becoming an individual

  BECOMING AN INDIVIDUAL

For every person,during his/her childhood there is this one person who they completely idolise,who they totally want to be like.For me it was my elder sister.It couldn't have been anyone else.Even today i don't know anyone with as magnetic a personality.She is eight years older to me.She was a very bright and naughty kid.She could eat the ears off people with her monologues.When our parents tell us stories about our childhood,they remember a lot more of hers than anyone else's and thats not owing to the fact that she was the first kid,its also because she was always upto something or the other.Shes always had clearly set ideas of what is right and what is wrong and she can't just let things be.Once when she got to know that a Sikh girl wanted to get a haircut but was forbidden by religion,to protest against the unfairness of it she cut the girl's hair herself.the wrath of that girl's mother was duly borne by our mother.She naturally got a lot of attention but she was oblivious to it.She was doing what she was doing only beacuse she believed in it with a passion that drew people to her and still does.She always had a huge group of friends so she never bothered herself with me but then you can't balme her i was forever annoying her by imitating her in everything.Everything means everything.Even when my mother used to make her sit to study ,i would get
my books out and study.When she refused to eat a meal,there is no way my mother could get me to eat it except by physical force.When her dance teacher came to teach her i used to stand right there and copy her much to the fury of my sister and the teacher.She got  irritated first,then tried complaining to our parents who gave her the "you are her elder sister" "she loves you" ":she will learn from the example you set" routine and then she took the matter in her own hands.She realized even then that if
this continued i was going to end up as a copy of her.She ,my eight years older sister started asking me for help.You can just imagine the ego boost i got.She swallowed her ego and her assumed indifference  to me to help me become an individual.She would ask me how i had drawn a particular picture,marvelling at its beauty and say that she was incapable of drawing like that.The amount of effort that went in that was huge because i can't draw even now let alone at the age of nine.When i danced she would ask me to repeat a particular step and teach her how to do it and then say that she couldn't just do it as good as i did.I would be bursting with pride with this and show off a little more then.She ,at her age understood in her own way  that i was underconfident and that i needed to believe that i was capable of doing anything i wanted to.She made me believe in myself.She helped me find my own person,to become an individual with her own passions,hobbies,likes,dislike.Even today we are very alike in alot many ways but we are also very different and i am a much more confident person.Thanks to Didi.