The Story of Tintin

 

Tintin is six and she’s chubby and fair. Oh, and she’s the naughtiest kid in the whole neighbor hood.

 

Tintin had a round face with green eyes like blazing emeralds and she loves to bat her eyelids with faked amazement and she uses her hands a great deal while she talks. It’s like she has to point towards a thousand things or she doesn’t feel she’s conveyed her message well enough.

 

In all such cases, Tintin loves to begin from the start; incase if you’re not listening, she would stomp her feet and pull at your clothes and demand, not beg, for you attention; then she would ceremoniously climb up you lap and with excruciating detail she would go over the facts once more. All this while her left/right, whichever eye keeps close watch on your face to make sure that you’re not cheating her off her attention even for a nick of minute.

 

You have no clue how Tintin hates to not be the centre of attraction.

 

In case if you’re unlucky enough and you’re distracted about some more important job (and don’t expect Tintin to ever understand that!) and you don’t, cant, give Tintin her desired share of attention; Tintin is sure to go suddenly very still. It’s like the whole universe implodes and settles on six year old Tintin’s brow. Then two huge (and believe me, H.U.G.E) tears pool in the corner of Tintin’s green luminescent eyes; and she’s like going to be perfectly still and believe me that’s an art. She wouldn’t let the tears roll down her eyes till her lower lip twitches with gentle ferocity and her fat cheeks go all crimson with pain and heartbreak.

 

After this mind blowing performance, Tintin allows the tears to roll down her cheeks and fall into her little two chubby hands folded neatly on her lap. And she’s look at you with her huge green puppy eyes with such painful, heartbroken devotion that you’d feel like the you’re tethering at the edge of human viciousness for causing such a beautiful, adorable fat child such soul numbing pain.

 

 

And these are just about the first few of the million things that make me want to strangle Tintin and hoist her up the banyan tree in our backyard!

 

You have no clue how I despise the brat but like a stupid invisible Casper ghost who delights in making my life miserable, Tintin follows me around the house with her stupid toothless grin plastered on her fat face, merciless and all!

 

How I wish I could do something about this little devil and teach her one lesson but then she has the whole household stuffed in her pocket and dancing to her deliciously evil tunes.

 

 

Incase if you’re wondering, and I’m sure you are (haven’t I borne this too many time already) who I am to be speaking so venomously about such a delightfully adorable child, here’s the truth. I am Tintin’s evil older sister; yeah, older as in O.L.D.E.R; who hates her more than the little ugly puppy (of Daboo uncle next door) who Tintin loves to torture with her precious white stick she stole from the Old cantankerous Aunty who came to visit mother’s aged aunt a while ago.

 

Oh yea. I hate Tintin. With all the seventeen years of sins I carry on my frail shoulders, How I hate that little pest!

 

And more than anything I hate her for being just six because that doesn’t let me get even with her in all the wonderfully tortuous ways I’d like to!

 

I sound too evil, don’t I?

 

Well, here’s my story.

 

I still can’t understand why my parents had to accede to a wish I had made to them eleven years ago.

 

 I wonder if they realize that sometimes an eleven year old wish come true can be but a perfect recipe for disaster. Oh well they would never understand!

 

I was five when I used to ask my mother why I didn’t have a little cute fat sibling to play with and boss around on. And I remember that my mother used to give me all reasons and explanations that somehow didn’t quench my little five year old head but then I got by. And I did grow up too and I was happy; just a little bothered sometimes that I didn’t have the same stories to tell, like my friends, but I was happy and I was doing fine.

 

Until that day when I was eleven and a little wrapped bundle was placed in my trembling hands and I was told that I wasn’t to feel alone any longer and that I had company.

 

But then I wasn’t as lonely as they thought, now was I?

 

 

Tintin made a mess of my life from the day she came into my house and perched atop the throne from where I used to rule my roost. Hate me for being a seventeen year old girl bickering about a six year old child but then I was twelve sometime too and it was such a weird thing for me to have my mother attend the parent teacher’s meeting with a one year old fat child gallivanting in her arms while my friends’ brothers and sisters stood quietly by their parents smirking at the sight of my graying at the edges mother trying to control the insane kicks and squabbles of the little fright in her arms!

 

And that wasn’t just it. When my friends would come over my mother would unmindfully shout at me to look after Tintin while she cooked and washed and I would have to run around a two year old ballistic child while my fourteen year old sensibilities dictated me to either throttle myself or that little pest.

 

I did neither.

 

I just suffered in silence.

 

There were those times, when my friends would come over for a pajama party and like the fifteen year old girls we were, we wanted snuggle inside the covers, dim the like and smirk and giggle over stories of budding love and muscular guys.

 

But then how do you think and eternally cursed fifteen year old femme gets to live a life when a four year old wizened chaperone is shooting in and out of her room full of hot blooded teenage girls dying to tell their stories.

 

But the little pest won’t let that happen and my house was declared unfit for hosting the weekly and so very important for the health of our raginghormones party.

 

And I felt ashamed.

 

Oh and did I tell you that when my boy friend would call (and I was sweet sixteen believe me!) a little five year old Tintin had a deep and penetrating premonition and wherever she may have been, like a little troll she would appear from dreaded corners of the earth and lunge and the phone before I would be able to save my skin.

 

Then it would be something like this.

 

I stand perspiring next to the phone; cursing and swearing under my breath. Its not like my mother doesn’t know about Shivam but then there is an unspoken question in the air that why do I have to talk to him for long lengths of time and as soon Mom smells its some guy over the phone she starts hovering around me and I cant talk and inevitably I have to hang up.

 

And Tintin is her facilitator.

 

She picks up the receiver with great drama and then she croons, ‘ ‘elloooo’

And then nods her head vigorously ala Saint Bernarda of the We will never let sixteen year old sister living in PeaceValley and she looks at me her eyes squeaking and her eyes shining like a green sun.

 

And while I’m standing at a distance of five feet, she calls (SCREAMS!) out me like this.

 

‘Didiiii… shhhiiVVAAAMMMM BHHHAAIYYYYAAA HASSSSS CALLLLEDDD!!!!’

 

And even before I can grab the phone from her hands and shoo her gloating little frame out of my sight, ha! My Mom is standing over and asking nonchalantly, did someone call?

 

And I just sit there seething and burning with rage and anger and un-cried tears of frustration.

 

 

But then, did I throttle the little pest as I promised?

No way.

Did I not tell you about all those times when I have a bad day at school and she jumps into my bed and even though she cannot ask tender and soothing questions, she jumps around the bed with unrestrained energy and she makes funny faces and climbs atop me and digs her face in my chest and laugh and scream in joy.

 

It’s like a child thing. She’s little and she doesn’t know all the big and tender things people say to each other to make them better; but she senses that I feel tired and lost and she tries to make smile and forget my blues.

 

And did I tell you about those times when she would fight with Mom to let her sleep with me in my room. Its like she feels that she’s been give a prize when she’s allowed to slink into my bed; she’d have carried her folded bunny covers in her hands like an Olympic prize and she settles on my bed and she never stops grinning until my mother has turned off the lights.

 

Even when, I her feel her body spasm with unbridled joy.

 

And those times when I’m sick with worry over a project which is half done and its submission date is nearing; the whole household is frantic and my Mom and Dad help me with the printouts and pictures and amidst this melee I never fail to recognize two small hands trying to help as much as they can, even when all they can do is cut up paper at lousy angles and make more mess.

 

But I can see little Tintin trying to help.

 

And those times when I’m down with fever and delirious and my mother puts cool wads of cotton dipped with alcohol on my forehead, am I dreaming or I feel two buttery hands caress my head from over the cool wads of cotton…

 

There are a million more stories and more reasons why I can’t really hate the little pest as much as I claim. And though throttling her is my favorite dream, holding her fat chubby body as she snuggles next to me on cold winter nights and holding her hand and visiting a kingdom of peace and innocence is a dream I cherish a tad more.

 

And this is the real story of Tintin.