“What is the craziest thing you did in your college?”, she asked. I hardly knew her 2 minutes ago and this is her 2nd straight question right after ‘which college are you from?’, while I was still hesitating to ask her, her discipline.
Well, there always is something about these Extraverts that attract me. They can shake hands without the other extending one. I always dreamt of being one, totally wild, completely crazy, careless, limitless and, that day, on that stage, in those shoes, with that hat, under those lights, I did, I did that I thought I would never do, yes I did…!
‘Craziest’, is a relative term and for a Library-Lizard, bunking a class can be qualified as one. Going on a tour, flunking exams, well, can be put under crazy++. Being the backstage guy for events and losing all the attendance marks, writing & directing a short film, heading a student club, well, I guess, moving from crazy to a scary zone. But after all of that, this one battered the hell out of my balls.
The stage was all set for my final Annual day at college. Don’t know about the front-end, but the back-end of the stage is all-together a different world. You get to meet all the artists and actors, know their roles, listen to their stories, much before they enter the other side of the world. A world, totally lit-up with the dichotomy of pressure and pride. Oh ya, I forgot to mention this in the list above, I had started Singing too, Singing on-stage!!!
Sometimes, you got to pick those eye-balls out of your courage and go blind on the stage, singing like a dog barking in the dark. I did just that, not once, not twice, no pain, no gain. A wise man with a mask once said, “There can be no true despair without hope”. So I kept making those jumps without a rope, shielding my baby hope from the Voldemort, rising it without a scar.
I now call myself the lead-vocalist of our band, all-though, all I do is bury my choking notes in that heavy instrumentation. That day was my final concert in the college, yes, we used to literally use that word ‘concert’, as we got 2 singers, 2 guitarists, 1 drummer and a guy on piano.
A, F#m, D, E, Bm, with the chords resonating, I started walking down the ramp, singing “Nalone Pongenu Narmada”. I practised it too much that now my sub-conscious mind, is doing the singing part, and one part of my brain, not sure left or right, is voicing, “Hey, you are just kidding right, you are not gonna do it, no way, just walk back”. And then the other part replied, “That is such a cliché, I heard you saying this many times. I am just so used to this, but haven’t lost the excitement in surprising you”.
With that said, I blew a Flying Kiss to my audience, like a Rockstar to his fans. A haze of smoke pumped on to the stage with ashy explosions on both the edges, the crowd screaming like crows on shock, surging and shaking the ground beneath. Well, none of that happened!!!. I neither a Rockstar nor are they my fans. But I care a heck, that was my Matrix moment, creating my own reality and as I see, Beast unleashed…!