Brothers! You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them

When I was in the third standard, my parents sent me to an unconventional boarding school in Kerala—with tuckshops and cross-country races, duckback raincoats and English puddings, fashion parades and Jamaican dance classes.

I had the time of my life there, but it wasn’t all hunky-dory in the beginning. I was desperately homesick and often found myself crying in the bathroom. One day, somebody misplaced my white canvas shoes just before morning PT. I couldn’t find it anywhere, and it turned into the spark that set off the explosion waiting to happen. I burst into tears and nothing anybody said could make me stop wailing. The matron tried every trick in the book, from threatening to cajoling, but nothing worked. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she summoned my elder brother from the boys’ dormitory. He came and hugged me, and almost immediately, I stopped crying. His was the warmth that thawed my frozen heart.

The incident came to mind when I saw a recent study cited in Pubity—that having a brother could significantly increase your mental health and self-esteem. Kids with brothers, it said, were emotionally stronger and had a higher sense of self-worth. I’m not sure I agree fully. With the kind of pummeling I received from my brother when I was young, I’m surprised I did not get permanent brain damage. He bullied me into giving him my superior bedroom in exchange for “a lot of money” which obviously I did not get, and fought for sole possession of the remote control when we watched TV together. I never gave in without a fight, although I knew it was a losing proposition. Still, on a scale of brotherly overlording, I guess these are not unpardonable sins.

I don’t remember too many physical fights. When I was a baby, my mother says she always felt confident asking him to watch over me when she went for a bath. It seems he was quite taken with his baby sister, although I only had to enter toddlerhood for the charm to wear off.

To tell the truth, I was quite in awe of him, older than me by three years. It seemed like he could do no wrong. He was everything I was not—optimistic, outgoing, tech-savvy and confident. I was mostly a snivelling wuss who was allergic to people and a firm believer in Murphy’s law that everything that could go wrong would go wrong. Sometimes I wonder how children subjected to the same parenting style, morality code, home environment and shared experiences can turn out so different.

My childhood with him has turned into a sepia-toned mosaic of memories—making birthday cards together for our parents, going on adventure rides during holidays, playing in the river behind our home with cousins, watching movies at our run-down hometown theatre, having lime juice and omelets at the local club…. He introduced me to some of my favourite music and movies. There was a phase when he would only allow ‘Michael Learns To Rock’ songs to play in the car on long journeys. All of us, including my parents, still know the lyrics to most of their songs.

Sometimes it seems they are seared into my psyche. I used to wonder who this sleeping child was, how one could paint their love and pitied the poor man who arrived 25 minutes too late to see his sweetheart getting married to someone else. He also introduced me to my all-time favourite movie—You’ve Got Mail—and then made fun of me for crying at the climax. He would mockingly mimic Meg Ryan’s line in the end (“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly”) while I desperately tried to contain my tears.

One of the great things about having an older brother, however, is that he sort of buffers your childhood from parental wrath. Parents are usually stricter with the oldest children and have more expectations from them, but they also give them more attention.

According to a study of 5,000 American children, the oldest child performed best on cognitive tests as early as their first birthday compared with younger siblings. "Mothers take more risks during pregnancy and are less likely to breastfeed and provide cognitive stimulation for latter-born children," stated the study published in the Journal of Human Resources. "Our findings suggest that broad shifts in parental behaviour from first to latter-born children is a plausible explanation for the observed birth order differences in education and labour market outcomes." Oldest children performed better academically later on as well. This was certainly true of us; my brother scored higher than me on both 10th and 12th boards, but I did not mind because being the second child meant that my parents’ enthusiasm for raising a genius had fizzled out by the time it came to me. My brother had rebelled enough for both of us so that my college and career choices were free of parental fuss.  

I cannot quite say how elementally my personality has been shaped by having an older brother; so many unquantifiable factors go into forming your character. All I can say is that single children don’t know what they are missing, fights and all. Not that older brothers can’t be pompous; they are born with a PhD in it. They think they know what’s best for you and have an opinion about everything—from your haircuts to your social life (or the lack of one). Unfortunately, unlike with friends, with siblings, you are genetically programmed to care.