OF BROTHERS & SISTERS, RAKSHABANDHAN, AND PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS

According to custom, Rakshabandhan is a festival where girls tie a fancy thread around their brothers' wrists and pray for their welfare. Brothers on the other hand, promise to guard them forever. Ironically, the promise of eternal protection needs an annual renewal. It is a festival which gives:
1. students a holiday
2. students a holiday
3. students a holiday
4. girls the chance to curb a boy's infatuation
5. boys another road to bankruptcy

Today being Rakshabandhan, it'd be worthwile to check on the status of the definitions of brother, sister, and brother-sister relationships.
The misuse of titles is rampant among students. Students don't twitch a neuron before purporting some classmates to be their brothers or sisters. Once while in school, I teased my friend for spending entire days with a girl from my class, and he snapped, a flash of coerced anger in his eyes, "She is my sister." During schooldays, we called Rakhis licences to flirt and this was amply corroborated by the couples' regular trips to Cafe Coffee Day, Pizza Hut, and other hang-outs. The most notorious casanovas would have the most number of Rakhis on their arms. Whenever we teased these guys (I generally refrain from teasing girls) they would take refuge in the folds of the damn Rakhi and talk at length about the sanctity of sibling love. Their philosophy confounded me then, and still does. From what they said, I inferred that when a girl ties you a thread, you love her like you love your sister, and hence she becomes your sister. So the difference between going out with your girlfriend and going out with your Rakhi-sister is that you are not supposed to be teased with your sister while you can tolerate people teasing you with your girlfriend.
I find this rationale so foggy that I need to clear the air with forthright analysis of the definition of sister.
A sister is a female offspring born to your parents. Period. The brother-sister link is a relationship genetics thrusts upon us and which tradition identifies as platonic. I sometimes think brother-sister relationships are platonic not because they are supposed to be, but because they just are. Sisters, as a result of living with you under the same roof for a couple of decades, become good friends and confidantes. Very little separate sisters then, from friends. In fact, I have a sister who I consider to be among my best friends. I call her Akka simply because that's what my parents taught me to call her and that's what she was asked to reply to. We give each other no special sibling-privilege or sibling-love. There are some people I consider as dear to me as my sister, and as trustworthy. But that doesn't mean I will start calling them brothers. If I do, it tantamounts to undermining the scope of the definition of friendship. It's well known that siblings can grow up disliking each other. This adduces credibility to my claim that 'sister' can't be blindly substituted for 'caring, loving, and helping girl.'
So if a boy considers girl 1 a sister and girl 2 a friend, the only difference is that he does not/does not want to/is not allowed to look lecherously at the former. I'm sure a number of brothers will thirst for my blood on reading this, but this a sacrosanct fact. How else can you justify separate titles for two girls who you treat with commensurate care and fuss?

Disclaimer: All statements made in this article are a product of the author's general opinions on the subject. Resemblance of any situation mentioned with anyone's personal experience is purely coincidental.