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Dhruv Saxena
I am my mother's favourite child.
My sister would like me to acknowledge that she also believes she is my mother's favourite child. She has believed this since approximately 1997 and has not updated the belief despite what I consider to be substantial counter-evidence. We have discussed this. We have not reached agreement. We have both decided to continue believing what we believe and let our mother continue not clarifying anything.
My mother has never said she has a favourite. She will never say she has a favourite. If you asked her directly she would look at you with an expression of genuine offence and say she loves us both equally and she would mean it completely and she would also, somewhere underneath the meaning it, know that equal is complicated.
Equal is very complicated.
I have been studying the favouritism question for thirty-one years. Not in a resentful way. In a genuinely curious way. Because the Indian mother's relationship with the favourite child question is one of the most sophisticated pieces of emotional management I have ever observed up close. She maintains the position of no favourites with total consistency while operating a system that both her children can feel and neither can prove.
I was home last month. My sister called while I was there. My mother picked up and the quality of her voice changed in a specific way that I have been cataloguing for three decades. It became warmer in texture. Not warmer because she is cold to me. Warmer in the specific way that suggests the person on the other end requires more warmth than usual and she is supplying it. She sat down with her chai and her Mom's Magic biscuits and she talked to my sister for forty minutes. When she hung up she said your sister sounds tired and I should call her more often.
I had been sitting across from her for three days.
I said I was also there, physically, in the same room.
She said yes beta, you are very settled, your sister needs more checking on.
I was not sure if this was a compliment or a demotion. I have been thinking about it since.
The Favourite Rotates
The first thing I have established in thirty-one years of research is that the favourite is not fixed. It rotates.
The rotation is not arbitrary. It follows a logic. The child who is currently having a harder time becomes the favourite in the sense of receiving more attention, more calls, more unsolicited checking-in. The child who is currently more settled receives less active attention but this is also, in its way, a form of preference. She trusts the settled child enough to leave them alone. She worries about the other one more actively.
This means the favourite at any given time is the child she is currently worried about. The worry is the love in concentrated form. More worry equals more favourite in the operational sense.
My friend Nikhil has two brothers. He has tracked the favourite rotation in his family for years. The favourite is always the brother who is going through something. During his elder brother's difficult job period, his elder brother was the favourite. During his younger brother's health issue, his younger brother was the favourite. During a period when Nikhil himself was going through something he has not specified to me, he was the favourite.
He said being the favourite felt exactly like being the one his mother was most worried about. He was not sure this was the kind of favourite he had wanted to be.
The Things That Signal the Favourite
The favourite, at any given time, receives specific signals that are not given to the non-favourite. These signals are not dramatic. They are small. You have to know what you are looking for.
The first call of the day. My mother usually calls me first in the morning. During the period when my sister was going through something, my mother called my sister first. I noticed this within two days. I said nothing. I logged it.
The food specifically packed. When I come home there is food packed for me to take back. The food is good and plentiful. During my sister's last visit, the food was also good and plentiful but there was one specific thing my sister had mentioned once, years ago, that my mother had remembered and made and packed specially. I had not received the specially made remembered thing. My sister had.
The WhatsApp check-in timing. My mother checks in on both of us. The frequency and timing of the check-in shifts based on who is currently in the favourite position. I have timed this. The data is consistent.
The Denial
My mother's denial of the favourite system is complete and genuine simultaneously.
This is the part I find most impressive. She is not lying when she says she has no favourites. She genuinely does not experience what she does as favouritism. In her model, she is simply responding to need. The child who needs more gets more. The child who needs less gets less attention but also, from her perspective, the gift of being needed from less, which means she is satisfied with how they are doing.
In her model this is not favouritism. It is calibration.
My sister and I have discussed this at length. My sister believes that in the calibration model she is perpetually the favourite because my mother perpetually worries about her more than she worries about me. I have argued that the worry-favourite is not the same as the actual favourite and that I am the actual favourite. My sister has asked me to define actual favourite. I have not been able to define it in a way that supports my position.
My friend Karan is an only child. I have explained the favourite system to him. He said he assumed being an only child meant you were automatically the favourite. I said you are also automatically the least favourite because there is nobody for the position to rotate to. He said he had not considered this. He seemed mildly unsettled.
What My Mother Would Say
If I showed my mother this piece she would read it and then look at me and say this is all very dramatic and she loves us both the same.
I would say what about the food she specially packed for my sister.
She would say my sister had mentioned it once and she had remembered.
I would say I have also mentioned things once.
She would say she remembers those too, she just has not had occasion to make them yet.
The logic is complete. There is no entry point. She has been running this system for thirty-one years and she has never once been caught. She will not be caught. The favourite exists and does not exist simultaneously and she holds both of these truths with complete serenity.
I am definitely her favourite though.
My sister is wrong about this. I am very settled and the settled one is the real favourite and I have decided this is true and I am going to continue believing it.
Some beliefs are load-bearing.
