A note before you read – Raksha Bandhan passed a week ago. I was still writing this. Twenty-five years of a relationship somehow needed more than a few days to put into words. If you are reading this after the festival — it still counts. Chosen bonds do not have an expiry date.
December 2001. I was in the first year of a two-year IT course at an SSi centre that had opened directly across from our apartment in Mumbai — right in the middle of the IT boom, when NIIT and Aptech and SSi were mushrooming everywhere, and everyone was certain that computers were the future.
There were just three girls in the class. Little did I know that one of them would go on to become my best friend. And the instructor who walked in that first day, cheerful yet serious, straightforward and sharp. He would become my brother.
I did not know this yet. Neither did he, I think. But the universe apparently did.
What I Was Carrying Then
I was an introvert then and still am. And I was in that phase of life when I carried the insecurities that many young women carry without talking about them. I have always been conscious of being on the heavier side, wore spectacles, and wondered whether I looked acceptable enough to be liked and accepted by society.
And underneath all of that, somewhere I had not quite named that I longed for a brother.
I had grown up without one. I had a younger sister and plenty of cousins. I knew that brother-sister relationships weren’t always perfect because I had closely seen many go through their share of disagreements and turbulence. Yet, the bond itself had always held a special corner in my heart. There was something about having a brother that I had quietly yearned for: a certain comfort, tenderness and sense of being seen that I couldn’t quite explain.
The Birthday and the Rakhi He Found
A few months into the course, he invited us to his birthday. He had been casually talking about this during classes, saying that he wanted me to be his sister. The thought that someone would want me as a sister felt a little strange.
Still, we went to his birthday. It was at his bachelor’s room, which he shared with roommates who were at least 10 years older than us. Something that hasn’t changed about him in all these years is his relationship with punctuality. We waited a good long hour for him to arrive and celebrated his birthday. There was no proper cake-cutting ceremony. Just us and a few of his then friends gathered together in that room. By the end of the day, as we were planning to leave, he asked again whether I would tie a rakhi.
I was surprised. Why would I? I didn’t bring one since I had never taken his earlier mentions seriously enough. And he was so determined that he found a rakhi somewhere and insisted that I tie it. Well, his friends asked him to gift something to his new sister, and the insistent one hadn’t bought a gift. Now he searched through his little treasure to find a small grey Casio calculator.
It still brings a smile when I think about that calculator. The slightly absurd practicality of a found rakhi and a calculator.
A Bond That Simply Was
There is something I want to say clearly about this relationship, because every story about a man and a woman tends to be pulled in a particular direction, and this one resists that pull.
It is a sibling bond. Pure, specific, chosen.
He was the youngest of his siblings, studying and working far from his hometown. Perhaps, without either of us realising it, the relationship became a source of emotional and moral support for both of us – a quiet kind of chosen family.
He is a chatterbox, and I am a listener. Our friendship/bond has survived over twenty-five years on the strength of that dynamic, him filling the air, me listening, both of us understanding each other.
I was fortunate enough to be a small part of the important years of his life when he got his dream job and when he chose his life partner. I was just there. Our bond has survived the things that often change relationships: marriage, children, different cities, distance and the increasingly complicated lives we build as adults.
And then there is my Bhabhi – his wife.
She is one of the sweetest people I have ever met, and perhaps one of the reasons this relationship has remained so easy and beautiful. As our lives and our families grew around us, my husband and children became part of this story too. There was never any formal moment when that happened. My brother just became part of our family, in the quiet, effortless way some people do
Perhaps that is what makes a relationship like this beautiful. It doesn’t ask for space; it simply finds one.
The One Thing I Still Carry
I have one guilt from these twenty-five years: I could not attend his wedding. Restrictions at home made it impossible then. I tried to make up for the absence at another occasion, but I knew I had missed the day that mattered. Even now, that guilt sits somewhere in me.
Life doesn’t wait; priorities take over. We grow old, have families, raise our children, work pressures, and get caught up in the thousand ordinary things that happen to us.
But some memories remain untouched.
The Brother He Became
He has been present for every important occasion in my life. He travelled with his family to meet my twins as my brother, as their mama. He introduces himself that way, proudly, without any explanation, effortlessly, and that has stayed with me.
He makes me feel seen. Not with grand gestures or public declarations, but in the specific way only someone who has known you across two decades can manage. He sees the girl I was, the wife I became, the mother I am still trying to be, and the daughter who is still finding her way through life. He sees the effort. He names it. That is rarer than it sounds, isn’t it?
And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts a relationship can give us: the feeling that someone sees who you have become, not just who you once were.
Settled in the Same City
After a decade and a half of distance — different cities, different rhythms, separate lives — we eventually found ourselves in the same city. Just an hour apart.
We have both grown into busy lives of our own—families, work and responsibilities that seem to multiply with every passing year. We have never felt the need to step into each other’s spaces. And yet, there is connection. We are in touch. But Raksha Bandhan remains our little constant. Every year since we settled here, he comes home. I tie the rakhi, and in that simple ritual, I am reminded that some bonds don’t need daily presence to remain strong.
We may forget each other’s birthdays. But never Raksha Bandhan. It still makes me smile. Culturally, neither of us is from the part of India where this festival is traditionally celebrated. And yet we celebrate it — in our own little way. Because somewhere along the way, the ritual became ours. I sometimes wonder whether relationships like this are divine.
I often think of the famous line from The Alchemist:
“When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favour.”
I believe that. I have seen it happen in my own life more than once. Sometimes what we receive isn’t what we imagined; it is better.
What My Son Said
This year my eight-year-old son asked if he could tie a rakhi to his best friend.
I asked him why. He said — Amma, I want my relationship with my best friend to be like yours with your brother.
I did not know what to say for a moment. Because perhaps that is the greatest meaning of this twenty-five-year-old story. He had been watching us—what it looked like, what it felt like, what it meant to the people in it. And somehow, at eight, he had understood it.
Maybe that was what moved me most—not that he wanted to tie a rakhi to his friend, but that he had understood what the thread meant to me.
Some Bonds Are Simply What They Are
I have often thought that we need to stop romanticising every meaningful relationship between a man and a woman. Not every deep connection is romantic. There are pure friendships, mentors, people who become family, and sometimes there are two people who simply know, somewhere along the way, that they are siblings even though they were born to different parents. There is respect. There is trust. There is space.
And there is the certainty that if either of us really needed the other, we would be there. Not every relationship needs to be constantly explained. Some relationships just work because the people in them understand what they mean to each other.
I believe in karma. I also believe in destiny. I believe that some relationships are not accidents; they arrive when they are needed, they survive because they are meant to, and the universe occasionally conspires to give you exactly what you were quietly asking for.
Ours began in a classroom in Mumbai in 2001—with three girls, an IT course, an instructor who was terribly bad at being punctual, a rakhi that wasn’t even bought for the occasion, and a tiny calculator that became a rakhi gift.
More than two decades later, the calculator is probably lying somewhere hidden. The rakhi lasts for only a few days. The classroom exists only in memory. But the relationship remains.
And perhaps that is what Raksha Bandhan really means to me: it is not just celebrating once a year on a festival, but about being grateful for the bond life unexpectedly gave us.