mischievous one . Well what I have taken away from experiencing life on this beautiful planet all these years is that being mischievous is a default setting of every younger sibling but just for you to know I was on next level. I mean I was on par with other beings of my species and they can consider me a role model .
So, there was this incident, no-no accident no-no Disaster which took place when I was 5 years old.
One normal day ,( I guess only days can be considered normal in this context ) when I was just playing around my mother called me in the kitchen and handed me a matchbox . She asked me to keep it on the shelf in the living room. What an easy task right? But only if she had chosen someone smarter and more responsible for this task . I know she chose the wrong person but I don’t really blame my mother for this as she didn’t have a choice because my other siblings who were a lot reliable than me weren’t around.
And being the obedient child that I am , I took the matchbox and went to keep it on the shelf of the living room but when you handover a matchbox to a dumb and mischievous brain who likes to experiment like me, something has to go wrong. So, instead of keeping the matchbox on the shelf I took it to my grandmother’s room where I sat down on the bed admiring the matchbox and matchsticks when suddenly a brilliant thought struck my mind which was that I should also try lighting the matchstick . So, I took a matchstick and rubbed it against the side containing Red phosphorous (like had seen my mother doing) and BOOM! I lit a matchstick. It might not seem interesting to you but to my 5 year old dumb brain it was no less than a miracle. It was the first time I lit a matchstick which may have turned into a little disaster later, but who cares , I was living one of the best moments of my life. As I was appreciating the burning matchstick , my fingers started heating up ,as the fire reached the end of the stick so I dropped it. In the time I could process what happened the bedsheet caught fire.
Now let me tell you my IQ is quite low , you see if I was in a room with Einstein, Newton and Edison , I am capable enough for bringing the room’s average IQ to 2 . But if I had to do a prank or a mischief or annoy my sisters , my mind can surpass every genius that ever existed on planet earth .
So, after processing everything I started to panic but then a stunning idea struck my mind, how about I cover it with sacks and I did the exact same thing. I collected all the sacks in the room that I could find and put it on the burning bedsheet. After that I left room with a satisfied smile and went upstairs.
My mother who was cooking food in the kitchen smelled smoke coming out of that room and rushed towards it , she somehow managed to put off the fire . Then comes the high time when I should repent upon my not so clever deeds . She came in her goddess Kali form and summoned all of us in the court of justice ( that was basically our living room ) . She asked who was in charge of the disaster. Since I was the youngest , I was blameworthy and declared guilty . Even though that was correct , but how can one blame someone just on the basis that they are the youngest.
Of course for the sake of justice and truth , the guilty is supposed to be punished . So for the punishment , I was beaten 3 rounds , one by my mother , then by my father and the third one again by my mother because her bangle broke while beating me the first time .
Even though these memories aren’t that sweet but they will always be the fondest memories of my childhood.