A jack of all trades

*11.30* in the middle of an extremely busy and productive work week.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

This proverb has never made sense to me. I have always found it boring to be a master of one when you can be a jack of all. I have been a jack of all trades since school. I used to participate in everything from dance and drama to yoga, from Olympiad and scholarship tests to rifle shooting and lathi fights – you could find me in every team, every group. And of course, Samadnya – my soul sister. We’d be together in anything, EVERYTHING and win. Most of it was to avoid sitting for lectures, but guess what? We would still be teacher’s pets (Samadnya being the Principal’s daughter was not the reason, or so I want to believe).

I loved being part of the competition. I loved the preparation, the hustle and the effort, especially when we’d perform and give it everything we had. I don’t want to boast (or maybe I do, for a bit) but I was also the Best Student of my class for two or three years and the head of my scout-guide group (not a big deal that one, but since I’m mentioning everything..) and then there were couple of times when I topped the class in the end semester exams. My school days were the best, I was an all-rounder who loved herself, and always wanted to do everything.

I loved to do all my homework in time, so much that my parents would force me to stop studying. But I would also play for hours without a care. Life was simple, I was carefree and happy. Eventually, school days were over and I moved on to college, one after the other, and then into the professional world. All this while, I had left behind the little girl in me who’d always be happy and cheerful. The girl who would enjoy studying the American and Russian Revolution or solve Algebra and Geometry for hours, who would play kho-kho with such conviction as if it was the Olympics, who would go train as a commando, or go camping at a remote village for months, who would swim in a pond with frogs, play King Lear’s daughter in the Drama competition and also win every dance contest in town.

I lost her. And damn! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I missed her. It only took a couple of people over a few years to pull me down on my self-esteem bar. I felt unambitious, inferior and self-conscious of who I was and where I came from for the longest time. I had loved every bit of my childhood and yet, I had grown up to hate it for most part of my teenage- why? Well, for one, I didn’t feel confident in the new world outside of school and second was influence. Influence works wonders if you’re an unsure teenager exploring newer things. But that’s a topic for another blog. However, it took a long time for me to accept myself and fall in love with me, again. It took a lot of self-convincing and assurance that the place I came from was beautiful with the most loving, and genuine people. It took a lot of effort to go back to my childhood and cherish those memories instead of looking down upon them as something to be ashamed of.

I’m writing about all of this today because I had a fulfilling day at work. I felt like the child in me was back – a child who would be excited to go for one dance practise after another and participate in literally, everything. Today, I reconnected with what I have always been on the inside – a jack of all trades, an aspiring master of all and proud. So I am just going to make this blog about telling myself “I missed you. Welcome back. The world is ready for us to conquer.”