Season 3: is it really easy being a younger sibling?

 “You are the younger sibling; it must be so easy for you”

I have heard it almost my whole life in some or the other way, well it was easy, till a certain point. Maybe it was never about younger or older daughters but about the expectations from parents.

I remember my sister cramming up, crying over math, studying all day, and all night, and sacrificing her whole life when she was in 10th grade. I do not think I ever saw her happy that year, but as I am the younger sibling and to know what it must be like having boards is a whole different thing, I did not even study. So just like any 7th grader would do, I used to make fun of her “pura din bas padhti hi rehti ho” and she still did not score good marks in her school tests. I used to think a person who studies all day and me, who barely ever opens her books in a day are scoring the same marks, how? How would an 11-year-old be supposed to know about ‘the board year’?

Jump to the day when my sister got her results, 93%, my mother literally shrieked. She called my Nani and cried in the bathroom- she was… just so proud. Whereas I, why should I be bothered with it? I didn’t know how big of a deal it was until my board year came.

2022

It was a crazy year, for many reasons but first, it was the first normal year of school after 2 years of covid. We forgot how to behave or how things work in school, it was all new. Especially, studies. We had to cram up 22 whole chapters in social studies, carbon, and its compound, and weird geometry proving things (we obviously did not study in lockdown), it was like the entire earth just fell on me. For the first time, I felt the pressure. From my parents, teachers, and peer pressure. Now, all the attention of my parents was drawn to me and I was regretting making fun of my sister.

 Karmas a bitch.

 I studied, day and night, and had infinite late-night study sessions with friends and everybody knew especially my family that I worked harder than my sister.

 The big day came, on May 11th, 2023. My 10th class result

*Drum roll please*

90%.

My mother told me with despondence and let her hand out to shake and said “Congratulations you at least passed” AT LEAST PASSED?? That was not why I worked my ass off the whole year, mother. Then she told me “Your father is very disappointed” Just to hear those words, I don’t know something shattered in me. I just… could not take it in. I made my parents sad? Even though I SO worked hard, just so hard. But nothing was ever enough, was it? I scored lower than my sister that was all going on in my head. I worked twice as hard but I couldn’t manage to get more than 93??

All my friends were ringing phones, but I could not stop crying. I cried the whole day, like how couldn’t I? I was pathetic. Everybody scored like 94 or 96 or something, and me- even in 10th I couldn’t score better than a mere 90%

I cried so much that I lost my ability to speak that day, my face was swollen.

I mean was that all even worth it?

 I mean my mother didn’t cry in the bathroom or call Nani. My dad didn’t bring me a cake or tell me that I’d get an iPhone. Instead, I got my dad not talking to me for a week.

And by the end of the day, my mother told me to just stop crying because it was hurting her to see me this way. I genuinely didn’t know what to say but the whole day, I just said sorry and sorry to my parents.

I mean what did they deserve to have a child like me?

That day and today, I never stopped working hard, because I knew no matter how much hard work I’d put into anything it was just…never enough. I was never enough.

So, what was that about saying “You are the younger sibling, it must be so easy for you”?