When Love and Hate Collide

Ok...a spur-of-the-moment entry. And it's going to be mushy and utterly sentimental, and I am not sure why I am writing this in the first place.

What is it about younger brothers that makes them so adorable? My brother, who is incidentally eight years younger than me, has just dropped into my office. He had gone to BCL for the day, ostensibly to study, in reality probably to check out every Manchester United related information available this side of the English Channel. He looks tired, although I fed him a good lunch. He looks cranky, just the way I do after a long day at work. So far so good, we are behaving like self-respecting Dasgupta siblings.

And as I am looking at him, I want to tell him that much as I want to kill him nearly everyday of my life because, he has either made fun of a certain CD of mine or has forgotten to run an errand or because his chalta-hai attitude towards most things in life are nauseatingly annoying, I also want to tell him that I love him to death. For a million reasons. But particularly for always being the first one to listen to a certain kind of my grievances, for instinctively knowing how I would react to every situation, for looking across a crowded room to catch my eye and letting me know that we are thinking the same thing about a relative or neighbour, for being a far better human being than I can ever be, for not having an iota of envy or dishonesty in him, for being my punching bag, for sharing his enormous collection of non-veg jokes with me, and for teaching me that gratitude is probably the most essential of all human virtues. And most importantly for our Sunday ritual. For all this and more, Riju...I will always keep you.

P.S. I will probably delete this post tomorrow...because the moment we step out of the office today, we will argue, and he will annoy me in the process and I will tell him, "Please go and throw yourself in front of a moving vehicle". And the argument shall continue...