[Here's an article I had to write for my school magazine]
Can you think of that kid - that one who just has that special something to go up on stage and rock the crowd like there’s no tomorrow? This talented someone who always seems to know what he/she is doing; who just has this way of always getting stuff right, no matter how many people are watching them. Don’t you just envy this lucky little (or maybe not) bugger? I know I do! We’ve all met or watched these kinds of people. They could be people we’ve seen on TV, at culturals, or maybe even that chirpy girl who sits next to you in class. Whoever it is, I know that at some point of time, all of us have wanted to be this person; we’ve craved for the spotlight or maybe just the satisfaction of knowing you were in front of a crowd and you totally hit the spot.
But let’s just forget all those ‘glorious’ examples for a moment, because here’s the catch; most of us will go faster than a bullet to the other end of the planet before we even consider stepping up in front of a crowd and showcasing our talents and creativity. Face it, the great majority of us are a dreadful wreck when it comes to performing or speaking on stage. And whether we like to hide it under the rug or not, the problem is that a lot of us are plagued by something very familiar called ‘Stage Fright’. It’s that feeling you get when you’re made to stand up in front of a group of people- it’s like you’re being cornered by the angel of death, your throat goes dry, your mind goes blank, your heart is beating at a thousand beats per second and the world around you shatters into tiny little pieces. Well guess what? The last part doesn’t really happen, nor will the ground swallow you up (as much as you want it to at that point). The hilarious truth is that the world does NOT end the minute you make a mistake and you won’t be walking around with an oversized scar on your face that confines you to a life of ridicule.
You see, the bigger problem is that we don’t need to live with stage fright but most of us just can’t be bothered to shrug it off. Any of us can do it. All it takes is an itsy-bitsy ounce of will power, but finally it’s up to you. There are many ways to do it, but here are a few simple tips to help you overcome stage fright:
F- Face your fears. It’s a clear rule- know that you’re afraid, but also know that you’ll overcome it. Like I heard someone say, “Let it be, fear grows. Face it and it goes.” Sometimes, it’s as simple as just sucking it up and taking the plunge. Go for it, its okay if you mess up a little, taking your chances will definitely reduce your stage fright.
E- Experience it again and again. That’s very important, to gain some familiarity of going on stage. If you happen to pass out five times, chances are you won’t the sixth. (Uh…Don’t worry, I was just kidding.)
A-Assume imagine and act. Whatever works best for you; imagining the crowd naked, your favorite memory, or just thinking of your dog. The point is to use your imagination to your advantage and to make whatever situation you’re in more under control. It might seem silly at first but either way, you’d be doing the same. Only, usually, on the other hand, our beloved “sensible” and “realistic” smart alecks will waste their oxygen making up their own assumptions and predictions about how they look and what the audience thinks. So my advice to you is, for a second, just own the moment, forget about the audience, forget about messing up and just go with the flow.
R- Relax! This is probably the most important thing to do out of everything. Whatever it takes, just chill yourself out because the more anxious you are, the stupider you’re going to look and the more panicky you get, the more chances there are that you won’t think coherently during a performance or a speech. From inside, do your best to be calm and composed and most importantly, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. A lot of experts recommend listening to music or entertaining yourself before going on stage. Another crucial thing is to take care of the physical part too. I know it sounds like a load of bogus baloney, but the advice people give you to eat, exercise and sleep right is actually really important because a great part of fear is the bodily reflexes. Keeping that under control is very important. Another thing you should remember is to take deep breaths and breathe properly to relax yourself more.
Most people have to live with having cold feet for going on stage but the bottom line here, literally, is that if there’s anything in the world that’ll scare of fright itself, it’s got to be you.
Okay well here's what I was planning to write in my old post before the subject of facebook stealthily creeped into it (I'm serious- That was not what I was planning to write about!). Anyway, that's the thing, I was so clueless about what to write to at least motivate myself to start blogging again. I thought long and hard and looked everywhere for some inspiration. The best way to get that, as I thought, was to look for it by watching TV and scanning through the latest newspapers. And just when I was reading, reading, reading for a new idea to get those juices flowing- it hit me; Why the standards of the public media in India piss me off.
Yeah, really they do and for good reason. To begin with, I hate the newspaper reports because they are so unbelievably standard. And I guess I'm a total weirdo for thinking this, because apparently, that is the accepted, professional format of writing for their papers. Total, useless crap. I mean, the first thing that crossed my mind when I was comparing 'The Hindu' articles to the stuff I read in books and on blogs etc. was how much difference they have between them. BIG TIME! Let's take a look:
"When it rains, it pours in Goa. The city, so famous for its beaches and parties, pauses to take a breather when the heavens opens up. A weekend getaway is rewarding nevertheless if you love being in an idyllic setting. As you drive down the airport all you get to see is lush greenery."
You're probably reading this and thinking "she's mad". Yes, I know this is beautiful and totally elegant but seriously, this kind of stuff is all over the papers day after day, don't you think it's a little overused? Wait...Did I say 'little'? I meant criminally overused. The fact is that writing bucketloads of meaningless articles full of big, flowery, flamboyant words is not gonna make a difference! My point is, most of the stuff that goes into the public newspapers these days are plain, irrelevant and just downright fake. It would really help if they talked about things in Goa we didn't know about...the little insides stories, written with a little more of an exciting perspective. That's why the "free/opinion column" in NXG is always a bit more interesting to read.They say writing is a window to the soul, but some of the trash that's supposed to be entertaining us is nothing more than a window to a bunch of deadline-ruled careers and a sheer lack of imagination.
Something else that cracks me up at times but sometimes really gets under my skin is the multitude of stupidly fake movies. Or rather, fake concepts in movies. I'm usually the one to advocate fantasy, illogical stories and go against people who want fiction to be based on realism because of the fact that you're not celebrating the freedom and limitlessness of fiction by giving it the restriction of reality. But the fact is, sometimes we take this freedom a bit too far on the pretext of which we happily transgress the bounds of sensibleness and class...and we end up with a sorry work of stupidity. A far fetched idea is one thing, while a far fetched, completely moronic portrayal of an idea is something completely different. Movies and TV shows of all languages are guilty of this, but as far as the entertainment used in India is concerned, Hollywood movies are a bit better at obscuring their stupidities than their Indian counterparts.
In the olden days, the movies were supposed to be extra-dramatic just like theater but that's supposed to have tone down a bit over the decades. Some movie casts forget about this and we still have a lot of phoney roles on the big screen. You know, the sleazy superheroes, secret agents and businessmen or the wayyyyy too laid out "gangstas". The most cheezing off are the I'm-way-too-cool-to-act-anything close-to-human so called "sophisticates". The kind who have something elegant to say all the time, the kind who never slip and the kind who are fascinated by nothing. Sometimes, these phony characters are adorably funny but at others times they can just be plain annoying.
Indian movies take this a notch higher and make every little love affair the most empathetic melodrama you've ever cast your eyes on. Enter destiny, flower petals, romantic music and the crying. We even have fixed roles for the guy and for the girl and it goes a bit a like this; The Romeo is always flawless, get's a bit angry and reckless at times, can lift a monster truck and beat ten muscular gangsters silly without messing up even a single lock of hair. The Juliets have a longer and more tedious list of qualifications. She has to be dazzlingly beautiful, super well dressed (even if she's handling a pig-sty), have a beautiful voice, amazing dance moves and have the ability to be attractive to every human being in the vicinity. What's even more sickening is that not only does she have to be elegant and poised, but also extremely bubbly, child-like, adventurous, down-to-earth and never, ever ridiculed. It's a cute way to represent a girl, but every single time, you happen to turn on the TV you have these oh-so-glamorous beauty queens who are flawless, bubbling angels. Now that gets very sickening.
The list of "phonytics" is never ending, but my blog or my energy isn't so I'll stop talking at this. Now your turn; what do you like or dislike about the media? Idiotic concepts? Mundane articles? What would you change ?
The way I'm always making false promises to myself, I took another silent oath to get off my butt and start writing. To start putting something up on blogger, reading other people's blogs and establishing that as a hobby. I've been promising myself that I'd do other stuff too, like jogging, or delving into a new novel, or practice painting. There's so much that I aspire of accomplishing and all that stuff I wanna get back to but guess what? That so called "five minutes" of facebook always gets in the way!
And that's not a lame excuse. I swear, facebook's evil, It's wasteful, destructive and all the other disciplinishic words I can think of...but whatever it is, whether any dreamy-eyed boy could do it or not- facebook has sure got me smitten.
I'm actually ashamed to say it's probably the apple of my eye. And maybe the apple of the eyes of so many other poor, helpless people. Facebook has got us all perpetually glued and there's nothing more honest that I can say or do than give the genii a complete, full-fledged hats off. They say the pen is sharper than the sword- but believe me, all the computer programming gobbledygook behind facebook is sharper than the sword, more dominating than our poor naive friend "the pen" will ever believe he is, stickier than the most expensive super-glue ever produced and more destructive than any weapon ever created.
Oh wait, that's it! The weapons of mass destruction- a product of pure genius- was not buried down some god forsaken kitchen garden in the Arabian desert! It was ingrained deceivingly in the realms of cyberspace. How could the Bush administration have been SO stupid? Not only do they go screw up half the Iraqi LEGACY but they come back home with sheepish smiles going "Well guess it ain't there. Better luck next time hey, pops? All we gotta do is throw in some CHANGE and I guess those iRacky folks'll be able to get themselves a good ol' Bud Lite or something. Sure will straighten stuff up." Believe me, the percentage of chance that these guys would get anything right is probably even lesser than the number of braincells in their skulls. Three words for you; QUIT-WASTING-TIME.
Okay, my nutty exaggerations apart, lets take a look at the stuff facebook's doing to us. I'm too tired to go into the serious, security and moral issues, so for now- let's just stick to how much shit is being thrown at the fan by facebook.
I guess the biggest of the problems is how we lose track of our responsibilities. Like homework and studying ,for example- I swear to god, at this instant, it's 11:15 and I still have two commerce essays due for tommorow. Holy crap- This is as pathetic as it gets !@! I can actually talk about where facebook is leading me and not do anything about it. I guess the temptation surpasses the guilt every time. For those of you still at school or college, you'd totally get what I mean- I'm sure everyone of you have put away studying for a freakishly important exam just because you got too carried away with facebook. They actually have these procrastination groups and stuff like "I'm supposed to be doing my homework but I ended up on facebook". How aptly in our faces...
Danger number two is how vastly facebook affects our social lives. I'm beginning to find that more and more each day, so many people's lives are being built on, made and broken by facebook. I know I said I wouldn't be touching up on serious stuff but I wanna mention that I've actually seen relationships end because of some airhead getting all hanky panky with some of his so called "friends" on facebook. Like changing his relationship to "married" to someone other than his "steady" girlfriend. What's worse is that these "other women" in question aren't always women. Of course, the vice-versa applies. The message is, whatever it you're planning to do on facebook...EVERYBODY CAN SEE IT. What's even more strange, is that exactly when you think everybody will be too busy to notice what you're doing anyway (the way so many things that were actually meant to have an audience goes away unnoticed), everybody sees it. Like everybody, meaning, everyone, meaning, all d'peeps n da hood, not only manages to see it, but also talk about it even though whatever it is, it's completely dumb and useless.
Apart from that, we fight over facebook friends, friend requests, embarassing pictures, why nobody likes us because we never got tagged in a poem or a cartoon, POKES (!?!) and all sorts of insane bunk. We have the loners who cry about their empty walls, popular people complaining about their flooding friend requests, people who get upset about their friends doing badly in "how well do you know XYZ" quizzes, and the annoying people who get ignored on fb chat (I wonder why...). The worst of all of this are the rumors that get spread on facebook, normally through facebook status updates and the really, really tabboo pictures. On a serious note here, whoever you are- if you're on facebook, please use it with dignity and respect, 'cause like I said a simple, fun tool like fb can make or break you.
So signing off; though this was just a useless rant, just me trying to kill some time by complaining about something completely stupid, and not all of this should be taken that seriously- I just wanna end this by saying that I guess it's time we reflected on what we do and just learn to be careful dealing with social networks like facebook.
Now, I gotta run, I bet my notifications are pilin' up!
I still remember the day when I first met Janani. It was a sultry July afternoon in school and we were out on the P.E. field. Being tired, I decided to sit down on a bench where I saw too girls, Vencia and Janani watching me inquisitively as I approached. I was just a few days new to then to the school, so to whoever I met, I spoke animatedly.
Thankfully, these kids didn’t have a problem having a conversation with me and I remember spending that P.E. period learning all about my classmates, school politics and every “taboo” thing I’d been doing for the past two weeks as a new kid. We talked about the social circles in the school. At that point, it looked like the two girls were really close friends and probably part of the same clique, because of how comfortable they looked, sitting there together. They even told me that they were close friends, but I was quick to notice a faint look of reproach in Janani’s eyes, and that's when I knew then that there was more to what I was hearing than what met the eye.
I was right, because later I found out that Janani was one of the outcasts in our grade and Vencia was just one of her very few close acquaintances. You could call her a friend, but it was nowhere near a real “close-friendship”.
Vencia on one hand ,was a small, average-looking, average-habit cheerful girl. She had her own circle of friends and had pretty much secured her comfort zone, a girl who probably didn’t have much to worry about.
Janini on the other, was a girl you hardly ever expect to see. Janani was tall and slightly burly. Her hair was long and greasy (with traditional coconut oil) and she wore two long pigtails that were folded and tied up with ribbons, they way it’s done traditionally in south Indian villages by young schoolgirls. Her face was tired and blemished and her expression was permanently twisted into a morose frown. Her eyes looked pained, her shoulders were constantly hunched and she always chose a secluded place to sit, tired of being treated so differently all the time. Talking to her, I found that that she wasn’t as backward as she looked. Though she wasn’t exactly someone who was “globally cultured” and though she wasn’t all that in par with the teen lifestyle, she seemed to know a lot. To be honest, all of this was pretty cool to me, and since everything and everyone in India was so different to me anyway, I didn’t have any reason to find repulsion in Janani’s unique style.
As the year went on, I slowly began to settle down, make new friends and even find my own little “clan” to hang out with. On the occasion, when the seating arrangements were changed, or during our break, I got a chance to talk to Janani and she told me all about her family and her life. She was just so different from the other people I talked to; she would talk about things that were completely out of the ordinary or way too uncool for anybody else to even think about. That didn’t bother me; in fact I was actually keen on talking about deeper, stranger topics, that were different from the usual mundane gossip. We talked about everything from culture to education to politics. Janani was interested in Hindu mythology, and I sat through a whole period listening to her tell me about the Hindu Ramayana, and other little stories that came from the Indian past. Out-of-the-blue she’d ask me strange questions, like why people get into relationships. She told me she just couldn’t relate and we spent hours discussing and ranting about our views on relationships and love and I can even remember people turning back and throwing us mocking looks, or just shaking their heads like we were from another planet. I really didn’t mind, I found it quite fun. I found Janani really deep and mature. She was strong, and serious and she always kept her anger bottled up. At the same time, she was never afraid to stand up and let someone know about her injustice. Even if it was a teacher or a grown-up, she was brave enough to get up and oppose. And her “anger” was a lot worse, a lot more meaningful than the anger that most of us experience.
I didn’t always get in touch with Janani, it was just those days when I saw her sitting by herself, I always made it a point to say hi and talk to her. I always went up to her and gave her a hug, by which she was always so taken aback. At times, Janani would bring out her dark side, and she often told me about how she’d never really had any close friends. There were two girls in our class that she hung out with sometimes, but she told me how she was never actually taken in to their group. She told me that people saw her as arrogant, but that’s not exactly the self-perception I anticipated. Janani was highly dignified and she preferred being secluded to being ridiculed in the process of mingling with people. I never pitied her for the person she was, I only pitied the people who had their heads way too high in the clouds to see and appreciate the person she was. The fact that I made friends with her soon became a standing joke in my own friends’ circle. They’d give me weird looks when I’d talked to her and tell me to help her out saying “Go ask her what she wants, she’s your friend” like I it took a great deal of humility to befriend “someone like that”. People were never mean to her; they just treated her like she was invisible and like talking to her was way beneath their dignity. If you ask me, she was more intelligent than most of the kids in the class and they just had no idea about what they were raising their chins to. If only she had a lighter mind, a less worrisome life and people that actually cared about her and looked up to her, I could swear to you, she’d become someone so amazingly great.
Apart from the fact that she had no true friends, Janani had so much more to deal with in life. She was always given the worst seats in the classroom, she faced partiality with the teachers and she’s even had her own parents insulted in front of the whole classroom. To any passer-by she looked like just another one of those pissed-off moping losers, but I don’t think they would ever understand the pain of being absent from school for a week and not having anyone notice or care. Or how it feels to not go to a field trip (which happens exclusively for ninth grade) because she wouldn’t have any friends to hang out with anyway.
Now, all of that was over a long time ago. Things began to drift apart late in the tenth grade when the revisions and mocks for our board exams started taking over. I hardly ever saw or spoke to Janani after that. The days flew by as we had our revisions and exams followed by our summer vacations. Now, just a week ago, the new academic year started and so did my eleventh year of school. When I walked into campus on the first day, the first person I spotted was Vencia- the same girl who I found sitting with Janani back in the ninth grade P.E. class and we sat together in the morning assembly. After the assembly and the speeches were over, one of my friends in the row in front of me turned around and asked me jokingly why I wasn’t talking to any of the new kids the way I made friends with people like Janani (She was one of my friends who sat next to her in class during the last term). That’s when it struck us that we hadn’t seen Janani yet, we had no idea which course and which subjects she’d opted for or even if she was staying in the same school. I turned to Vencia and we both asked her if she knew where Janani had gone and she just shook her head in confusion. That day, I went around asking quite a few people if they had any idea where Janani was, if she had transferred schools and where she’d transferred but every single person I asked shook their heads and told me they didn’t know.
I remembered how my friends threw me a “surprise farewell party” when I was only planning to change schools (and I didn’t btw), and I remembered all those parties, yearbooks, journals, signed shirts, hugs, laughter and tears at the end of the school year for the kids who were leaving school or leaving the city. Now with all of that happening, here was a girl that we all knew, shared our years of school with, some of us who even shared our company and laughter with, and when we weren’t paying attention she walked out our lives in silence. We don’t know where she is, how to contact her, where she’s gone, or even if she’s till alive for that matter. Besides, who cares anyway? She’s just an outcast, right? A social reject.
I once read on a signboard,
“When the entire world seems to be against you, and turns your back against you, turn around ‘cause there will always be someone with open arms still waiting for you.”
There were a very small handful of us who cared about Janani. Maybe it was our job to make her feel loved. Who knows, it could have been any of us. Whenever I think about her, I can’t help feeling this deep ugly pit of guilt in my stomach. Maybe it was I who was meant to be that “someone”, maybe I was the one responsible, maybe I was the one with the job. But among the twists and turns of fate, I was just too caught up. Too caught up with my own life, my own friends and my own petty problems. Maybe I could have made a difference, but the thing is, I didn’t. So here’s my point; I failed miserably at being a good friend.
I wasn't exactly sure how to write my next post, because after such a long span of time, it was almost like my fingers, mind and everything else were just too numb to write. Too weak to flow, like I'm being enslaved by my own incapacity. To be frank, even right now, I'm just sitting here trying to push myself to write hoping that after a point it'll flow all by itself, the way it used to. Hoping that it'll be as simple as breathing, the way it used to.
I called my last post "kick-off", and now, come to think of it, it doesn't really feel like I kicked off. It's more I was catapulted with full force across an endless chasm I could never ever conquer. And like the best and worst of things, it did end but the end came quite unexpectedly- In this deep "endless" abyss- I landed in the middle of nowhere, too weak and too fragile to get up and find my way home.
But it's different now -and I promise.
And that's why I call this my "baby steps"; because I helped myself up and I'm daring to stagger across as much as I can- just like a child does, no matter how difficult and painful it is, no matter how many times he or she has to trip, stumble and fall...because that elegant, graceful stride that comes at the end of it really is worth all that pain.
Ahh the beginning of a blog. For starters, I guess I should start off with an intro about the brain behind it - ME. My name is Yamna and I'm a eleventh grader living in a place pretty close to the equator called Chennai. It's a huggge metro located on the coast of southern India and it's basically a fiasco of the randomest things you can ever think of. Like Nakku Mukka, chili powder, crows that like to taunt chameleons, "chinese restaurants" that serve everything from wantons, to spaghetti, to burritos, mint-potato-cucumber-onion sandwiches, and the coolest auto-rickshaws in the world :D
About myself, I'm not gonna drill you with the regular cliche about what a "Funny, Outgoing, Happy go lucky, down to earth" person I am. If there's anything I would say bluntly about myself in a few words, it would be how I totally hate walking within the line. I don't think it's worth trudging around in been-there-done-that-land. Explore, explore, explore- That's a way cooler mantra.
I'm quite artsy and I thrive on creativity. I love writing, reading, composing, drawing, painting, sketching, coloring, mucking, singing and a lot of "that" kind of stuff. I enjoy reading almost anything and I love visiting art galleries to look at other people's artwork. The weirder they are, the better.
I'm a fun magnet. I suppose that explains why I'm so drawn to so many different things in life...My list of interests is endless. I love playing sports, dancing, video games, movies, clothes, skateboarding blahh blahh blahh. I'm incredibly playful and I never stop to think twice about why I'm acting my shoe size 'stead of my real age. Basically that's it ; I'm completely invogarated by lots of speed, noise, excitement and PIZAZZ. I'm a candy-choco-holic too :D
I also enjoy going deep and I spend a lot of time unravelling my philosophical thoughts. Like I said, I'm not into reading a bunch of books about Confucius and Plato -I'm more into playing around with my own thoughts and the thoughts of other people around me trying to figure out things about life, love, emotions etc. (That obviously won't ever ever happen ...). Plus, Im a Muslim, I'm really fervent about my faith and I'm totally interested in learning about other religions and beliefs too. I believe in peace, virtue and tolerating everything around you. As you might have guessed, I'm an activist and I dream of being someone who makes a difference in the world .
Oh, and by the way, I'm a tree-hugger too! *Tries to supress the groan going round*
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