Identity

‘I am so proud of you. You have topped the class in the exams. My grandson truly’ beamed Grandpa when Aryan showed him his report card. Grandma came along. When she heard the news she added ‘your father was also a topper, so was your uncle. You truly take after our side of the family. You will one day fulfill all our expectations.’ Besides being intelligent, Aryan was also a handsome looking boy and his grandparents said he was a carbon copy of his father. Not only that. He was already a junior swimming champion and would soon be on the national team.
Aryan was very happy to please his grandparents whom he loved dearly. He too felt that he had all the qualities of his father and Uncle Shyam. They were engineers earning very well. His grandfather had been a renowned lawyer and his father a scholar. Aryan had heard this so often that he felt proud to identify with a smart family and to be thought capable of adding his own accomplishments to it.
Aryan had a younger sister Tara. She was eight years old. She was a nice girl but unlike her brother she did not come first in her class. She took time to understand things. She was slow in learning but once she had learnt something she never forgot. But nobody cared about that. Being slow was unacceptable.
Aryan was 5 years older to Tara. He liked his sister but he never had the time to sit with her, play or help her with her homework. As soon as he came back from school, he got busy with his studies, after which he went off to play cricket with his friends or went cycling. Computer games took away some hours, chatting with friends some more until the day was over. Weekends were worse. Aryan had swimming classes on Saturday and then he would go to his close buddy Atul’s house for the day. On Sundays, he woke up very late, disliked anyone disturbing him and then shut the door of his room, switched on the AC and was lost to the family. While Aryan was in the 8th standard, Tara was still struggling with her second standard syllabus. Numbers scared her. Spellings terrified her. Her mother spent hours repeating the same lessons to her. Though she was the most patient among the family members, even she lost her cool sometimes. ‘how many times have I taught you the same lesson?’ she would yell at times. Then she would see Tara’s tears and feel really bad. She would give her a hug to make up for the hurt.
Grandfather and grandmother loved Tara dearly but no one said she made the family proud. When her grandparents spoke of Aryan as his father’s carbon-copy, Tara would long to know whom she looked like but she could never ask that question because she knew nobody would answer her. They would just look the other way. When the whole family went together for a function, Tara would be instructed again and again to pay attention to what people asked her and to reply correctly and not fumble. Her grandparents though usually did not let anyone come too close to Tara or ask her any questions. They did not want people to wonder why this girl was so slow in everything especially in comparison to that brilliant brother of hers. When people came home and Tara came to talk to them, her grandmother would rush there and send her away as fast as she could.
Tara felt lonely at times. In school, she had one or two friends. They helped her with studies when the teacher asked them to. But Tara had no real playmates. She could not follow games which had rules and in which one had to think and act fast. So she stayed back in class or sat alone watching the others play.
In a way it was fortunate that Tara was slow. She did not have the complicated thinking of a superfast brain and so she did not ask herself too many questions. She just accepted reality as it was. Aryan’s world was as far to her as say Mars or Jupiter.
Tara’s mother worked in a bank. Luckily it was close to their house. Only her mother’s boss and a colleague of her mother knew about Tara’s difficulties. When her mother wanted to remain in this branch because it was convenient for her, she told her boss that Tara was a special child who needed her constant attention. When she was in need of a holiday she requested her close colleague to take charge of her work also because she had some urgent meeting with Tara’s teacher. Her boss and her colleague sympathized with Tara’s mother and gladly let her have her way. To be identified as a special mother gave Tara’s mother some practical advantages. Not much really compared to being called the mother of the class topper or the swimming champ.Tara’s mother came home from work, relaxed for a while and sat down with Tara to do the day’s lessons. Teaching Tara took away so much time that as soon as it got over, her mother had to rush to the kitchen to make dinner and then it was bed time. Tara’s grandparents would talk to her when she came to them but it always ended with ‘you should do this’ ‘you should not do this’- mostly before others.

There were three bedrooms in their apartment. Until last year, Aryan and Tara shared a room. Then Aryan told his parents firmly that he needed his own space and comforts and anyways he did not wish to disturb Tara’s sleep when he sat up late. So the family did some space-juggling and the grandparents agreed to share their room with Tara. It was good that Tara had few things to crowd their room. She had no use for costly games, she did not need a TV or computer, story books scared her. The few dolls she had, had come as gifts. The sofa-cum-bed in the room became her bed. Grandmother would put a small mattress on it in the night for Tara and remove it after Tara left for school.
5 years went by swiftly. Many changes happened. Aryan was now in junior college, a real well-built young man. Grandpa had died. Grandma could not get over her grief. The very idea of being labeled a widow, even though of a renowned lawyer, made her bed-ridden. Tara’s mother had to leave her job to take care of her. The only thing that remained the same was that Tara was still lagging in her studies, though now she went to a centre where she was taught in a different way.

Now everybody was busier than before so nobody bothered about how Tara spoke to others or what others spoke of her. Least of all Tara. In the centre she found a very understanding teacher whom she instantly liked. She was in fact the first person who made life interesting for her. She helped Tara bring out all her thoughts and feelings. There were so many of them, hidden deep inside her heart! As Tara was not very good with words, her teacher taught her to paint and express all that came to her mind. She made Tara feel good about herself.

Now, it did not matter if people looked at her differently. When her mother was busy and someone came home, Tara welcomed them and made them feel at ease in her own special way.
And now it did not matter to her if her parents and grandmother did not say who Tara looked like.
Tara had built her identity from her own inner resources.