Good luck messages for your sister

Six messages you could actually send

Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it, so all that is left is to change a word and send it. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.

1. All the best for tomorrow. You've prepared harder than anyone in this house has realised, and that was the only part of it you were ever in charge of. Go in steady, and tell me about it all afterwards.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. Good luck. Ignore everybody's advice, including mine, and do it exactly the way you've been doing it all year. Whatever comes back afterwards, nothing changes at this end. Nothing at all, honestly.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. All the best, behen. You've been the smart one in this family since we were small, and I've never once seen you walk into something unprepared. Tomorrow won't be the exception. Get some sleep, and go in without the panic.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. All the best. Eat something before you leave, because every single year you forget and every single year you regret it. Then go in and be your usual irritatingly capable self about the whole thing.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. Good luck tomorrow. I know you'll be awake at one in the morning going over it again, so take this as a message telling you to put the phone down and sleep instead. You've done enough. Really, enough.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. All the best for tomorrow. Everyone in this house already knows how much is riding on it, so I'm not going to be the one repeating it back to you. What I'll say instead is this: we're proud of the year you've put in, and that was true before tomorrow and stays true afterwards. Ring me when you're out.

   Copy

Writing your own

Say the thing the parents cannot say. In most Indian families the exam has been given enormous weight by everyone else. A sibling saying it changes nothing at this end is genuinely relieving, and it is the only voice in the house that can say it credibly.

Add one practical, slightly bossy detail. Eat before you go, take two pens, leave early — small and concrete beats inspirational, and it reads as somebody actually looking after her rather than cheering from a distance.