"Can I just call you MC? Like MC Hammer?"

The stars were not consulted on that occasion. Nor, it appears, was Manju.

In Hindu tradition, a name is a celestial gift — a sound provided by the cosmos and filled with human hope. But for five-year-old Manju, arriving in Michigan from Delhi, her name quickly becomes a burden to every room she enters. A source of hesitation. A tilted head. A pause at the school register. An inconvenience to be naturalized.

So she learns the quiet art of triage. She rolls out placeholders. She deploys nicknames.

Manju. MC. Mona.

Three names. One person. None of them entirely chosen.

UNFIT is a story about the pause — the involuntary half-second that happens when the world encounters something it wasn't expecting, and decides whether to see it or replace it. It is about the cost of spending a lifetime making your own correctness smaller so that other people's comfort can stay larger.

And about what remains when you finally stop.