Stories from my best friend’s toxic family - 1

When I started college, I became friends with a girl from my hostel. To be honest, I didn’t want to be friends with her at first. We shared a room with four other girls, and she had a very rigid personality. She wasn’t friendly with anyone and rarely helped with any of the chores in our room. She would often stand near her cupboard and secretly eat her snacks so that no one could see her. The strange part was that none of us ever asked her to share her food; it was simply her nature to be guarded and suspicious. Despite all this, over the months we slowly became friends.

For a long time, I found her behavior difficult to understand. Everything started making sense when I visited her home.

I come from a family where people openly express love, concern, and emotions. Conversations are warm, and feelings are shared. Her family was very different. She belonged to a conservative Hindu family. Four of her father’s five sisters were unmarried and over fifty years old. It has influenced their family in bad way. My friend also had a younger sister. When I visited their house, I immediately felt an uncomfortable atmosphere. Everyone seemed distant from one another. There was very little warmth in their interactions, and the environment felt tense and pretentious.

Since my bf loves my food and I had been staying there for more than three days, I decided to prepare something special for the family. My friend and her younger sister loved the food, and I felt happy seeing them enjoy it. However, the next day I noticed that a large portion of the food remained untouched. I didn’t think much about it at the time.
That evening, as we were getting ready to sleep, I heard loud voices coming from another room. Curious and concerned, I went to see what was happening. My friend’s fifth aunt was arguing with her mother. The issue was simple: because there were limited rooms in the house, the family was requesting the aunt to sleep in another room for one night so that three of us could stay comfortably.

I was perfectly fine sleeping wherever they wanted me to sleep. It was their home, and I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. But during the argument, the aunt suddenly turned her anger toward me. She said, “Why is this lower-caste person entering our kitchen?”

I froze.

Until that moment, I had never been treated that way in my life. I grew up in a loving family where I was valued and respected. My caste had never defined how people treated me. Hearing those words felt like being struck by something I couldn’t understand or process.
I quietly walked back to the other room, trying to hold myself together.
A few minutes later, my friend’s mother came to me. Instead of addressing what had been said, she simply told me, “It’s okay. Don’t worry. Just don’t tell your parents about this.”
Those words broke my heart even more.

The problem wasn’t just what her aunt had said. It was the fact that everyone except my friend, seemed willing to ignore it, hide it, and move on as if it were normal.

The next morning, I packed my bags and left for home.

Even today, I have never told my parents what happened. I know they love me deeply, and I don’t want them to view my friend differently because of the actions and beliefs of her family. I chose to keep the incident to myself.

But the experience stayed with me. It helped me understand my friend’s personality better. She was also their victim.