The Star by Shruthi Rao

Vanaja just had to be the best at everything. Even as a child, she constantly competed with everybody. She wanted to have the longest plait, the largest bruise, and the neatest homework. If she jumped rope two hundred times yesterday, she wouldn’t rest until she managed two hundred and ten today.

Her mother had no idea how to handle her rather malcontent child, and she soon learnt to let Vanaja do whatever she wanted. Vanaja carried her fierce competitiveness to college, which, of course had to be the best in the city, and for which she worked harder than she ever had. But when she got there, she found that she couldn’t top the class as easily as she could at school, no matter how much she worked at it. So, she compensated by enrolling herself in all sorts of events, and winning every kind of prize that could possibly be won.

Right after she graduated (with distinction), her parents decided that it was time she got married. Vanaja made an exhaustive checklist of attributes, and checked with meticulous care the credentials of every prospective groom against it. Finally she settled on (and married) the one who scored the best in terms of education, career, and looks.

She was the perfect homemaker. You wouldn’t find a mote of dust on any surface in the house. She prepared tasty dishes and served them in the best china she could afford to buy. Her home was decorated with the choicest articles, painstakingly selected and bought at excellent bargains from various handicrafts exhibitions across the city. She was a wonderful hostess, always having guests over at home and preparing fabulous spreads. She was always well-turned out, with not a hair out of place.

And inevitably, she transferred all her ambitions to her husband. He had to make the best presentations, buy the best car, rent an apartment in the best complex (until they saved enough to buy) and just had to be promoted whenever his promotion was due. And when her son Akash was born, she transferred all her expectations onto him. Even at the hospital, she gushed about how his bawl was the lustiest among the babies born on the same day as him, how he weighed the most, and how he was the pinkest of them all.

As he grew, she kept an obsessive watch over his development, charted his every step, agonised over every delayed milestone, and exulted at everything that he did ahead of schedule. She entered him in Beautiful Baby contests and sent his photographs to diaper companies. Before the year had gone by, she had listed out all the babies in their neighbourhood and confirmed that her son was sleeping, walking and speaking well-ahead of everybody else.