Master of None

The story began with the first of the messages that Amruta received. It came printed on a crisp, white square of paper, in a crisp, white envelope that bore no clue as to who had sent it in the first place. The print read simply Amruta Jadhav will never be the best at anything she does. At this point, Amruta was only a young girl of twelve. In a small town that had had its fair share of inexplicable events and random instances of magic, the message was taken with the utmost solemnity and was believed without question. And that was before all the other messages. They didn’t always come through the same channels – sometimes they came in the form of a text from an unknown number, or through an anonymous speaker on the radio, and sometimes they were in the form of a fortune teller’s predictions at the town carnival, or though a mysterious call on the large and ancient telephone in the foyer, that no one remembered still worked.

But what all the messages had in common was that they were always untraceable and they always carried the same words: Amruta Jadhav will never be the best at anything she does. Navigating her way around the weighty prediction would prove to be tricky in the days to come – at school, half her classmates would take great joy in teasing her, while the other half would offer her their sincere condolences, teachers and trainers would be wary about choosing her first for any competitions or parts, and in little and large ways her life would change, as it is wont to do.

But at age twelve, a bold and bright Amruta treated the whole affair with a great deal of scorn, and took it to be an obvious challenge. “Look,” she said to her family, at the breakfast table, “if there’s one thing that all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve watched have taught me, it’s that predictions like this are meant to be thwarted.” She took a thoughtful sip of her berries milkshake and then went on, “I’m going to prove it wrong. I’m going to find something that I can do better than anyone else, and then I’m going to perfect it.” With that firm declaration, she began the first part of her newly changed life. 

The first activity that caught Amruta’s interest was dancing. Her school had started a dance club for all its students just that year, and most of her classmates had already signed up for it. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to pick up and hone a new skill, and so, with that motive in mind, Amruta joined the club alongside all her friends. The young girl started her lessons with high hopes and an innate love for learning new things, and her first few sessions went exceedingly well. Amruta would spend the evenings dancing to all her favorite songs with her best friends, feeling happy, and energized, and positively brimming with enthusiasm. But it became clear to her a few months into the lessons that dancing simply wasn’t something that she would ever master. She knew that her honest enjoyment came out in the way she moved, turning it into something lively and open, but despite her best efforts, she just wasn’t able to refine the steps to any of her dance sequences. 

This meant that while Amruta had turned out to be quite a good dancer, she would never be the best in her batch, and so she immediately and abruptly gave the skill up. After some consideration, she decided to turn her attention to badminton next. Every weekend without fail she would sling her racquet over her shoulder, and set off for the town club with her dad, where they would then proceed to play for hours together. This went on for a good few months, and Amruta even chose badminton to be her extracurricular activity at school, so that she could work on all the techniques that she hadn’t yet picked up. But, somewhere along the line, she began to feel certain that the sport wasn’t meant to be a talent by which she could be known. This suspicion was proven correct just a few weeks later, by the mini advertisement printed on the box of cereal that her mum bought for her. In eye-catching, multicolored letters it said, Amruta Jadhav will never be the best at anything she does. 

Over the course of the next few years, Amruta tried her hand at every sport, skill and art form she could think of. She learned chess at thirteen, she learned to swim at fourteen, and at fifteen she learned to crochet, and at sixteen she tried her luck with drama, but none of it stuck. Every time she would start something new, hopeful and determined, she would realize that while she was passably good at it, she would never be the absolute best. And what good was that? Amruta longed to be someone, to be known for something – she wanted to be the best artist in her class, or to win awards in story writing, or to be a champion footballer, and she just couldn’t see the point in continuing with anything when she felt certain that it couldn’t carry her all the way to the finish line. And so she kept trying one thing after another, with an increasing sense of desperation and a need to prove all the numerous messages wrong. 

Finally, in the months leading up to her seventeenth birthday, Amruta began to wonder, with a sense of great horror at the prospect, if it was simply the time to give up. Her birthday, when it dawned, turned out to be an exceptionally bright and sunny day in an obvious nod to the irony of her life. After spending most of the morning avoiding people and sulking in quiet, unobtrusive corners of the house, Amruta made her way to her mother’s room, in search of some company. “Hi, sweetheart,” her mum greeted her, looking up from the screen of her laptop and dimpling her cheeks, “what brings you here?” Amruta flung herself into a chair near her mother’s own and groaned. “Oh, not having a very good day, then?” Her mother asked, furrowing her brows in concern. Amruta straightened up and shook her head, “Of course not! I mean, did you see what the icing on my birthday cake spelled out?” 

Her mother gave a wry smile, “That prediction, yes. And after your baba spent so much time trying to get the people at the bakery to spell your name right.” That made Amruta crack a smile, but it slipped quickly off her face as she prepared herself for her next words. “Do you think I should stop trying so hard to fight this prophecy?” She asked, finally. Her mother’s eyes widened in surprise, “What? Why do you want to stop?” Amruta gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know,” she said, “It just feels like none of it is helping. Over the last five years, I’ve tried so many different things, I’ve been to so many different classes. I’ve played football, and squash, I’ve learned to skate and I’ve learned how to sketch, I’ve tried acting and I’ve tried singing too, and I’m just not the best at any of them!” She paused to take a breath. “So, what’s the point?” she concluded, feeling miserable. 

Her mother didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she put aside her laptop. “Sweetheart,” she said and then stopped to shake her head. “You know, if you were anyone else I would have told you that the whole point is just to have fun. To enjoy what you do and to make that your whole reason for doing it. But I know that you do have fun doing almost everything you do, and that that’s still not enough. Am I right?” Amruta nodded in agreement. Her mother smiled and leaned forward to take both her hands in her own. “So, what does someone like you do, when they can’t be the best at anything?” Amruta just stared at her in incomprehension. Her mother laughed, “They get really good at everything! Amruta, I’ve been watching your progress over these past few years, and sweetheart you have learned so many new things! You just said it, didn’t you? Badminton, and singing, and dancing, and crochet; so much. And you’ve got so good at so many of these things because you’ve just been trying so hard.” She grinned, “So, who cares if you’re not the best at any one of these skills, when you’re the best at just knowing so many!” 

Amruta realized that she was smiling too, in relief and a different, hopeful kind of happiness. It felt like she had been looking at everything wrong for such a long time, and her worldview had suddenly and dramatically been changed in the course of just one conversation. “Thank you,” She managed, “You’re right.” She shook her head in realization. “Wow. I have picked up quite a few skills in just five years, huh?” She said with a laugh. “Yes, well, don’t let it get to your head!” Her mother teased, smiling back at her. Her phone buzzed, and Amruta plucked it out of her pocket and unlocked it. It was a notification from her weather app: Amruta Jadhav will never be the best at anything she does, against the background of a sunny, blue sky. It didn’t feel like a challenge anymore, it felt like a win. “And so I’ll just get really good at everything.” She said, and that’s how Amruta’s story changed once more, and this time on her terms.