They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

Because stories designed to uphold hierarchies protect only one group—those at the very top.

Our problems began when I was expected to shrink myself, as you had been forced to do, but instead I insisted on expanding.

we cannot love ourselves and we cannot love each other well so long as we are preoccupied by the desire to leave ourselves, to abandon ourselves in search of something beyond ourselves.

Serving the myth teaches us how to belong but severs our ability to connect.

My temperament mirrored Papa’s—stubborn, opinionated, strong-willed, outspoken, and loud. Traits admired and encouraged in my father but concerning when manifested by a girl.

There was a time when my outspokenness brought us together instead of tearing us apart. There was a time when speaking my mind was received not as a threat but as an act of love.

For years I have not had you, Papa, or Yush to help me remember, and now the things unsaid between you and me have calcified and I do not know how to cut through to allow the memories of our joy to flow unobstructed. But I want you to know that when I think of you, I feel your warmth.

Though it was you who did everything at home for us, it was Papa who we looked up to, as if he personally made the stars and the moon glow bright. Your love was stable, which made it expected and ordinary. Papa’s love was mysterious, like the weather patterns during the rainy season in the tropics.

It was a love that felt exciting and curious, a love that we had to jockey and perform for—a love that we could not afford to take for granted, as we did yours.

I didn’t know how to get the girls in my class to see me as special or good, but I learned that winning over adults was easy.

Either you had to sit and turn into Papa’s disciple, as one of us, or you had to withdraw in resignation, unable to contribute—not because you had nothing to say, but because Papa stood at a pulpit for one.

You protected me from Papa’s wrath with tiny acts of resistance: You told me when Papa called to say he was on his way home, both of us understanding that it was time to perform in the way that he expected. You were my lookout, warning me when trouble was near.

Now I wonder where that anger of yours went. I wonder if the anger I thought I learned from watching Papa instead came from you. Trapped, without an exit, transferred from mother to daughter through the secrets we were both meant to keep.

Papa twisted the criticisms of his decision-making into personal attacks against you: When we were kids, he told us that Dadaji didn’t want Papa to marry you, and he said that Buaji looked down at you as a servant.

As a girl disconnected from my ancestors with no sense of a homeland, little oral history, and few traditions, I adopted the culture of constantly achieving, of doing, of accomplishing, of ascending, as my own, without considering that there were other ways for me to be in the world.

You thought that because your education level or technical skills didn’t match his, you were somehow unintelligent or had nothing of value to offer your children. I could never convince you that what you offered Yush and me was so much more essential, not just to our survival but to our humanity. Your consistent, stable love grounded and protected us, particularly as children, acting as a shock absorber against Papa’s volatility.

You both seemed terrified about some vague, abstract fear of drugs and rape—not sex, because as a teenage girl, I was not seen as having the right to choose what to do with my body. Despite your fears, I’d never so much as smoked a cigarette or even held hands with a boy.

I learned that when I was seen as the object of desire of a tall white man, suddenly, I mattered. I became visible. People who had overlooked me—including my own father—now noticed me. Soon I relied on the boost I received when such a man wanted me, even if he could not fully understand me, even if when he saw me, he saw conquest or submission or exoticism or domesticity.

What I think he didn’t feel sure about was whether, if he chose that simple life, he’d still be loved and respected.

We were all drowning, unintentionally dunking one another below the surface in an effort to lift ourselves up in a raging ocean.

We were expected to honor Papa’s sacrifices, but did not offer you special treatment for all that you had given up to look after us.

In a capitalist society, the measure of wellness isn’t a person’s actual health or happiness but how far one can rise or how much wealth one can accumulate. Somebody seen as “unwell” is unable to produce and to achieve.

It only further instilled this pressure to always be perfect, to never mess up, because now three other people relied on him to get along and to function.