Brothers Commitment!

Rakshabandhan aka the bond of protection is a Hindu festival marked by the tying of a Rakhi, or holy thread by the sister on the wrist of her brother. The brother in return offers a gift to his sister and vows to protect and look after her.

In my school days, Rakshabandhan would bring fear in the eyes of all cupids struck innocent teen, the fear of becoming Rakhi brother to the first love of his life. What happen if ones first crush think oneself as her Rakhi brother? What if someone has leaked my tender desires to the girl I love and to prove herself innocent she would come to me with a Rakhi. Also, there were girls madly in love with someone who sits in a adjacent row (my schooling was done under the watchful eye of famous Indian co-education system where a class room is divided into two mutually exclusive co-existing area based upon the gender or sex), feared that, Is he going to come with a Rakhi? and request her to tie her on his hand.

We really enjoyed making fun of our so called stupid friends, spreading rumors of someone intentions of tying Rakhi to the someone, the fear of those foolish eyes, the sadness of so called newly made Rakhi brothers and sisters, their bravado to accept the fate in front of bunch of jerks. No one ever dared to deny the request to become ones Rakhi brother or sister.

This was a scenario of a typical small city Kendriya Vidyalya, fifteen years back, in which I spent my wonder years. It was strange, yet true, that in our Co-Ed school, you can make friends only of your same sex. It was, you can say unaccepted, to have a close friend of an opposite sex. A friend to a girl can be a girl only and vice versa for boys. But, you can have a deviation if you became a Rakhi brother, it’s like a commitment from brothers side to the girls social circle that my intentions are pure and my love is brotherly.

It can look like a joke, but still these so called commitments from Rakhi brothers still part of our great Indian small town which constitutes more than eighty percent of our city population. I am not here to judge our society or culture but, can relationship between a girl and a boy be only limited to brother or non-brother.

Strange but true, still, if we see a girl hanging out with a boy, and we get to know somehow that, the boy is not her brother, we always smile at our intelligence and think "hmmmm... kuch to chakkar hai"( Something fishy is going around). Can a girl and a boy can never be best of best friends?

I have seen so called modern liberals doubting on a friendship of a boy and a girl, so, it’s only brothers commitment which is pure and genuine, and rest is JUNK.

It’s not about being ultra cool and modern; it’s about our mindset, which needs to get cleaned. Until and unless we are not able to accept the fact that a boy and a girl can be good friends or buddies without getting romantically and sexually involved, we cannot overcome this so called jinx.