For Di
& Bhinaju

You will not remember this, but you were my whole world. 🤍

Wherever you went, I went. Whatever you decided, I agreed with. If you said we were playing something, we were playing it. I never questioned any of it. I thought that was just how families worked.

It took me many years, and a lot of distance, to understand that it was not how families work. That was just you.

Here is something I only noticed while making this. 🌾

We have a photo of you at almost every Dashain. Same festival. Same house. Same tika. And you are a little older in each one.

Look at them in order. It is your whole growing up, one Dashain at a time.

Small warning before you start counting. The ages below are my best guess. You know me and numbers. 😂 I once forgot my own age for a whole conversation. So if I have made you seventeen when you were nineteen, please take it up with my memory, not with me. The order is right. Probably.

This is the last Dashain we did together. 😔

Nobody knew that at the time. That is the thing about last times. They look exactly like all the other times while they are happening. We were just getting tika and eating too much and arguing about something stupid.

What I miss is not the tika or the food. It is the noise. That exact noise of the whole family in one room. Everyone talking at once. Nobody listening. Somebody laughing too loud somewhere behind you.

The house still fills up every year. It is just one person quieter now. Everyone notices it. Nobody says it out loud.

But Tihar is the one that really breaks me. 🥺

You know why. There is an entire festival in this country built around exactly one thing. A sister and her brother. Bhai Tika. That is the whole point of the day.

Every year the sister puts the tika on her brother, makes the garland, and prays that he lives a long life. Every single year. And every single year since you left, I have sat there on that day without my didi.

People are kind about it. Somebody always steps in so that I am not sitting there with nothing. It is not the same. It is a lovely thing done by the wrong hands.

Bhai Tika is supposed to be the one day of the year that belongs to us. And for the last few years, it has been the day I feel the distance most.

I found the school photo and could not move past it.

It honestly feels like last week. Same face. Same look. The one you still make when you have already decided something and you are waiting for the rest of us to catch up. 😌

Then you look at everything that came after it. College. Your friends. The degree. The wedding. A different country. And now a baby. All of that came after this one photo.

I kept this one on purpose. 😄

This is you wishing me. Happy birthday bhai. The first time you ever put it on Facebook, in front of everybody, instead of just saying it at home.

It was a normal post. You probably typed it in thirty seconds and forgot about it. I still have it.

We have come a long way from that post. Look where we are now. 🤍

I still miss the Dashain tika from your hand. 🤍

Everyone else in the family still does it. It is not the same. Yours came with a small lecture about looking after myself, every single year, without fail.

I did not know I would miss the lecture.

You were not just my sister. You were my guardian. 🤍

You are the one who explained things to me. You told me when I was wrong, and you told me kindly, and then you helped me fix it anyway. You pushed me when I needed pushing. You defended me when I did not deserve defending.

Whenever I was stuck, I came to you first. Not to anybody else. To you. Every single time.

Half of what I know about being a person, I learned by watching you be one.

This is the part I miss most. Not the big festivals. This. Everyone squeezed into one room, arguing about the filling. 😂

Then the opposite of what I feared happened. 🙏

I did not lose a parent that day. I got a second one.

Bhinaju, you did not just marry my sister. You walked into this family and took the same place she has. Now when I am stuck there are two people I can call instead of one. I do not think you know how big that is for me.

I was worried about losing my guardian. I ended up with two. 🤍

You married into a family that talks over each other, shows up in large numbers, and has an opinion about everything. 😅

You did not flinch once. You learned all the names. You sat through the long rituals without checking the time.

And the thing that matters most to me: she is happy. I have known her my whole life, so I can tell the difference between happy and fine. Thank you for the difference. 🙏

And then came my bartabandhan. 🙏

You were already married by then. You had your own home, your own life, your own things to worry about. You still showed up for mine like it was the most important thing happening that month.

That was when I knew for certain. You did not go anywhere. You just brought somebody with you.

I have never told you this properly, so I am telling you here.

I was away working that day. I could not get to the airport. So while everybody was standing there with you, saying goodbye, I was somewhere else, holding my phone.

I never got to say bye to you. Not properly. Not to your face.

I did not have any words that day. My eyes just filled up and I kept my head down so that nobody would notice. You know how it is. You are a boy, so you are supposed to be strong, and you are definitely not supposed to cry in front of people. 😔

So I did it quietly, on my own, and then I went back to work.

Out of this entire story, that is the one day I would take back if I could. Not the fights. Not anything else. Just that one.

And I want to tell you how much I miss you. I have rewritten this part many times, so I will just say it simply. 🤍

I miss the ordinary days. Not the festivals. Everyone shows up for the festivals. I mean the boring parts. You in the kitchen at some strange hour. Being told I was doing something wrong, while I was in fact doing it wrong. Your voice on the phone in the next room.

I miss having someone in the house who remembers the same things I remember. Someone I never have to explain a story to from the beginning.

That is the hard part. Not the big days. Everyone calls on the big days. It is that there is no normal Tuesday any more where I can walk into a room and you are just there. 😔

So I built this instead. It took me a long time. That is sort of the point.

But here is the part that makes it okay. 👑

You did not just go far away. You went somewhere you are looked after.

Bhinaju, I have seen how you keep her out there. Like a queen. That is the only reason this family sleeps at night with her that far from home. We trust you with her, completely.

This one made the whole family happy. 🥹

You are on the other side of the world and you still put on Dashain. Same tika. Same blessing. Just a different kitchen and a very different time zone.

It turns out you did not leave home behind. You packed it and took it with you.

One more thing. Nobody here thinks of it as you having left. You just moved further than usual. 🏡

Aama still cooks like you might walk in. Your room is still your room. Everybody knows it and nobody has suggested changing it.

And now there is going to be a small person who has seen none of this. 👶

They will not know the old house. They will not know what the courtyard sounded like at Dashain, or that their mother once stood knee deep in a field in Dhangadhi and laughed about it. They will grow up very far from where all of this happened.

So somebody has to tell them. That is going to be my job and I am taking it seriously. 🤍 They will know exactly who their mother is, where she comes from, and how much noise this family can make about one person it loves.

Look at this one properly.

Your grandmother. Your mother. You. Three generations of this family, all standing in one frame.

And now a fourth one is coming. 🍼

Di, you are going to be so good at this. Not because it is a nice thing to say. Because you raised me, and I turned out okay. 😊

And Bhinaju, you already know how to look after her. Now there will just be one more of them.