All I could hear was my name being screamed in a rhythmic loop amidst claps and laughter. A moment before that, I was sitting in a dark corner amongst a just about familiar faces, biting my nails while cursing the sadist blood running through the veins of my seniors. Bloody sadists. How could they even think of putting their sweet not-so-little juniors through such traumatic jolts? The sympathetic nervous system of my body was far away from being sympathetic and was boiling with action sending out signals to the brain that this lady is not pleased. My legs were shaking. Sweat drenching my palm and forehead. Heart rate speeding more than the speed of light. I knew my hands are going to shake when I read the letter. I had taken all sorts of precautions to prevent this rather uncanny self of mine to come out of the closet. Defense mechanism is what I call them. I had read the letter nth times so that I don’t flounder on the words. I had rehearsed walking up to the stage and holding the microphone. I had prayed to God, if he could save me just this one time. I had practiced meditation for hours to keep myself calm. In case my hands go numb, I had prepared myself well for that too by tying my rubber band around my fingers so that I could feel them. I had left my hair open so that my red hot ears do not make its presence in the public. And for a shield between my audience’s eyes and my eyes, I had my power less specs ready. A direct eye contact is just as dangerous as the infectious conjunctivitis. I know all this sounds extremely silly to the point of being coming across as obnoxiously fatuous. But I could not help myself. I just could not imagine myself flaunting out loud in front of my seniors and my new friends that I was goddamn nervous.
Suddenly there was my name thrown high up in the air and falling bang right in my ears. My fingers involuntarily stopped its play with the rubber band. I could feel my heart pumping blood to all over my body and my throat parching. It was my time to go up the stage and profess my love to one of the seniors. Never had I imagined my fist brush with love proposals would happen this way. Anyway, I gathered all my courage and made my way to the stage. There was a strange interplay between my heart beat and the clap of the crowd; as if both of them had conspired against me to stumble on my way. No, I did not stumble. I fell down flat on the floor. I felt my whole world crushed on me. That I belonged to the floor. As if I was just given the death sentence. But then, a suicidal movement it may seem, I did restore my clumsy self and slowly walked towards the stage.
The stage is the most haunted place on earth I believe. What can otherwise explain the bizarre behavior that I do the minute I step my foot on a stage? The color of my face changes. My hands and legs do the break dance on it own. There are knots in my stomach. And words just refuse to come out of my mouth in an appropriate chronology. It has to be the doing of some ghostly being hovering around me while I try to be really exceptional on stage. It was the same ghostly being who shook my hands vociferously while I held out the love letter to my senior. There were tears in my eyes that I desperately tried to hold back. My first day in college was disastrous. I could not even begin to imagine how I am ever going to show my face again. It was like the whole world was staring at me, almost like shooting at me with their eyes. I felt naked and exposed. I wanted to just run somewhere and cry out loud. Little did I know that it was time for the storm to finally settle down?
Fear of public speaking has been a common phenomenon amongst many people today. I have been a victim of such a social ordain for a very long time. Life is tough as they say. But it becomes tougher when not being able to speak out become a part of your natural disposition. Life gives too many chances but this one disposition of yours pulls you back from taking up those chances. Like it did for me and I lost each one of them at the cost of causing a huge hara-kiri to my image. I lost out on being part of a short-film because I feared the camera lens on me. I never took part in debates, extempore etc because I feared those eyes staring right at me. I feared the limelight on me. The weight of public glare was too heavy on my shoulders. I would rather do my work somewhere in a hidden corner where nobody could see me. I do not know if I was doing the right thing. All I knew was I was missing out on those things that would have made things right for me professionally. As hard may be it is to accept, I was being utterly foolish.
That evening when I came to my room, I could not look myself in the mirror. I had lost myself to the hands of mindless fear and it was unnerving to see its reflection in the mirror. At once, a whole montage of random shots of my failed performances-the song I could not sing, the opinion I could not voice out, the film I could not act out- came in a whim in front of my eyes. I started questioning my fear. Who do I attribute my fear to? I did not even know what I feared. The public glare? The limelight? The Camera? The stage? May be it was time for the epiphany when my mobile buzzed.
“Self-confidence does not come from presence of success but from the absence of fear of failure – DAD”. A message from my father, who had absolutely no idea about my current situation. Talk about cosmic timing. That was the moment when all my questions were answered. Everything became crystal clear. You know one of those “eureka” moment when you suddenly find out what you had been looking for since ages. Or the moment when a complex puzzle is solved or a twisted knot is straightened. Yes, it was one of those moments when finally realization dawned upon me. It took just one SMS for me to infer that it was not the stage I feared, nor the public. I feared failure. I was so busy preparing myself to be perfect that I drilled myself in a way that I began to unconsciously etch it in my mind that a little imperfection would kill me. It became so much important for me to be the best in front of public no matter who I was inside. I was so blind that I could not see that it was okay for people to see your little flaws here and there. I forgot to laugh at myself and my idiosyncrasies. My threshold for tolerance of failure was put up in such a high pedestal that I invented my own “bullet proof” defense mechanism to fight against failure. But guess what? In the same process, I failed in each and every battle worth fighting for. Wish I could have known that the secret to win the battle was to embrace yourself as who you are with all the love and care that you expect from others. Wish I could have known that those claps that day were to encourage me, that the whole “love-letter” session was an welcome gag for us, that if I was not so persistent on making a hullabaloo out of it I could have realized that I was not running for an academy award competition but just an innocent senior-junior rapport building effort. Wish I could have rewind my time back.
As I rest my head in the pillow that night I was at peace. Because now I knew the secret. I had pooh pooh’ed my fear for good. The storm had finally settled down indeed. I know it might seem a very trivial matter for a lot of people and I genuinely envy them for their fearless attitude but then I also know that while I sleep in peace today, there is someone out there taking turns in bed because he has to give a presentation tomorrow. I reveal this secret for you my friend. I hope it works for you like it did for me. Love yourself and be assured that the only thing that will do a break dance is your heart. Good Luck.
Bhavna Devchoudhury
'Campus Writing' 