I often hated being an only child when I was a kid. I secretly wished for a younger sister, so that together we could weave innumerable tales of childhood and growing up. But alas, this was not to be! And to add to the woes of my solitary existence, my parents manipulated me into following a long list of dos and don'ts. They worked hard to inculcate the virtues of sharing and kindness in me so that I grew up with a humble head on my shoulders. Sometimes I grudged them for my so called single syndrome in spite of my mother's countless attempts in making me see the glamour of being the 'special' one. But it was very obvious that she never meant a single word of it even though she tried hard to be sincere and tactful at it. Her sternness would always give her away at the end. And I was to follow the wheel ruts again, and behave. But technically I was a single child and so I would anyhow retain certain single child traits. My juvenile thoughts often turned to how my parents wanted me to suffer alone, especially when my friends had siblings. While I befriended people effortlessly, I also loved cocooning up in a shell of my own. As I grew up, I realised I was a failure when it came to handle comparisons in a positive way. My father, who happens to be my worst critic, discouraged my complacence which was growing in leaps and bounds during my adolescence. I would get lost in an emotional maze and would take aeons to come out of it. Quite often I would get touchy about my 'situation', most often just so because teenage angst was always in vogue! Like any other belligerent teenager, I too loved to bask under a rebellious halo. Now, years later when I look back at my foolhardiness, I can't help laughing at myself!
The world has always been a little prejudiced regarding the only child. We are often stereotyped as spoiled, selfish and bratty. But this is just a twisted truth like the patchy outline of a story. Time and again I have been complimented by my close friends for having a flair for understanding people and their plight. Ah! God bless the friends! Contrary to the universal belief of we being apathetic, I have always been a concerned ear for my friends, no matter what the day or hour is. Strangely, the world loves to operate in contradictions. I have come across certain people who possess the temperament of a single child in spite of having siblings. But the trauma does not end here! When the "oh she's the only child" tag gets carried over to one's matrimonial realm, it results in more than one pair of raised eyebrows. The air swells with questions of adjustment, acceptance and tolerance. At such hapless times I have found it alarmingly difficult to fight these preconceived notions which are mostly groundless.
This eternal urge to make oneself understood and unscrambled sometimes takes away the cream from one's life. But as they say, certain things about the world hardly change. It's an old, stubborn place after all, strewn with age-old customs and dead conventions. And so the battle continues...
