There is such a thing as being too right.
Many years ago, one of my mahagyaani friends from my FMCG sales days called me Naina from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.
Uhh. Not in terms of Deepika Padukone’s glory. The character.
I couldn't relate.
By then, I thought I had long dropped the ghissu girl avatar. I could trek, party, fight, dance, flirt. I had a full life beyond the books.
But maybe Naina never really left.
Because underneath all of that was still the girl who wanted to be included — but couldn't quite leave her books and walk across the room.
And years later, I sometimes see her turn up at work.
She works hard. She likes doing things well. In fact, she is naturally joyous at it. She prepares, delivers, follows through. She thinks about the right optics, the right check-ins, the right stakeholders, the right answer.
And yet, every once in a while, she looks around and wonders:
Why don't I feel like I belong?
Why do some people seem to get pulled into conversations, opportunities and informal circles so effortlessly, while I keep trying to earn my way into them?
So she does what she knows best.
She becomes even better.
More prepared. More polished. More useful. Better formal check-ins. Better work. Better optics.
More right.
It took me a surprisingly long time to see the irony.
Perfection can be a shield.
Sometimes, what looks like extraordinary self-sufficiency from the outside is simply a very sophisticated way of saying:
I am afraid of being judged.
Because there is safety in competence.
If my work is impeccable, you can't question me.
If I have thought through everything, I don't have to expose uncertainty.
If I always look sorted, nobody gets to see me trying to find my way.
But shields do two things.
They protect us.
And they make it difficult for people to reach us.
Perhaps that's why belonging cannot always be earned through excellence. At some point, you have to do the much scarier thing.
Reach out.
Say, I would love to be part of this.
Say, I don't quite know how to navigate this.
Say, I keep raising my hand, but somehow I'm not getting pulled in. Am I doing something wrong?
Say, Can you help me?
Not from desperation. Not because your future depends on the answer.
Quite the opposite.
From enough self-worth to know that another person's response doesn't determine your worth — and therefore you can afford to let them see that you don't have everything figured out.
Maybe that is the corporate coming-of-age of Ms Naina.
Not throwing away the books. Not becoming less hardworking, less thoughtful or less excellent.
Just learning that she doesn't always need to hide behind them.
Sometimes, all she had to do was walk across the room and ask.
