Acharya Prashant: I was six years old. My sister Pragya was three and my younger brother was being born, mother was in the maternity ward. So, we two kids were having good fun. We had been relieved from school for a month because mother had gone to another city to be admitted for the delivery and it was a cesarean and all, a little complicated. So, these two kids would be playing and fighting the entire day.
I was playing with my sister and I broke her arm. Just casual kids play. I did not intend to, I didn’t even hit her hard. She got a fracture in the arm when she was three. And now, I was very guilty. I had not deliberately caused it, but it happened. And it had happened once earlier as well. I was chasing her, she entered the kitchen and hot boiling curry fell over her and she had burns all over her body. She recovered fully, but I had that memory as well, and now the fracture. So, it was a shock to my consciousness.
Now she had the plaster on her arm, from the same hospital and her hand would itch now. Under the plaster, her hand would itch. And since she was just three, so the plaster was not very thick. And I was feeling very guilty. Now what she would try to do, she would try to itch herself, scratch herself under the plaster. She would take a pencil or a pen and try to put it in and slowly she was trying to dismember the whole thing. The plaster was coming off; after all, it was just a plaster.
And as an elder brother and also someone with a guilty conscience, it was now my responsibility to ensure that she did not fiddle with her plaster. So, I was keeping a watch on her all the time. All the time she was trying to do something with the plaster, all the time.
