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This article is published in Vivid Magazine on 31st August 2013 I hate my brother” says 6-year old Rena complaining about her elder brother who is in class 8 and loves to pull her braids all the time. The little girl thinks he does not love her as he plays with her hair despite of the fact that she doesn’t like it. Rena’s mother tells us that her son loves to annoy his little sister yet loves her and cares for her a lot. However, little Rena is too young to understand this and is now unwilling to tie him the Raakhi her mother brought, on the 21 st  of this month. In a family with more than one child, and esp. when one of them is a boy, there happen these silly fights for no reason. Usually, the boy enjoys the fight while his sister (elder or younger) is left annoyed and sometimes, crying. Yet on the day of Rakshabandhan, every girl lovingly dresses herself in a beautiful ethnic dress, prepares a  thaali  with an earthen lamp, sweets, flowers,  sindoor  m...

I was brought up in a different house, not the one I currently live in. The new house, I know it from only a couple of years ago. The old one, it was what I called home. Even when I dream now I see myself in the old house. It was cozy and it gave a comfort my new house could never give. The Sundays were perfect there. My home used to smell of marigolds when I would go by the room where the idols of Lord Krishna was kept adorned with flowers and a censer containing a burning incense spreading its fragrance in the entire room. Mother would be in the kitchen cooking my favourite dal and the smell of the chicken curry being stirred would make me hungry and eager for lunch. The parlour would have the TV on being watched by Dad sipping a cup of Darjeeling tea just before lunch, a peculiar habit. The smell of the tea would somehow remind me of a beautiful sunrise on a faraway field sans people but birds and cattle. And my room would smell of nothing else but books; there were five bookshel...