Every year, I find myself getting a little older, a little wearier; every year, my kid brother gets a little younger, a little trendier; every year, the chasm between us grows. I may not be at the stage where I’ve started examining walking sticks yet, but as my brother recedes further from creeping age, it is to sports bikes that he turns, and off-terrain dirt-riders, things you’d expect to pump up adolescent adrenalin, not middle-age sap.
I find myself looking at a wardrobe that grows intimidating for its abundance of greys; my brother probably can’t see past the glitter of sequins and tinsel and metal in his cupboard. I wear glasses; he has shades. I look at the start of slackening skin, a loss of biceps; my brother looks at his skin to see if there’s a spot that’s escaped being tattooed, some place a snake might want to curl, a dragon to breathe fire. I pull at my lobes in concentration; he punctures them for yet another stud to pierce through his ears.
Every year, I warm a little more to the comfort of friends; every year, he seeks out strangers to befriend. I prefer conversations and bright lights when neighbours meet; he likes music, dim lights, the scandal of a cop breaking up a party. When he comes to our house for dinner, there isn’t anyone of our friends he doesn’t know; when we go to his house for a meal, there isn’t anyone of his friends we know any more.
He gyms, I read; I prefer strolling, he loves biking. We have invited performers with dholaks to play on special occasions; his preference, if his birthday this week gone by is any proof, veers towards a belly dancer whom he had contracted to entertain his guests. I’m embarrassed by photographs of how guests look after a quick couple too many; his party pictures are on Facebook even before we’ve got back home. He has television screens in all rooms with the exception of his bathroom; I can barely tolerate a television even in my bedroom.
A faulty gene runs in the family, but where I’m merely losing hair, he shaves his head to prevent his from falling out. When family chores are being split up, I get the part that has to do with duty and responsibility, but he receives a disproportionate dole of pampering and affection. As my girth grows, my clothes keep getting larger, more loose; as he sculpts his waist, his clothes seem to shrink so it seems he’s wearing a size smaller every time we meet. He is his son’s role model and my son’s hero; his son dresses like him, and my son dresses like him too.
“It’s called a generation gap,” my wife explains, when I point all this out to her. “I get along just fine with my son,” I say, “so where’s the question of a generation gap?” “Is that why our son,” she points out, “seems to spend his entire week’s break with your brother rather than with us?” There is some truth in what she says — “he does come home to sleep,” I mutter defensively — but it is hardly validation that my son and I don’t see eye to eye, which we don’t, especially on matters to do with, oh, motorbikes and tattoos, hygiene and haircuts, clothes and grooming, on diets and synthetic supplements, on waking hours and sleeping hours and choice of music, films, friends, on slouching instead of sitting, and shuffling instead of walking…
“I guess there is just a little bit of a generation gap between our son and me,” I concede to my wife. “Oh him,” smirks my wife, “I was referring to the generation gap between your brother and you!”