Every year on April 10, Siblings Day is observed in some parts of the United States and Canada, and on 31st May in Europe. Siblings Day is also celebrated in India under the banner of Raksha Bandhan. The Siblings Day Foundation in U.S.A is trying its best to make it a global holiday.
The day is to commemorate the importance of having siblings in our lives and the bond we share with them. Examples of commemoration include giving our siblings a surprise gift, a gift-card, or taking them out for dinner.
Non-material ways of observances on this day include giving hugs to our sibling(s), spending quality time with them, honouring their presence in our life, and greeting them on various social media platforms using childhood memories.
However, much more than being symbolic, is the need to rediscover the spirit of the sibling relationship. Our brothers and our sisters are our siblings. So are our cousins, siblings among themselves.
Our parents and the parents of our cousins have been siblings too and all of it traces back to some siblings in the remote past, till we ascend to Adam, the foremost father of entire humanity.
All the lineages sink to the same point. Allah derives his choicest name, Al-Rahman, from the root Arabic word, rahm meaning womb of the mother, straightaway pointing to ties of kinship.
Siblings Day can add great value to the much-forgotten oneness of humanity. However, cherishing anything globally without having achieved it locally would be a mere show-off and ethically undesirable. Unfortunately, the locale is low in sibling relationships, which among other things limits the happiness index globally.
The relationship with siblings is oftentimes one of the longest relationships in a person’s life. We are one in blood and flesh, having grown up in the same environment and shared the common memories and similar experiences, which makes the relationship unique and invaluable. One can rarely get away with being fake or phony with them. According to Imam Ali, friends are much like jewels or diamonds and siblings are like gold. A crack invalidates a diamond but the broken gold can always be redrawn to a better shape. It can be revised and recycled. It is not the price but the quality or nature of the substance that the Imam drives our attention to.
Different cross-sectional and longitudinal researches that have been conducted across the 21st century reveal that sibling relations influence the personality of individuals. They shape the person you become. As for instance, one of the siblings might be quiet, and an avid reader. The other might be a barefoot adventurer at heart.
As we grow up with siblings of different tastes and temperaments, it adds dimensions to our social and emotional understanding of people around us. It also gives a natural knack at handling conflicts. The siblings also cement our attitude towards the opposite sex. They help us communicate better. They may not always admire us but they know us better than everyone else and are always immensely interested in us.
We can easily make peace after fighting with them. With a number of siblings and cousins, the get together on various family functions or festivals is truly a huge fun. Life blooms with brothers and sorts out with sisters. While siblings can be friends too, the reverse is not true. There is a chain of melodious Bollywood songs across all ages that fill us with some kind of reverence and rejoice about our siblings. More than a decade old movie, Agneepath, had given us a marvellous storyline besides a stunning set of performances and this beautiful song that we can cherish forever at the reunion of a brother and a sister.
Abhi mujh mein kahin, baaki thodi si hai zindagi
Jagi dhadkan nayi, jaana zinda hoon main to abhi
Kuch aisi lagan, is lamhe mein hai
Yeh lamha kahaan tha mera
Ab hai saamne, ise chhoo loon zara
Mar jaaun ya jee loon zara
Khushiyaan choom loon Ya ro loon zara
Mar jaaun ya jee loon zara.
Still, somewhere inside me, there is a little life remaining.
A new heartbeat came up, I got to know that I am still alive.
Some such tenacity is there in this moment,
Where was this moment of mine,
Now as it in front of me, should I die or should I live a little.
Should I kiss joys, or should I cry a little
Different cultures and social orders across the world would enable having more than one family in different circumstances giving us step-mothers or step-fathers. But the siblings are always siblings not even a step away from each another.
Inside the nucleus of an atom, the nuclear forces operate with same strength between a pair of neutrons, a pair of protons or between a pair of neutron and proton even though the individual characteristics of these particles are quite different. The rest of the atom is almost empty in spirit and in substance. So is this, either a world of siblings or a world quite empty.
Dr. Qudsia Gani, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Physics, Govt. College for Women, Srinagar
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.