Scared of that bright unfriendly beam of light shining on you? If yes, then you are my comrade. I am a trained classical dancer, 16 years of bending, squatting, twirling, standing on my toes and various other rigorous practice routines.  You’ll probably be asking yourself… Isn’t someone who’s a trained dancer supposed to be fearless?! Not moi! The first and the last time I ever did a solo or a duet, was in my 4th grade. My dance school used to have annual shows, where us dancers used to put up the best of our routines with one major dance play (it would be like watching Romeo or Juliet in theatre). For us it was Shakuntala or tales of Lord Ram and Sita; or tales of Lord Krishna’s antics; and the list is forever, as Indian mythology has no limitations to stories being passed on for generations…

Now coming back to my supposed day of shining glory, it was my first and last one (much to my relief). It was a folk dance, comprising of myself impersonating a man (a drunken one at that!) and my partner, Vineeta (my wife)… Now, ‘fiasco’, would have been too underestimated a word for the events that transpired on stage. Before you all start imagining a stage collapse, fires or an impromptu hurricane, I should say that it was nothing as disastrous, except on a personal level… So here we were, in full costume, make up and the whole nine yards, with an addition of me feeling dinosaurs stomping around in my stomach, while Vineeta stood admiring my very impressive handlebar moustache.

So our names are announced, we take our places on the stage, the curtains are up and the music starts. And the funny thing is that, after I don’t recall what happened… nothing at all! Zilch! What I do remember is the pressure on my back of someone’s hands pushing my head between my knees, various other cacophonies. For a moment I thought I was blinded or dying, as I couldn’t see or breathe. When everything returned to normal levels after a couple of minutes, I realized, from the chatter going on that I had just stood there, fixed to my spot and then fell down, hyperventilating, hence, causing a small mass panic among the audience, especially my family. I could hear my father yelling at everyone to get out of the way, my mother being slightly hysterical and my brother bawling. Questions kept hurtling from every possible direction… “Are you ok?”… “Can you breathe?”; “Take her pulse!!” Listening to that particular directive, a lady frantically pokes at my arm with the requisite two fingers trying to find my pulse… which looking back, shouldn’t have been that difficult to find… I think at any moment, they were either going to pack me off to a hospital or start CPR (thank God that didn’t happen).

So basically, fiasco or embarrassment of monumental proportions, call it whatever you will, after this particular incident, I have stayed away from that unfriendly beam for some time, or at least performing solo’s and duets. And it wasn’t that difficult considering, as neither my trainer nor my parents wanted a repeat of that particular performance…