They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

But now I realize that the haziness of my memory was by design. Papa was a storm casting a perpetual fog around you. He did not want us to ever really see each other.

We have known each other as small echoes of our own voices.

The doctor believed that a potential diagnosis would deny Papa’s ability to get into a good college and succeed, an outcome that would have invalidated Dadaji’s decision to leave India.

“Well, if we forget, and the person doesn’t change, we’re re-creating the conditions to allow the same thing to happen again,” I said.

I wonder if, in an effort to bend reality to the perfect image they sought to project, my grandparents overlooked your discomfort, deepened your sense of isolation, and further eroded your trust in your own senses in a country where you did not have equal footing to assert yourself. Mummy, did anyone ever tell you that what you saw and felt was real?

But abuse is so often perpetuated under the banner of goodness, disguised in the language of benevolence.

How did one evaluate a personality disorder in someone raised between two wildly different cultures?

it was offensive to view Papa’s troubling behavior through cultural tropes like “strict Indian dad” or “tiger parent.” Such dismissals normalized mistreatment and implied that our dysfunction was an inevitability resulting from our cultural or ethnic identities. The refusal to seek explanations beyond these tropes had severe consequences.

He took responsibility for everything that happened to him—a burden I cannot imagine and an illusion of control that must have been crippling.

the notion that I deserved any better—or that better was even possible—seemed absurd. Vulnerability felt like delusion.

I could not simply grieve. I could not fall apart. I could not submit to my wrenching anguish and my unbearable rage. I had to perform and behave in the ways expected of me.

What Yush saw as parallels between him and Papa, I saw as pressures upon men whom the world reduced in similar ways. They were both brilliant in the way capitalism rewards, but as people, they were hardly alike. Yet how do you distinguish between your true self and a persona when you’ve spent your life becoming what others expect you to be?