The Peace Deal

Yes, this time, I do not wince when I look at him. He is sitting by the window, reading his French notes. The cherry colored curtains brush across his ivory face. He does like pink and all of it’s shades, as much as he would like to deny it. The sun rays are hitting all corners of the room and disappearing into the walls. My room is like a hot box. It is always summer here. No, it is not a summer with vacations. It is the one where arguments heat the atmosphere up to such a state that board games, tank tops and mango syrup snow cones don’t manage to bring that fifty degrees Celsius down to even a forty nine.

But it is all going to change. He wanted my room when I went away for college. I did not let him have it even though I knew I was not coming back. In reality, all that he wanted was me. He never said it and I never had any insight into what was portrayed so blatantly by his light brown eyes, which were the same as mine. He was germinating into becoming more like me. That was not necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily a good thing either. It would involve spending countless hours in bed, studying, just to avoid the living room confrontations. It would also involve performing brilliantly at everything. Two sides to every coin, they say. They are right. He was going through a pain of his own and for me that was a lucrative situation to take the first step. I wanted to talk to him, hoping that pain and pain are like cold and cold. Cold kills cold.The pain could act as an ice breaker. After all, we’d all had enough of the snow cones by now. I was hoping to spring ‘spring' into action.

I see him shut his french books. I call him out to the yard. It is covered by a beautiful layer of green grass longing to be stepped on. It is the place that carries memories of us playing cricket and breaking into a fight. Our parents always thought it was just some good old sibling rivalry. It was not. There are corn fritters, on a table, with some orange soda. There is also a brand new cricket set. He is only sixteen and his fantasy of the old bat and ball game hasn’t been lost under the worldly pressures yet. There’s a handmade standing card, placed strategically so as to be visible as soon as someone enters the surroundings. It reads out, ‘You Win, Brother’. My peace offering.

He comes out looking surprised. He sits down at the table I have set for him. I know he wants to, but he will not cry. Instead, he looks up at me, accepting my offer without any hesitation and complying with his half of the deal; forgiving me for every single time I have been cold to him. He probably did not even need an apology; there was but only a longing for love in his heart. He needed nothing else. But it was necessary for me to see this brother and sister have their first date.