Sibling rivalry for no reason

From a relatively early age most of us know that truth is stranger than fiction - and crueller and more dramatic. But it takes a long time for us to learn that many truths exist side-by-side, giving rise to confusion and suspicion and a lot of ill will, no doubt, but all being essentially the truth.

Have you ever asked a family of siblings to relate to you the stories of their childhood? Sometimes the incidents, although the same, are portrayed so differently that you cannot help but look at each earnest set of eyes and wonder which ones are liars.

All three or four of you were involved in the same scrape, but father's heavy hand was unjustified only on your rear, while the others got what they deserved for dragging you, kicking and squealing, into a mess you hadn't even been faintly interested in. Evaporated in the mists of time are the fervent pleas you made to the others, the favours you swore you'd do for them if they accompanied you on the investigating mission that landed all of you in the patriarch's den, under the cold glare of his lynx eyes!

There's sometimes the possibility that three of you may have a more or less comparable version of the truth, when suddenly out pops the fourth, from the one who was largely a spectator then, and it differs in so many ways that it seems another incident altogether that spouts from his or her memory!

Our childhood, like that of almost every middle-aged person I know, was idyllic. Large open spaces, school work without unrealistic expectations and therefore without tears or fears of failure, wholesome food, few luxuries or extravagances and fewer temptations in the market.

But just ask the other members of my family what they experienced and you'll hear something like this. The eldest will say that there was pressure on him to perform, to lead, to protect; he had to grow up and be a man and he had to do it with these two pesky sisters snapping at his heels along the way, never giving him a moment's peace, never acknowledging his superior intelligence and ability.

The middle one will say that she had to grow up too fast because the youngest came along blithely and grabbed attention and held it way into adulthood, pampered thing that she was. And she had to keep up with the elder one's capers so she was stressed almost from the word 'Mama'. Adrift almost from infancy, she had to claw her way to wherever she got with no help, no boost, just sheer grit and guts.

The youngest will say that she had tremendous pressure to outperform the other two and live up to whatever standards they'd set. She had to fight every step of the way to gain her independence, she had to prove she was an adult when they never had to, and she had to contend with the bullying and teasing of the other siblings that undermined her confidence and made her timid and shy (never mind that she can silence both the older ones now and put a bullhorn to shame as well).

Where in these stories of struggle and travail do the parents come in, one may well ask. Unadulterated truth be told, they were there all along, providing the good life, a more secure life than what we can give the next generation, asking for little beyond that we fulfil ourselves, certainly not pushing us into careers we had no aptitude for but held great potential in the modern world, not measuring our success by the marks we got or the money we earned.

Have we given the same to our children? Or have we given them a legacy of skewed truths, over-expectations, and rivalry for no reason?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.