Our Zoom call is scheduled for 7 pm and Maulik Pancholy logs in from New York five minutes late. Yet, he can’t help but feel embarrassed about it and we chuckle about how it’s funny that even after a year of a WFH life, we’re still figuring stuff (read, tech) out. It is only after our 20-minute conversation that we realise how apt our rather mundane conversation starter is as an analogy for the plot of Pancholy’s debut book. The Best at It (HarperCollins India) released overseas in 2019 but has just made its way to India, and at the heart of it, is Rahul Kapoor, a 12-year-old gay Indian American kid trying to figure his life out.

Rahul lives in Indiana and is anxious about starting seventh grade. He’s got a good support system in his best friend Chelsea, and a grandfather he calls ‘Bhai’ as they share a brotherly relationship. It is Bhai who instils confidence in him by telling him to find one thing that he’s really good at and become the best at it. Now, Rahul makes it his life’s mission to find that one thing but there are hurdles he has to cross: Brent, his classmate, who is a bully; racism and ‘fitting in’ as an Indian American; and his sexuality.