Brothers at War: The Endless Battles of Blood and Property

 **2003**

It has to be accepted without any argument to the contrary that brothers fight—directly, indirectly—over property.

The chariot in the battlefield led by the valiant wifeys as the charioteers—like nobody else in the world.

Self-interest being the fundamental force of every human activity, conditions sooner or later, by chance or mischance, by his fault or the other's, always aided and abetted by the clarion call of separation given by the wifeys, do crop up.

For they—the brothers—draw from the same pool of property.

So the sharing becomes the biggest cause of strife and struggle, leading to mini-wars in the streets.

People can have good relationships with someone from the other locality because they don't have anything to share.

But brothers face it really tough because they have to share and take possession of their respective shares from the same pool of property.

No wonder brothers fight like nobody else in the world.

Wifeys are very able lieutenants in the skirmishes. They put their guns on the husbands' shoulders and call the fires from behind.

And if the husband happens to be a weakling, he is pushed and prodded to go upfront.

It is only in the case of hopeless warriors that their female consorts take to the fighting stage, boldly, shamelessly, directly, without mincing any words.

So they continue fighting day and night to demarcate and consolidate their domain.

Missiles continue to be hurled while the process of demarcation continues under fire.

Others—the relatives stranded in no man's land—suffer the most, for they belong to this side, to that side also, to both sides and no side as well.

There is no end to this war—only intermittent ceasefires and cold wars.

Only time cleans the slate to put out the old, faded, barely discernible characters on the stage of the past generation; the baton is then handed over to the new, shiny, ebullient characters of the contemporary age, sharing the interests, fighting—the old wine in new bottles.

Look at the mutation of this animosity.

It moves ahead for a larger social front, and ultimately it appears as if everybody is fighting everyone else with whom one is related or unrelated.

So our most common identifiable trait is that of brothers at war.

We have to accept it as almost a natural law, for the instances of brothers wishing to drink the blood of their fellow siblings are too many and exceptions too few, so that it can be accepted almost as the infallible law of natural science.

How I wish that it was brothers at love, but the stimulants being such that they emerge enemies.