A Dinner-break non-Post
©By Vijaya Sundaram
March 31st, 2013
Write about your strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness: what caused the adrenaline? Was it justified? How did you respond?This was the prompt I got just now when idly clicking on “inspire me” after idly clicking on the “New Post” button seconds earlier.
I had just read other people’s blogs, while chowing down my two Amy’s Pizza slices. This is my dinner break in between grading papers, so I don’t feel too guilty about blogging! (Yes, it has become my guilty pleasure, and that is terrible! It’s interfering with everything. I am truly addicted). Or perhaps, I just want to write, because the dam has broken, and every day is a day wherein I need to write something down, be it poetry, stories, reflections or commentary on something.
So, what is my strongest memory of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness?
Being on stage at the Museum Theatre in Madras (now Chennai) India, at age 16, singing Vincent by Don McLean (click the song-title to hear Don McLean) to a crowd of five hundred school-and-college-age kids — so, as far as heart-pounding, belly-twisting nervousness goes, that took the prize.
As did I, that night. We won the Best Vocalist AND Best Band award (with my mostly all-girl band — our drummer was a boy we imported from our “brother” school). We blew them away. I had been ready to faint at the beginning of it all, but settled into an almost surreal state of calmness after I began, and the wild crowd became still. At the end of that song, wild applause rang in the hot, stage-lit air. I couldn’t see anyone. I was alone in a ring of light, and it felt good.
(I could write more about this, but that will have to wait for another time. This is a quick post.)
My most recent feeling of heart-pounding belly-twisting nervousness?
Right now! I’ve got to go! My heart is pounding madly. I’ve got to finish grading mountains of paper! An all-nighter looms. And I broke my word to my FB friends. I wrote this blog! But what the hell, it’s my dinner break. Right? And it’s not really a blog post. I mean, it’s only four hundred and forty-four words (according to that little word-count gremlin crouching below this box), and that’s a mere sigh in the raging winds!
Justifications, justifications! I want to write! That’s all I want to do!
See you when I emerge, gasping for air and sustenance, mid-week. If you don’t hear from me, I’ve probably died from drowning in paper (it’s a veritable sea around me here, and the water-levels are rising).
Quick, someone hand me a pair of flippers and a snorkel! This tsunami will not bear me away.
Bye, folks!
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams.
Alas, I have no picture of me performing on stage in Madras (Chennai) at age 16, but here’s me at age 21 onstage (far left, in black pants, black&white shirt, and electric guitar in hand) at Fergusson College, Pune, India, at the InSynch ’85 Inter-Collegiate Festival.
