Last year, my brother Asitha and I got matching tattoos. I couldn't have predicted this barfy bonding moment because we weren't close growing up.
I was three years old when Asi was born and my family lived in Oman. I don't remember being bezzies but there are many photographs of us standing united, us against the world.
We were opposites — I was loud, brash, angry and unsettled. Asi was quiet, gentle, polite and a homebody.
He was Mum's favourite and I was Dad's. All parents claim they can't choose a favourite child and all children know that they're lying. We aligned ourselves with the parent we mirrored, they didn't like hanging out and soon we didn't either.
By the time we moved to Perth, my 12-year-old self only spoke to him to fight over who torched through the family's monthly internet usage.
Reconnecting as adults
Our romantic partners formed bridges between us. When I brought home my first boyfriend at 19, the silent shadow prone to grunting came alive. I experienced his lightning-quick wit, which as a comedian this kills me to say, is much funnier than mine.
When I met Asi's girlfriend Ruth, I thought, "She's awesome and thinks he's awesome? She must have terrible taste." She didn't. Sometimes it takes another to value what we take for granted.
They have the kind of love that creates a force field of safety around everyone within it. While I bounced around the world after my relationship ended, their home in Perth was a haven on my visits back.
When I moved to Melbourne to do my Master's degree at 30, I learnt that maintaining our relationship required effort to combat the physical and time distance.
More bridges between Asi and I formed when my nephew was born and Charlie and I started dating. We started weekly phone calls and spent time together in Perth.
Then WA shut its borders in 2020 because of the pandemic. Asi video called every Saturday to make sure my nephew knew us. He said "vacuum" a lot. It was insightful, because Charlie and I were living in a vacuum in Victoria, but also just because he was obsessed with vacuums at the time.
Saying goodbye to our dad
When we finally got into Perth in May 2022, I was overjoyed to hug my family after two long years. Then we returned in August, much sooner than expected, when Dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
A cancer diagnosis is always a nightmare but ours was a special brand because our parents were recently divorced. Asi and I scrambled to navigate the unfamiliar territory of two broken-hearted parents and a terminally ill father. The doctors said he had two years but he was gone before Christmas.
It is a surreal feeling to watch a loved one leave the world in stages. You simultaneously will it to hasten and to slow. It was bearable because I shared it with another, who knew exactly what it felt like, to lose pieces of our father.
Charlie and I spent weeks, then months, at Asi and Ruth's home. It was the most time we'd spent together since childhood.
We discovered that we don't like chats about feelings. That we pace around in circles when distressed. That even through the despair that came with illness, death, and the funeral — we could make each other laugh.
In our third decade of life, as in our first, we united.
Deciding on a sibling tattoo
Two years later, they stayed with us in Melbourne. Ruth wanted to get another tattoo so Asi and I decided to get one too.
I wanted a tattoo of a crab because my funniest memory of Dad is from a family dinner at a beachside restaurant in Colombo. After many whiskies, he bolted from the table to run after crabs on the dimly lit shore, gleefully whooping as each one scuttled to safety.
Asi shared the memory and now we share the tattoo. There was little chat or fuss about this momentous occasion. While Ruth mulled over tattoo designs and placements for hers, Asi and my deliberations went like this:
"I'm going to get a crab on my ankle for Dad."
"Great, I'll get that too."
"They can fit us all in on Boxing Day."
"Great, let's sort dinner."
Then Charlie and Ruth muttered about Pereras while we figured out what takeaway to order. With equal levels of nonchalance, the day after Christmas, we got the identical designs tattooed on our ankles at a studio in Carlton.
Asi and I still speak every Saturday. And most days in between.
Sashi Perera is a comedian, writer and former lawyer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Find her on Instagram and Substack.
