Do I love being a triplet? This is a question I have found myself pondering quite a lot over the years. My mother used to tell us stories about how people would visit the household just to catch a glimpse of us as babies.AdvertisementBut the novelty, as you can imagine, faded with time. To begin with, we weren’t identical. We were as fraternal as triplets could possibly get. And being the only girl in the trio meant that I often found myself at the receiving end of unwarranted comments. “It’s like having two personal bodyguards,” random strangers would say. I bristled at the gendered tone of the comment. Then there was the recurring one about how my parents had been “lucky” to have us as triplets. The sexist underpinning of that comment was not lost on me. What they really meant was: How fortunate that my parents got the “perfect” gender ratio in a single birth — it was a social jackpot, because god forbid, there were two or (gasp) three girls in the mix.At home, my parents’ obsession with treating us as a unit and not as individuals meant that our personal interests often took a backseat to the majority’s choice. And since my brothers outnumbered me, they usually had their way. Take extracurriculars, for example: I ended up learning karate for a decade because my brothers took an interest in it. When your parents insist on signing you up for the same classes, comparisons become inevitable. As triplets, it meant it was easy for people to slot us into categories: The quiet one, the sporty one, the academic one. I was branded the arrogant one because I refused to let my voice be drowned out by my brothers. I internalised early on that I had to be the loudest in the family to get my point across, which meant I could never be filed away as the soft one.The same pattern followed us into adulthood. My bad driving skills, for instance, became a talking point. My brothers are excellent drivers, so naturally, the adage “women are bad drivers” stuck to me, no matter the fact that we were entirely different individuals who just happened to share a womb.AdvertisementAlso Read | Charlie Kirk assassination: How Trump’s free speech politics deepens America’s democratic crisisWhile twins and triplets often bicker about having to share a bed or a single birthday cake every year, my woe was a little different. What happens when you’re flanked by two others every waking moment of the first 15 years of your life? My brothers were by my side — literally and figuratively — all the time. Every new classroom I entered, there they were. This meant our social lives were deeply intertwined. The people I hung out with were people we all knew. There was comfort in that, yes, but also a suffocating lack of personal space.most readThings shifted when we turned 15. I chose Humanities, one brother went into Science, the other took Commerce — a reflection of how different our interests truly were. I remember walking into a classroom in a new school, for the first time, without my brothers beside me. It was pure, unadulterated joy, a kind of freedom I never realised I had been craving all along. I was excited about starting a life that my brothers were not privy to. I made friends who were exclusively mine, shared jokes they weren’t a part of, chattered and giggled without them constantly barging in.Ironically, the distance brought us closer. For the first time, we had stories to share when we got home. With adulthood, the triplet tag became less entrenched. From a core part of my identity, it has now evolved into a fun fact I tell people about.So, do I love being a triplet? Yes, but with a caveat. I love the companionship, the shared history. But I will never let the triplet tag consume my individuality.saniya.s@expressindia.com