Abridged

The life expectancy of the modern man is around 80 years of age. Of this the first quarter or in certain cases the first one third of life is spent in one’s parents’ home. As children when we grow up with our parents and siblings, we are enveloped with the feeling of love and security. We attribute a sense of permanence to this life. A feeling of oneness pervades and this adds to the overall enjoyment. Petty fights and making up are part of that life as also studies and helping each other. Competitive spirit does set in as the siblings enter their teens however this is of a very healthy nature as the parents never allow for feelings of jealousy and other negative thoughts to enter the formative minds. Thus the first quarter of ones life is led in 90% of our households in a leisurely and carefree fashion.

This pattern was what I experienced when I grew up. We were a close knit family like the hundreds of thousands of families around us. The core family consisted of my parents, me and my two sisters who are both younger than me. I lived in this corseted environment for 20 years and then got married. By virtue of my husband’s occupation, I had to move away to a far off land. While living away I used to come home once in 8-9 months and spend a good month or two with my family thus catching up on all the happenings and participating in all the events that occurred during my stay. This pattern continued for another ten years when my younger sister got married. So until her marriage, whenever I came home, we were again a complete family. Once she was married and moved to the UK, I would invariably spend a month or two with her in the UK every year. Little over two years after Latha’s marriage, Geetha got married and again I had the privilege of going to the US on a regular basis and spending time with her.

Thus my sisters’ absence from the house did not mark the vacuum it should have. Also those were years when all of us were relatively young and busy with our own lives and hence must admit did not have the kind of time we should have had for our siblings. My return to India in 1995 changed things in many ways. For one, it put a stop to my globe trotting and thus catching up with my sisters on a yearly basis ceased. In the last 15 years I have made only two trips to the US and that too for short periods of 8 and 4 weeks respectively. Thus the wait was for them to come to India. Since it was already imbibed in my psyche that Latha is a professional and hence has access to only three weeks of leave, her vacation was always short and could almost be termed as a whirl wind trip. Much as it hurt, that was what was possible. While growing up we were very close as the difference in our ages was just three years. We did a whole lot of things together and stuck to each other like two peas in a pod.

Geetha’s holiday on the other hand was more leisurely. By virtue of being a part time teacher she enjoys the summer vacation with her children and hence is in India for a minimum period of two months. It was thus until this year when she too had to trim her holiday as her son Krishnan has become a high schooler and thus has to attend some camps during summer. This is the time for the children in the US to pump up their CV’s and hence he cannot be denied this opportunity. Thus this year Geetha gets to spend exactly 20 days with me in Chennai. As much as I was happy when I heard that she was coming, it saddened me that I had only 20 days with her after a gap of 22 months. It set me thinking as to whether we were living our lives in an abridged manner. Here I am getting less than a day to make up for every month missed with her and in Latha’s case the equation is one day for every two months missed.

The first time I came across the word abridged was in middle school. Abridged was used to describe the books we had as our non detailed texts. As the name suggests, the books only had the essence of the story without any frills. Thus we read Pearl S. Buck’s Good Earth, George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and many other famous books including a couple by the bard William Shakespeare. Since all of us had just entered our teens, it did not matter to us that we were not getting to read the detailed version as I think we lacked the maturity to appreciate the good writing of these all time greats. It was fine as long as it concerned only the books as most of us got to read the original version later on in life. I wonder if that would be true of life too. Do we have to be contended with the quality time that we got with each other during our childhood and teens when we had hardly been exposed to the reality of the modern world? Are the rest of our lives going to be lived in the abridged fashion that I mentioned earlier? If that is the case, it would be terrible to comprehend. As it is the three of us are well past our prime and are in various stages of middle age. Will our lives together henceforth like the abridged books be just the essence without any frills? Is this the result of man’s quest for attaining greater heights? How does one get back to the original version where the frills were taken for granted and formed an integral part of life? I have no answers and I pray that some one would enlighten me. I seem to envy those siblings who live at a stone’s throw from each other. The last time the three of us were together was more than three years ago and that too for about 40 hours. Had I known this was the way our lives would turn out, I would have relished even further every moment of the first two decades of my life. My advice to the youngsters, if any, who read my blog would be to make the best of their present life as one can’t be sure of what twists and turns life would take.

I conclude by hoping that in our twilight years when our children are away, we could move from the abridged to the original version. By then we would all be in the last quarter of our life span.