Sorry Bro: it’s time to concede my failings as a sibling

FRIENDS. You can pick them. But when it comes tae family, ye’re stuck with the lottery of lineage. And while the post-Freud age obsesses about the parent and child relationship, the oft-overlooked sibling situation very much defines who we are. Channel 4’s The Secret Life Of Brothers And Sisters last week attempted to shed some light into the dark recesses of the most complex, caring and confrontational of relationships. Our relationship with our siblings is the longest-lasting of our lives. The hierarchy and dynamic across a generation is defined by culture, religion, class and (practically speaking) size. Only children, of whom I have known a few in my time, seem to move through the world with one or two fewer bags of issues. Of course, they might claim that they were simultaneously the sole recipients of love while also having noone to share parental disappointment with. I am one of three, all boys. Not blessed with a daughter, my poor wee maw found herself spending a lifetime bringing up boys and managing the man. In terms of order, I fell into the middle. What I call the “tricky second album”. Boy children have a very precise place in the panoply of Punjabi people, a singularly specific status among Sikhs. Despite all the scriptural suggestion and godly guidance, boys are better. Apart from carrying the family name, they are not required to provide a dowry upon marriage (that’s the girls’ burden). And within the internal sibling hierarchy, the first-born boy is vaunted, celebrated and adored. He has almost demigod-like status. Wrong he cannot do. These factors exist in a wider context, for sure, but it was very pronounced during my growing up.

I love my brothers. They are both good people. My little brother and I were always close, given that we were not the eldest, and were ergo mere mortals. But having found ourselves in the same profession we have an even more eager empathy. We have worked together on a few occasions, and I will never forget his wise counsel and support. To this day, we remain close. That’s not to say we haven’t had our downs as well as our ups. But honestly speaking, doesn’t everyone love Navid?

My elder brother and I sometimes seem like strangers rather than bonded as brothers, let alone friends. Our relationship has been challenging. He was a quiet child, thoughtful, reflective (to be honest Genghis Khan would have seemed quiet, thoughtful and reflective compared to me.)

I have no doubt that in my haste to blame him and him alone for every vagary that befell me, every moment of profound punishment, each intense injustice I endured, I fundamentally failed to consider his position.

Sometimes I thought all my big brother was doing was watching me, making sure I didn’t have any fun. Apart from having tae put up with me, his pushy, precocious, pain of a sibling, he had, Atlas-like, to hold the world of my parents’ expectations upon his shoulders.

That can’t have been easy. I’m not sure I know a single first-born boy in a similar position who didn’t feel the same. And while we all have to rationalise the relationship we have with our folks, sometimes our sense of our siblings suffers.

I wonder whether my inability to be a good younger brother, to accept and respect him and my place within the family, might explain my ongoing, lifelong problem with authority. Perhaps my second-child sense of not being the eldest has informed my drive to achieve? Maybe I owe him more than I think.

All I know is that as my children enter adulthood it’s time for me to reflect on my own childhood and how my upbringing made me the man I am, for worse and occasionally better. I have to concede my failings as a brother.

And while I may not be able to change what has passed over the years, decades and across the millennium, I am still able to alter my future. I only have one older brother. He ain’t heavy; he’s my brother. My big brother.