I used to be jealous of my sister. She was the beautiful and slim daughter while I was the fat one.

She was the stubborn, headstrong daughter while I was the daughter who sacrificed it all to keep my parents happy.

My mom was always proud of my sister, parading her to her friends, neighbors and everyone possible. She has always been the apple of my mother's eyes. When relatives would come home, I would do the cooking and keep the dishes in serving bowls, but my sister would snatch them from me, placing them in front of the guests to show that she did all the work.

After graduation, I went to USA to do my Masters. I had a boyfriend at that time and we were secretly in a relationship for 4 years because my parents are conservative and don’t believe in love marriages.

This guy was my first love, the first guy who wasn't mesmerized by my sister.

I'd had crushes in the past, but the moment any guy would start reciprocating my feelings, my sister would become overly friendly with him. Since she was slim and I was fat, they would lose interest in me, instead asking me to help them woo my sister.

One day while I was in the US, my guy and I decided that we wanted to get married and so we told our parents. My parents were strictly against the guy and against love. All of a sudden, my dad got sick and my mom blamed it all one me. She asked me to come home right away, even though I was due to write my finals in a week. I came home and they made me stay in India, leaving my dreams of completing my degree. And like a dutiful daughter, I agreed. Till this day, my mom brings this up and says that she can never trust me.

I would have accepted that that's how conservative parents think, had it not been for the hypocritical way in which my mother treated my sister.

My sister has always hated me and I don’t even know when it all started (sometimes I feel that she has hated me since childhood), but it became more blatant and obvious after this particular incident. A couple of years after I came home from the US, I was studying for my MBA from a distance education university, and also working part time. My sister was in her final year of graduation, and was in a toxic relationship. The guy had told her he was an engineer, and they were planning to elope.

I later found out that he was actually a security guard who hadn’t even finished his degree. It was an open truth in the place where he lived that he had another girlfriend, and many even said they were secretly married because she belonged to a different religion.

When I placed all these facts before my sister, she refused to believe me. She said that I was jealous because she was going to marry the love of her life and I couldn't. I begged her, pleaded with her to check his workplace, but my requests fell on deaf ears. She blindly wanted to run away with him.

I loved my sister too much and so I ended up making the biggest mistake of my life, for which she hates me to this day; I told my parents about her relationship.

I knew that it was the best thing to do, and even today I'm okay with the price that I'm paying for it because it saved her. My parents were shocked because they knew that guy and were aware of the other girl in his life, even the rumours that the two were married. They also knew that he was a lazy drunk. So they had a big discussion with my sister and made her promise that she won’t run away.

She finally finished her graduation and wanted to go to the US too. But she didn't get a full scholarship and when my parents were contemplating about sending her as they had financial problems, she made a huge scene saying that you sent Akka but don't want to send me.

My mom convinced dad to take a loan to send her. I was shocked because when I was going to the US, dad said that he wouldn't take a loan because he didn't believe in taking loans, so I ensured that I got a full scholarship and also worked as a grad assistant and lived off my stipend. I even saved up enough money to send home every month.

That was not all. Another shocking hypocrisy was when my sister fell in love again and my parents readily accepted the guy. In fact, when my parents found out that she had crossed limits with her ex and had to get an abortion, they lovingly covered up her mistakes, like it was no big deal.

Soon, they started calling her new love as ‘son-in-law’. He was called home, invited for lunches and dinners and treated like a son.

I made myself okay with the favoritism because he was a good guy and I was happy for my sister.

Then she left for the US, and that’s when a new drama began. She was living with our family friends, and at first, it all seemed good. She would sing praises of both the aunt and uncle, saying that they were very sweet. But when college started, she started complaining about them, calling them controlling and mean. While the family friends complained that she would go partying with her friends and return home at midnight every day.

My mom made me intervene and speak to her. We were on a Skype call with my parents beside me.

When I told her she should concentrate on studying, she clearly told me "Please shut up, you don't have a say in my life. You are nobody to give advice. Why do you feel qualified to advice me when you couldn't finish your studies."

Instead of supporting me, my mom told me to move aside and started cajoling her, and pleaded with her to go home on time. The very next month my sister had some essays to submit for a grade. She called up mom and asked her to make me do it. When my mom asked me, I refused, saying that I would do it only if she asked me herself. And that was it!

My mom created a big scene, threatened to stop eating and made me out to be a villain who hates her sister, a heartless monster who finds enjoyment in the downfall of her sister.

All I asked was for my sister to call and ask me. But I didn't even expect an apology. And yet again, like a dutiful daughter, I stayed up all night to help her with her essay. Let alone a thank you, she didn’t even tell me if she received the essay on time.

Then she had new issues and fought with the family friends because they wouldn't let her go on an interstate trip with friends. She went anyway and they panicked, they told my mom that they couldn't let her stay in their house anymore. My parents apologized, begged them to be patient and promised to speak with her again. She listened for a while but soon went back to coming home at midnight.

When she came to India for her summer holidays, the family friends advised us to make her stay in India as she wasn’t welcome at their place anymore. My sister refused to apologize to them and even started hurling insults at them in front of my parents. I was surprised again, when instead of correcting her, my parents started dancing to her tunes.

She almost convinced my parents to take another loan for her because apparently, her professor was partial and hadn’t graded her fairly, so she got a C in more than one subject and lost her partial scholarship (which obviously had nothing to do with her partying late into the night). She also wanted them to pay for her to live in an apartment with her friends.

I pulled some strings with my friends in US and got her a place, which was safe and cheap. I didn't want her to stop her studies because she didn't have a place to live in. I even paid the rent for the first few months.

My parents sent her all my savings from my bank account.

I was silent because I knew that they were in a fix and couldn't afford another loan. My dad’s salary was already being used up to pay previous loans. We were living on my salary while my sister was busy spending money on fancy shoes, dresses and even a used car.

To this day, whenever I ask her to save up some money, she asks me to mind my own business.

But the thing that hurts me the most is that my mom still portrays her as the saint, despite all the guys that she's been with, but she doesn't trust me at all. Every time I ask for something, even small things like an office outing, she says no. She says that she cannot trust me after I fell in love with that one guy and didn't tell them about it.

Even after sacrificing my savings and my self-respect for my sister, my mom still says that I'm the bad person.

That I should become humble and talk to my sister even if she doesn't reply, that I should help her even if she insults me. I feel that no matter what I do, I'll never be good enough for her. My mom will always find fault in me, even if I were to die in her place.

If you ask any mother "If both your children were about to die, and in order to save one, you had to push the other off a cliff, or let them both die, what would you do?" Most mothers wouldn't know what to do. But my mother would emotionally blackmail me into jumping off that cliff to save my sister.

What else should I do to be good enough for you mom?

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