The scoreboard nobody admitted existed
You knew the rules before anyone said them aloud. Your report card came home and the first question wasn't how you felt about it, it was what Priya got, what your cousin in Pune scored, whether you'd beaten someone. The comparison arrived wrapped in concern. "We just want you to do your best." But best was never a fixed point. Best was always relative to someone else's number, someone else's achievement, someone else's approval from the same parents you were trying to reach.This is how conditional love works in Indian families, not through cruelty, but through a kind of ambient arithmetic. You were loved, yes. But the warmth of that love seemed to expand when you ranked first and contract when you didn't. You learned to read the temperature of a room by how your results compared. You learned that belonging had a performance requirement.
