“Farahdeen,” said a senior journalist who’s work can be
found in most leading news dailies, “I have been following your updates on your
little brother Sushant.”
“You have?” I answered rather thrilled, “thank you for
your time, sir.”
“The affection you feel for him is like the affection I
feel for my younger brother,” he made known, “and it is inspiring to see this
connection between two who aren’t related to each other by blood, but my
brother is my own flesh,” he paused, “what I don’t understand is how can one care
for someone else like one cares for one’s own blood?”
I breathed, “I wish I had the skill to explain it to you,
sir,” I said, “all the same if there is anything deeper than deep, then it
has to be that…I don’t know anything beyond.”
Coming to think of it, isn’t this misconception something that
has plagued people, from time immemorial, and from all walks of life – your blood is your blood, and anybody not
sharing that blood is a stranger, an outsider. I may not have the
politically correct response to that, but this I can say without doubt that when
two individuals share profound love for each other: the kind of love that a
parent feels for a child, or, a brother feels for a brother, which is plausible
without having to share the same DNA, then the equation changes, and the idea
of ‘blood is thicker than water’ does not hold any substance. However, majority
of our population has been raised with such a concept that blood is thicker
than water, and once again, I do not possess the authority to challenge that adage,
but yes, this is what I can say with certainty – first, speaking about the
physical properties such as viscosity etcetera, blood may indeed be thicker
than water, but there ends the relation, and second, without water there is no
scope for blood to make more blood, so for me, together, they are essential to
one’s life.
I have always believed that bonds aren’t biological. My
first book’s preface indicated the same. I reckon that it isn’t such a foreign thought
to each of you as well, and you have all felt deep love for someone who isn’t
related to you by blood at some point in your lives. And that this love is far stronger
than what you might have felt for those related to you by blood. We cannot
attempt to vanquish something that is so acutely ingrained in society, but we
can definitely wish that people embraced those they love, with the same
inclusion, as they would their kin, and that in matters such as these it would
be prudent to follow our hearts and not entirely our minds. For that is the wonderful
thing about love, isn’t it – it is just as great a gift for the giver as it is
for the one who receives it.
“What if Sushant was not popular. How would you have met him?
Do you think that you love him a little more because of who he is? Would you have
missed giving him that love, if he wasn’t your Chotu (little brother) as you regularly
address him as?” asked the journalist friend in the same conversation.
I do agree that if my Sushant was not in the profession he
was in currently, then the chances of meeting him, considering the geographical
differences, would have been slim, but god has his unfathomable ways of
bringing whom he wants to bring together even if one were to be on the opposite
side of the globe, where it might take a year, or it might take a day, but what
is meant to be will always find its way. Likewise, this may perchance sound
mystical or barmy even, but there is far more to connections than what our
common mind might conjecture about them. There is something galactic that
entwines people in such glorious ways that once their paths cross, life without
them can seldom be the same. And such intergalactic clashes happen with such
unfailing intensity that the union stays unbroken until the ones involved in it
do not breathe their last. What’s more? You don’t have to be in each
other’s face all the time. You don’t have to be involved in each other’s life
all the time, and yet that attachment is so powerful and sturdy and unwavering that
verbal expression might not quite be able to communicate the exactness of what the
feeling means to those who are living within that circle of blessed bliss.
Becoming someone famous is about timing, or even about
luck. Agreed, my Sushant’s hard work, coupled by the benevolence of the
creator, has led him to be where he is. And we, the family, respect that from
the deepest echelons of our hearts. But we, the family, don’t love him because
of what the world thinks of him, or what he is to the world. We love him for
him. And even if he were not what he is now, our love would never diminish. It
is not tactile; it is embedded within the nucleus of our hearts, or the soul,
if there is something such as the soul. As for ‘would I miss giving my Chotu
that love’ well, I am a much better human being because of the love he gives me,
and I try in earnestness to be more like him with those around me like he is to
those around him.
Remember that love should not be based on nature or
stature, just as some relationships aren’t based on what you can get out of
them, but rather whirl on what you can give them.
Remember, nearly everything in life should be based on the
fibre of the love you feel for whom you feel it for and nothing but.
Remember, that when it comes to your brother, love can ebb
and flow: we feel different at different times, but it cannot whiffle waffle
with time or tide – it ought to be unconditional. Timeless.
Remember that love is universal, but brotherhood is exclusive.
Leaving you with something my Sushant had shared on
Twitter on Wednesday, the 8th of February 2017:
Just a heads up –
this planet is taking us at 30km/sec toward our finality. Let’s make sure we
Live ‘today’.
And even more binding is what my bade
bhaiyya Jimmy (Sheirgill) had shared on Twitter on Monday, 6th February 2017:
Birth: GIVEN BY OTHERS
Name: GIVEN BY OTHERS
Education: GIVEN BY OTHERS
Income: GIVEN BY OTHERS
Respect: GIVEN BY OTHERS
First & Last Bath: GIVEN BY OTHERS
After Death Your Belongings And Property: WILL BE
TAKEN BY OTHERS
Funeral Service: WILL BE DONE BY OTHERS
And I still wonder why we have the unnecessary EGO and
PROBLEMS. Let us all simplify our lives and love and live with others
peacefully.
Let those words sink into you. Be kind.
Be humble. Love. That’s all that matters.
