We- The three musketeers.

Three Musketeers by French author Alaxandre Dumas is a classic novel. But this blog is not in its reference... No... No... I am using it as an idiom which means the inseparable friends...

My blogs character are no where close to those of title characters in Alexandre Dumas book. But they do have one thing in common and that's the bond they share and their Moto, "All for one and one for all". which means all the members of a group support each of the individual members, and the individual members pledge to support the group.

Time to introduce characters of my blog...

(Sounds like a movie narration)

So our story begins on the day when I was born followed by my brother year later and three years later when we welcomed our little sister. Though I wanted a brother but my brother was happy to have one more sister and he showed his love every time by reminding her that she got exchanged in the hospital...lol...

Well jokes apart, she is an integral part of us no matter how much we both have annoyed her with our bossy attitude to get our work done,. With time even she perfected the art but soon our team got scattered. 

Time keep on moving no matter what. It doesn't wait for anyone. At times it feels that it keep changing its pace from fast to slow to creeping or vice versa but it's not true. It's our state of mind that makes us believe so.

No, no I am not getting philosophical here... But what's best to express the time passing by, obviously I can't express like the bollywood does... A boy running and focus goes on his feets and few shots later you get to see a man running...

By talking about time I meant that time kept its pace and we siblings who were together for 25 yrs of our life are not living together anymore. As we all have our own jobs, family and kids.

25 yrs is not a short span. Society rules seems harsh when you have to leave your loved ones to be with one you are destined to spend your rest of the life and have kids. It hurts not to be with your friends given by nature... 

Best part is that the physical distance does not matter as our heart strings are attached with endless love for each other.

I remember my grandmother used to write letters to her relatives and had to wait long enough to get reply. My dad often narrates the story of how he managed to get telephone service first hand in town and people use to come home to make emergency calls. Things quite unimaginable in today's scenario.

Thanks to all those people who made phone, messenger, camera, voice calls and video calls feasible. Now the long distance is just a click away. Although it cannot fill the void but still something is better than nothing...

I am going to a take a nostalgic trip down the lane to refresh those memories that are tucked in the scrapbook of my mind in a hope that you too have a wonderful time.

As kids we siblings were equally involved in almost everything we did, leaving the bossing around onto me (well you need to reap some benefit of being elder) and that's scarcely benefit of being eldest,  if you have younger siblings than you'll quite agree with my point as you are always the one who's in the interrogation room of your parents whenever something wrong happened.

Most of the time the interrogation started with a question,  "Who started the Fight??"

Fights are part of every ones childhood where relationship seem bit complicated, especially in childhood giving really hard times to parents with regressive and aggressive behaviour.

I believe fights are the predominant factor in building a healthy relationship with siblings...

We siblings use to fight on one or the other thing in the morning and by the end of the day we would unite this rotational process of fight-unite-fight-unite was much more than the earth rotating around sun.

In our home fights had quite a range from serious to non serious, some silly to purely idiotic ones. Our arguments on silliest things often turned into ugly fights just like in any of the Jackie Chan movie.

* Fights over who is mom's favourite,

* Who'll get to eat first or get to eat grandfather's share of mango(as he was diabetic). 

* Fights over TV remote to get opportunity to watch serial of ones choice, when failed either of us would run and turn off the television.

*Fights over timings of video game where our younger sister would play Mario and played nearly for about minute and two and I excelled in playing tetris which lasted for more than fifteen minutes and my brother played Contra which seemed endless... 

* Talking about silly arguments, the silliest of all that I remember is our argument over moon. We all individually said "moon stops with me when I stop walking." and yet another I can recall is, whose favourite song will top the chart buster.....

* Competing for favorite song to competing on almost everything i.e.

- who'll climb stairs fast,

- who'll drink milk first,

- who'll finish homework first or

- who'll reach the park or complete round of park first.

Interesting fact here is, you don't get to win just because you are year or two older. You need to fight like a worthy contender. Yaa many times Mom won by emotionally persuading us that you are elder and must understand that he is younger and immature and she narrates bits of her childhood and we just get all melted up. Then we play the role of elderly sibling acting quite mature, regrets do try to take over but up till then the game's quite out of hand.

From fights to laughs, we didn't have to cover miles. When we were together everything seemed different, the grass was greener, trees were higher, colours were brighter, sky seemed closer and was more of a canvas for our imagination, every new day seemed more interesting than the previous one.

There are lot of memories that stayed in my (and I am sure in my siblings) heart,  which are going to stay there forever. 

Few lovable memories that still bring smile on my face are:

* Playing games together be it carom, chess, ludo, hide n seek, cricket....you name it we played it...

* All the late night talks after lights were off as we shared bedroom,

* Spending time with my grandfather massaging his bald head or his legs and listening to the stories of his homeland and often going for long walks with him in the evening.

* Regular temple visits with grandmother where temple was more of an open ground for us to play than a place of worship.

* Fun filled afternoons with mom when she sacrificed her naps for our homework specially mine as I was least interested in school work. 

* Watching wrestling on television with dad and supporting our favourite wrestler. Even trying to enact, obviously under expert supervision, my dad... Lol...

* Going on a scooter ride with dad where my sister stood in front and brother sat on seat holding dad and me sitting reverse and holding the extra tyre of scooter.. I always cursed the situation... "why me???" 

* Dad telling same imaginary story which made no sense at all...;)..just to make us go to sleep.... Then his morning alarms...and not to forget those scary study alarms...

* Getting punished equally, as mom never took sides...and she often became lawyer for us..arguing with dad even when we were wrong...requesting to forgive and grant a second chance.

* Gifts used to be the item of blackmail..i.e..if you'll not do my work I'll take my gift back, ( even when gift was of chosen carefully to fit givers own personal requirement. ..;))

* Jealousy after seeing other being praised, and our promises to ourselves ..i.e. I'll work more hard next time.

*  Sharing clothes was fun but our sister was more of a hijacker... She confiscated the clothes she liked no matter it were mine or our brothers...

* Visits to maternal uncle's home and playing with cousins. 

* Relatives coming up and telling me and my sister that you look exactly same and we  often cracked jokes on considering ourselves twins with 4 yrs gap...lol..

Whenever I close my eyes my mind is filled with joy by remembering the simple and carefree life which was full of love and affection of the parents, grand­parents and other dear relations.

We the three musketeers use to talk, play, cry, laugh, have fun.  Any thing we did, we did it together. 

We were the

Environmentalists: We would find sapling nearby and plant in the middle of jungle (sound stupid)  and take care of the small plants by giving them water. I remember we even tried to find our planted tree after months but couldn't and assumed it would have grown to  great height. 

Nature-Lover: From gazing the stars, moon, clouds, birds(also offering water in cups kept in ventilator), the sound of wind in the trees (Psithurism), sound of rain, rainfall  (danced in rain), thunderstorm (watched the lightning) , hailstorm (collected hail) , and specially the earthy smell that follows rainfall(Petrichor), and bask in the sun(Apricate) we enjoyed it all. 

Explorer: We were always in mood to find some new connecting road or a place where no one has ever been before which made us quite the risk bearers(obviously we failed in it) . We would roam in the city even got lost few times but managed to get back unhurt. (Thinking about our idiotic stuff sometimes scares the hell out of me, if something wrong had happened??? ).

Adventurer: We were asked to find cows in the city by our grandmother as she believed in serving first home made chapati(bread) to cow as it would bring good luck. It was quite a fun, we use to roam freely on the streets, play under bushy Banyan tree. We used to dawdle around even when cow was nearby...

Thinkers: We all had our stories to tell specifically our little sister who came up with a new story every time quite similar to our situation and my brother was a silent thinker,  never shared his thoughts and later started penning poems and about me my mind was never at one place (its still out of control many times).

Supporter: We use to support each other at every step be it on some serious issue or any prank. Did others homework or assessments specially our brothers as he was never interested in drawing and crafting in return he did my science projects. 

Healer: Whenever any one of us was in rough mood, we all use to sit together and listened carefully and tried to console the person. Healing comes from venting out the frustration and we all have been listeners at one point of time. We even were personal physiotherapist(phoney once... Lol...) of our father... We jumped on his back, stood on his shoulders just to give him relief from body pain... He was more of trampoline for us... 

Secret-keeper: Everyone has secrets so do we and the best thing about sharing secrets with siblings is that you can be carefree as they never bitch behind back and never back stab you. Zipped lips🤐...

Team: We all had share of both positive and negative qualities. We always helped each other in bringing out the good by suppressing the negative qualities. We were and still are a team who were independent but interconnected. 

We three are busy in our lives, hardly get to see each other together under one roof but the precious moments spent together holds the bond to stumble. Which makes us the inseparable friends given by  nature completely Dependable which means:

1. They are the first person I think of when I am in any kind of trouble. I know they'll never ditch me in situation of need. 

2. Whether they live around the corner or on the other side of the planet, they will always be there for me.

3. I know I can call them up even at 12 at night or 4 in the morning. 

4. Once they say that they'll take care of something, I know they will. Infact, there are times when they sort things out even before I ask them to.

and I can swear it by heart that all this applies on all of us... 

Our togetherness lights up my inner skies that even thousands rainbows can't.

I'm so thankful to God and my parents that they gave me two beautiful gifts which are more of a blessing because they have been there for me from the time I was a child to even now when I have my own child.

Reason behind jotting memories down was to reinvigorate myself... 

Hope the same for you... 

Happy memories everyone!