1. Born with an Iron Spoon

I was born as an afterthought. My Nani didn’t have any son and my Dadi had only one son, so both the old ladies decided that in the times to come having two sons is most ideal for a family. In Uttar Pradesh, that probably spelt muscle power for the head of the family.

My brown coloured curly haired dad was raised typically as a pampered brat amongst three sisters and he started dreaming of a second son just after my elder brother was born. My fair-skinned straight-haired mom, a simpleton having grown up minus a brother, and blessed to have been married to a very strict male, loved the idea of having two sons, probably thinking of a better budhapa for her.

The non English comprehending folks —my Dadi, Nani and mom—struggled to understand when the nurse announced in her Kannada-accented English what had been delivered as the second child, at the Bangalore hospital on the morning of 20th June, 1969.

Only I knew...

I was born...not as a brown-coloured son or a fair skinned daughter but as a duckling who on the face didn’t look so ugly and was given an on-the-spot invented name ‘ankita’, that meant to imprint, which also made me the first Ankita on this planet!

The entire clan shifted its attention to my elder brother who was immediately hailed as the dynasty enhancer. he too learnt by his second birthday that he was the only entitled species in the house. he would ensure that I wasn’t allowed to sleep next to our mother. One day he brought a tea pan and stood over it holding an iron chimta to push me away. Whoever saw that most innovative engineered act of a two-year-old boy shrieked thinking I was dead. They clearly didn’t notice my inherent survival skills...as I happily rolled towards my mom’s feet!

No wonder two decades later my brother became an IIT engineer and I joined Indian Army!

With no rona dhona and no tantrums, the buffalo’s milk in the feeding bottle made me take a robust round shape and one day while playing, I accidentally rolled down a flight of few stairs to land near the base where a tiny temple stood. as my Dadi and nani rushed to save a surprisingly calm me, they blamed the pundit who made my kundli saying I would bring comfort to all the inhabitants of the house!

It was then decided to keep us siblings under strict parental control but soon this also failed as while sitting in my mom’s lap in a moving cycle rickshaw with my elder brother, I don’t know how I managed to get into yet another adventurous parabola and landed on the ground. On my fat bum!

My parents couldn’t carry me for long in their arms majorly because of my weight and hence I developed horsepower in my legs very early.

While my grandmothers would shower my elder brother with gifts and throw a party on his birthday, they would large heartedly arrange to buy me four pieces of laddoos on my birthday which I ate gapagap6 after playing cricket with one of them using my pencil box as the bat!

The desire for a second son again hit the minds of all the adults in my house and when I was nine years old. against everybody’s assumption and the pundit’s predictions, a very fair, straight-haired, beautiful younger sister arrived. I was neither seen nor heard in the house at that point. as my mother recuperated post her caesarean delivery, my old Dadi took over the kitchen duties. She was a sweet simpleton. When she saw my brother’s tiffin box looked brighter with beautiful prints and mine looked drab, she started wrapping my school tiffin box in a jazzy yellow flowery plastic cover that she found discarded by my mom.

As a nine-year-old student of class four, I was always on the sports ground during lunch breaks. One day I was cornered by two senior girls of class 12th. Anticipating that I would be punished for not finishing my food and playing sports, I started to run for my life. They too started running after me. Obviously their longer legs had more velocity than mine so I was caught immediately. “Show your tiffin,” one of them demanded. I hid my tiffin box behind. “Listen, we saw your box already,” the other one said. I instantly prayed that somehow the half-eaten paratha would vanish when I showed them my tiffin box. It didn’t. I then knew God doesn’t listen to wrong prayers and I was prepared to be scolded. “Who packs your tiffin?” the first one asked.

I shivered wondering if they had the power to tell my Dadi that I leave the food that she cooks for me in spite of having severe joint pains. I meekly said, “My Dadi.” “Ok, where’s your mommy?” the other one asked. “She had an operation to take out my sister so she can’t cook.” I spoke, fighting my tears bravely. I didn’t want them to hurt my grandmother. The first one bent and came to my ear height and softly said, “Ok, listen please tell your Dadi not to pack your tiffin in this plastic wrap from tomorrow.” I looked up at them and asked, “What’s wrong with this cover? Dadi says it has beautiful flowers on it.” “Listen, girl, you show this cover to your mom today and she will tell you why this shouldn’t be brought out in public.” She made a statement and walked away. My mom hid all those bright yellow plastic covers from that day onwards and instructed Dadi never to use them for anything. Years later when I grew up, I learnt it was a Stayfree sanitary napkins cover!

My sister, nine years younger to me, didn’t need any pampering from my parents or grandmothers. She was born a queen to rule over every human mind that engaged with her even once! She in fact could control human minds. I was one such human. I admired her sharp presence of mind. My dad who was very strict with me, melted in front of my sister. She was born with special powers for sure along with beauty of course. I continued to be shown the rule book of discipline and why I won’t be given this or that. I kept postponing my wants and needs without an ounce of self-pity. I knew I will get everything I wanted someday for sure.

I felt sad for my brother and sister—they didn’t get the luxury of dreaming for good things as they got whatever they demanded. As I mentally reshuffled the list of things that I would get for myself one day, people wondered why I looked happy. Soon I started participating in the colony level events hosted on Independence Day and Republic Day and won prizes regularly. My elder brother, obviously the pampered child, didn’t win any prize in any of the races and he remained the darpok7 kind till he was in the 8th standard. Meanwhile, the power from my legs had flowed upwards to reach my heart, turning me quite strong and brave. I was often requested to accompany my brother whenever he would feel scared of the dark! From a tiny dusky duckling, I had now grown into a mini brown tortoise when my nani again reminded my parents of the importance of having two sons elucidating the benefits especially in old age—that the parents can have alternate living arrangements if one daughter-in-law didn’t behave amicably. Pundits were asked to use aI enabled telescopes that can correctly see the future and after they calibrated their eyes and confirmed a son’s arrival as the fourth child in our house, my nani distributed sweets in the colony.

I was 15 years old then and prayed hard to bless my parents with another daughter just to teach a lesson my conservative family a lesson. I had added a footnote in all my prayers— God please give a sister who sorts out everyone other than me in the house! 

I had no one to talk to. But I found a way—I started talking to my diary. I poured out all my thoughts about the Shakespearean drama that happened each day in my home, in my diary. Soon a more beautiful, fairer skinned youngest sister was born! Noticing that she was the most unwelcome species in the house, she immediately crept out of her own skin and crawled into each adult’s head making him or her feel like a criminal if ever they ignored her! She would perpetually cry non-stop. By now I had understood that I was the teen with a Midas touch for all disgruntled humans in my orbit. I would rock her keeping her on my tummy. In my sixteenth year, I would play with her gudda gudiya8. I would take her out for shopping and most often the illiterate shopkeepers would call me ‘Mataji’, especially when my kid sister would demand things beyond her authorised quota of expenditure. I, the brown tortoise, got more prominent when the rest of the three siblings shone in a fair, bright and beautiful format. I realised I needed to hide myself but I couldn’t as tortoises can only hide their heads and not their bodies as they don’t have that enabled feature. So I learnt to hide my head inside my tortoise skin.