You would get your sibling a giant isopod, if you had to

 

You don’t understand your sibling. 

You have experienced a whole decade without him. 

You want to have many conversations – about random things in the 90s.

SRK’S role in Darr, why was it erotic then and not now?

Saif’s dance in Ole Ole, why was it sexy then and not now?

Disney princesses who waited for their prince to rescue them, why was it cute then and not now?

You especially want to know what your sibling thinks because he is a guy and because he is a product of the year 2000.

Your parents are out visiting a cousin because of an emergency so it’s just you and your sibling. He is watching something on his laptop. You are gauging if you need to take a pill for your period cramps to subside. You just watched a reel on how every time you get your periods, your “basket” gets emptier. 

When your brother was born, everyone said he would be like your child because of the age difference between you.

He rarely speaks, especially when he likes the food he is eating. 

While you crave traditional Indian rice crepes, called panpole in Konkani, he craves the pancakes that American kids have on TV. If he had a craving for a giant isopod, you would get it for him from deep waters even though they scare the shit out of you, and you don’t know how to swim and then you would even cook it.

Your sibling doesn’t touch panpoles. 

You love the process of making panpole, from measuring the quantity of grains in the cup, to soaking it in water for a few hours, to then draining the water, to grinding the rice bit by bit by adding enough water to check the consistency. Not too thin and not too thick. It must be smooth though, not grainy. 

Your best-friend’s brother does everything for her when she has her period as she is not allowed to enter the kitchen during this time.

Your brother doesn’t say a word to you as usual. He doesn’t even know you’re around, standing a few feet from him. His earphones have already shut out the possibility of contact with you.

You haven’t spoken to him in ages. The last word he might have said to you was, ‘Cool.’

You decide to surprise him. Will he like it? You have no clue. He has been wanting to buy the Petty Crocker pancake mix for ages but you know he’s lazy, and no one else wants it at home.

You clutch your stomach, the cramps are bad, and you just finished washing your panty with stains from the overflow last night. 

Before you rush out of the house for DMart, you say you’ll be back soon, but his earphones are still on. 

You reach in 5 minutes, but the sun on your face has made it feel like 50. It makes you nauseous.

You didn’t anticipate the long line in front of the store. Weekends are always like this, you remind yourself. You look at the people waiting, what do they want to buy for their loved ones? An old man empties a trolley full of makhana packets into his car’s dickey. It’s one of the fastest-selling snacks in Bombay, you’ve been told.

You wonder if you should buy it and try it out. Your sibling might like it. It tastes like popcorn, you’ve heard. To buy time, you google makhana. You are shocked to find out they are lotus seeds.

When your t-shirt sticks to your back, your attention is drawn back to the long line.

When your turn arrives, you rush inside the store, and try to dodge the crowd. Some are buying biscuits, some are buying parathas, some are buying dairy products. You go straight to the section you last saw the Petty Crocker box at. It’s still there. Your photographic memory hasn’t betrayed you. 

You pick it up, and first check the expiry date out of habit. Satisfied by the one-year period in which you can use it, your mind calculates all the times you can make breakfast with it. Enough chances to bond with your brother over a year. Your heart skips a beat. It seems too good to be true. 

You stare at Petty Crocker’s promise to you—she guarantees that you and your family will enjoy it. What more could you want?

You go to the counter which tends to customers with under ten items. You have only one item. You hold the pancake mix as if it has the sign ‘Fragile - Handle with care’. The two customers in front of you look like siblings. One of them says, ‘Bhaiya, he has more than ten items, check, check. Go, go in the other line.’

The other one hits the sibling on his head.

Once you’re out of the store, you check your watch—what if he already ate? You should have told him you’re getting something. 

When you reach home, he looks the way he did when you left, but he is smiling now. At something on the screen.

Will the pancakes make him smile more?

You go to the kitchen. Your hands tremble around the box. It has clear instructions. Just follow the instructions. When you open the box, he enters the kitchen to drink water. 

‘Is that for me?’ he asks, a hint of a smile in his voice.

‘What do you think?’ Your fingers are cold.

You have never seen him this excited, maybe when he was a toddler, not after that. 

He insists on making the pancakes himself. 

You stand in the background wondering if you could add something. 

You want to share trivia on Petty Crocker, that she’s a fictional character and not a real woman, but it might annoy him. He hates knowing you know much more being the older one.

You don’t trust the instructions to do the magic. You have to do something. You grab the chocolate syrup from the fridge while he measures the water-to-flour ratio. 

When he tastes the batter, he comments that it's too plain. 

You pour a bit of chocolate syrup into the mix despite his objections. 

He tastes it reluctantly, as if gearing up for disappointment, and then nods. ‘Nice, but not sweet enough.’ 

He adds some sugar.

A hymn comes to your mind, 

 

He is my everything

He is my all

He is my everything

Both great and small

He gave his life for me

Made everything new

He is my everything

Now how about you

 

Like honey in the rock

Sweet honey in the rock…

 

You bring out the bottle of honey as if it's the secret ingredient your relationship has been missing.

‘No need, the sugar is enough.’ he says.

‘Trust me, it will work,’ you say and add a spoon of honey.

You don’t look at his reaction for fear of disappointment, you heat the pan instead.

He pours the batter onto the pan.

The pancakes look beautiful, they are brown, like his skin.

When he was a toddler, you loved to carry him around as if he were a trophy.

Now he has grown. He has hair sprouting from his arms, legs and chest.

You can’t relate. If he was a girl, he might have had severe cramps like you.

Maybe you both would have bonded on that.

While he goes out of the kitchen to eat the pancakes, you wait in anticipation the way you did for your board results as if it’s going to decide your fate.

There’s no sound of him. You make your share of pancakes and carefully pack the rest for next time. 

Looking at the pancakes, you feel like throwing up. But you want to have what he is having. 

When you gain the courage to go to him for feedback, he is holding his head.

‘I told you not to add honey. It’s too much. Sugar rush.’

He becomes quieter than before.

You go to your table to eat your share of pancakes. 

Each morsel ends up like stones, scraping your throat and esophagus, ending in the pit of your stomach. 

When the pancakes refuse to settle, they rush up with all their might like a scooty on a one-way street. You hold your hand to your mouth but you’re not able to stop the flow. Bile seeps through the gaps in your fingers.

 

Michelle D’costa is the author of the poetry chapbook Gulf (Yavanika Press, 2021). She co-hosts the author interview podcast Books and Beyond with Bound. She was born and raised in Bahrain, and currently writes and edits out of Mumbai. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Litro, Eclectica, Out Of Print, Berfrois, The Chakkar, and others.  Her work has been longlisted for prizes like The TOTO Award for Creative Writing and the DNA-Out of Print Short Fiction Contest.  She is an alumna of the Seagull School of Publishing, & the Kolam Writers’ Workshop.