My cousin Inder- Part 1

Inder Then


We're mainly five cousin-brothers, if I talk of my childhood. In fact, six, but the sixth one was bahar (means 'anywhere outside India'- it's one of The Pretty Common Punjabi Lingoes (I am planning a book with that title, hahahhaha)) mostly so we five were the ones who hung out in summer vacations. For most years of my childhood, my cousins were my only friends and my summer vacations were the only days I felt like waiting for each year. Inder and I were best pals when the youngest two cousins weren't even born and the one right after him was too young to join our team.

It's a fact that he's pretty old in thoughts and style. Inside, I am no new either. Sometimes me and my sisters respectfully felt and still feel that he's from some other generation altogether. But he's one cousin-cum-do-anything-I-'m-with-you partner who knew me when I wasn't even on a lookout for buddies.

We roamed around in random streets of west Delhi on his bicycle. Our landmarks and spots were Prabhu Di Dukaan in Vishnu Garden, many video game parlors, Laal Building School, many grounds, few pastry shops, parks, paid and free air pumps, cold water pyaoos, mandees, tight Tuesday-Wednesday-any-day markets, dairies, jalebi shops and many more........

We burned uplaas with dhoop that my naani (his daadi) kept in areas which were supposed to be totally inaccessible by kids. But he and I only accessed the inaccessible. In my twenty one years of age so far, there's one thing I have controlled quite smoothly- I don't smoke. I somehow think I have been able to keep it away only because of day 1. I was six or maybe seven years old. There was no power at my naani's place one afternoon. Inder and I opened the rear door of the house trying to think what to do. Suddenly, he put forward the idea of smoking as we both spotted a used cigarette in the middle of the street. We took it to the kitchen where there was a lit candle on the shelf. I helped him climb but then we heard naani coming, so we ran off and disposed it back in the street.



I rode the bicycle all the time. We were out all day long in raging months like May and June. He would sit either on the carrier at the back or the bar at the front. I would kill my legs just like I still love doing. Only difference is, I never calculated tiredness back then and neither did the tiredness make me want to rest. Inder and I were a popular duo. We still are when parents' parties still talk about any of us. We're just different now. He's more of an iron man now, working in his daddy's factory on and off since he was fifteen and from a couple of years full time. I am more into less physically exhaustive things. I exert my body more with people and places.

I never predicted or even tried to in my early teen years how would he be. Being respectfully honest, he is one of those guys who can be quite embarrassing and limitlessly heartful at the same time. I am saying embarrassing here only to explain. No matter how much he changes or how much I outbreak my lines of life, I know and he knows too, he'll be there and so will be I.

In the later years of our adolescence, we saw each other lesser and lesser. Now, as he realizes, just like me, we feel this little gap well there in our lives- a pit between our bicycles and number plates. Sometimes I am not even surprised how we have turned out to be so far. He still very much talks like an elderly about those years that we had to kill time and those years that we even faintly just don't remember.

Who's Inder as I ask myself, a whole different rush of unlimited pictures runs through my head. Converting a wheeled center table in a second into a racing car speeding all the way through a huge terrace, bombarding random people walking in the street with ice cubes, discovering eye killing adventures like Contra, Road Fighter, Mustafa, Mario, King of Fighters, 1942, Islander, Dr. Mario, Battle City and many more @ one rupee per turn, jumping fences and patrolling others' roofs, playing bat ball just anywhere with plastic balls, wresting together in bedroom rings, bathing together in bathrooms of doors with openings for the tall ones to see, convincing elders to buy us guns at marriage gatherings and shooting everybody, playing hide and seek through all the floors of the houses, fighting for turns and crying for our own personal shares of fun, traveling many kilometers on cycles to checkout things as amazing as a pond or a pig, talking about haunted places, visiting cremation grounds with absolutely no permission seeking, burning newspapers just to experiment and observe, caring about raakhis for just one day with hundreds of tying and untying sessions, verbally writing of our very first ballads and registering them completely in those single perfect attempts- we did whatever we could to have fun, we had fun without ever searching or trying for it, we lived with absolutely no hurdles that could stop our wheels or feet, we were free without knowing what freedom meant and in those years we set up inspiring years for the rest of our lives.

It took him many years to teach me the meaning of "that brotherly feeling". But he succeeded. I am sure he never had any plans but only a good heart. That's who Inder was. That's who Inder is.
My cousin, my brother, Inderjeet Singh Kalsi.