Anand stroked his sister’s hair. It was all he could do. He couldn’t think of what to tell her. He didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. Anand had always been the family member Meena turned to when she was having problems with the world. Now it was he who was giving problems to younger sister, and he didn’t know how to make it better.

But he was happy that she had not bolted out on him. That even after he told her, she had clung to him and let her emotions fall out on him like the tears which soaked his shirt. Hers? His? It didn’t matter. His darling sister was still with him.

He had always known it would be like this. Maybe that’s why he didn’t get along with his mother and older sister as well. They had their worlds cut out from a rigid pattern, how could they ever understand a variance? Meena had always the more broad minded.

Shilpa had been after him for years to tell Meena the truth, but he had held back. Almost as if by not telling her, he would protect her. Growing up, Meena had been the most constantly critisized of the three children. Over the past few years, their parents had been after her to settle down. He had thought that if he told her, and later his parents found out that she knew before they did, that they would only have more cause to be displeased with her. But now Meena was more settled down. She had a baby. Of course, her baby was adopted and she was still unmarried, but somehow that was enough. It finally clicked in Anand’s head that Meena wouldn’t care what her parents had to say about the way she lived her life, and that knowledge finally convinced him that she would be able to bear the blows their parents would give her when they found out.

And it was a relief to tell Meena the whole truth, because even lies, which we often create to make life easier, can become heavy and backbreaking with maintenance.