The Performer!

 Hey friends..I'm back..I don't know if you still like my blog..and I know it is about very simple and silly things..but that's the person I am.You can't expect me to be  a totally different person and write about great things!I'm like this blog...silly and simple and talkative..and its difficult to change now..

The topic for today is about my historic stage performances.I can talk nonstop but onstage I get very scared sometimes.

When in my kindergarten I was called to recite some nursery rhyme in front of the class and when I opened my mouth no sound came :D

My teacher Ms.Yvonne said"Lets increase her volume"and did some action similar to that but in vain!I didn't open my mouth. I did not know that in the years to come embarrassment was going to be my best friend!! ;)

Then came my 1st std.I was selected for the play "Sleeping Beauty".And you must have guessed that my role was NOT that of "Sleeping Beauty" :D

I wore yellow shirt and red pants and my dialogue was...NOTHING AT ALL!!

All I had to do was stand beside Sleeping Beauty along with two similar dressed girls.You can call us servants if you want :P When she falls asleep we also should sleep..

That too on the floor(Sleeping beauty slept on a bed!!)and also we had to wake up when she was kissed :P

What a tragic 1st performance!!

And my Mom took leave to watch me "perform" She didn't know that I had such an important part to play :P (My poor Mom bought a whole packet of buttons when one of my shirt buttons broke! When even I was not visible on the stage,what about my shirt button??)

Then came the event I will never forget in my life!

Youth Festival was going on and I wanted to participate in Fancy Dress and wanted to be this lady who collects plastics from houses.So in order to find out if my dancer friend has any costume which will serve the purpose my Dad called up her Dad and uncle suggested that there was a better option.Which was to dress me up as a kid who comes to collect money in trains and the only costume required was a shirt and shorts.

So Dad took leave and managed to get a shirt from our neighbours son and what was left was makeup and my Dad had a solution for that!

The Tamilians who iron our clothes use coal in the iron boxes and they throw it outside our house on the road and my Dad went and TOOK THAT COAL and made it into a paste and put it on my face and hands!!!!(he forgot my legs :P)

And gave me some postcards and told me that after going onstage I have to keep the cards here and there on the stage and then beg and cry and say"Amma,vallathum tharane"(Please give me something)

My Dad made me repeat the dialogue until I was perfect and finally it was time for me to go onstage. (Believe it or not-The then slim me really looked the part :D)

Tragedy!!My English teacher was standing right next to the stage and I was so scared as we have to give fine if we talked in Malayalam(Anglo-Indian School you see!!)and so I went on stage,took a bow and came down ;) BEGGAR WHO BOWS??IN THE BRITISH STYLE??IN INDIA??

My Dad almost got a heart attack.All the 'makeup'and dialogues and his leave wasted,thanks to me :D

He was so shocked that he couldn't even scold me ;) That was the last time Dad took initiative to get me into some programme at school!

Then when in third standard,I was selected for western dance.Hahaha!!!My partner was Khadeeja Kalanad..one of my closest friends in school..Pink frock and a red rose on my hair and a partner!!We practised and practised day and night and had dress fiitings.On the day of the dance we were specially made up.Lipstick was used to make our cheeks rosy(It looked red :P)And we were asked to smile showing our white(yellow!!)teeth and we started dancing to the tune O Sussanna..And during one step I had to sit down and my partner stand up and then suddenly I got kicked..and then I realised that I had to get up and I forgot as I was busy smiling!!(I believe in "Obey your elders" ;))

Then years passed and I was selected for Christmas Carol for many years.(I did not stand near the mic :D)My biggest dream in life was to be an angel in the Christmas play( I know what you're thinking-I'm born to be an angel :P)but everytime I went for an audition I was sent back!(The same teacher who sent me back used to be my teacher in kindergarten and used to correct my books and write Very Good Baby!and all the angels selected got a Very Good Baby Doll! So thats the reason!)

But once for a competition,I didn't go for any of the practise sessions and was forced to go onstage on the day of the program.And thanks to God,THE MIC WAS INFRONT OF MY MOUTH.I had a hard time acting!I was mute but acted like I was singing and thanks to me we won a prize ;)

Then came a one act play and I went for auditions and was selected for the role of Apple Woman!!!!And I had one dialogue :D and they made me buy red frock for the role!And before entering the stage,my teacher said she'll do my makeup. I was happy as a bit of makeup would do no harm, it would enhance my "beauty"

BUT!!

She used kajal to make my(bushy)eyebrows dark!!!And red lipstick!

I looked like a scarecrow!I used my new frock to wipe it and it got worse!They could have renamed my role as the ugly dark witch!(Thanks to my teacher!Did she have any kind of vengeance towards me?Or else why did she do such cruelty to me?)

Then many one act plays and dances where I managed to do okay.But once for Independence Day,my stage fear and tension made me bestow a Doctorate degree on Bal Gangadhar Tilak :D

Everything went fine, but suddenly I said, Like Dr.Bal Gangadhar Tilak said...when did he take a PhD???

When I reached college,I sang thrice and not a single one  of the songs were audible,thanks to the non-stop boos from the audience(People cannot accept talent!!Jealous world)

Even on my own Farewell day my juniors were forced to boo,thanks to my great song!

One more incident that happened was: There's this inter-college fest called AZone. We were planning to participate in an event called Oppana but we were told that we cannot go! The reason was simple-The year before that we went and lost :D So they did not want to take another risk! That was kind of okay, but instead of us, our juniors were going! The seniors in us were hurt and due to minor issues with ego we learnt a new art form and decided to participate. We tried hard and learnt it and finally started performing. But suddenly something went wrong. When we realized what was wrong,it was too late!THE SONG!!
All of us we doing different steps and few of us collided with each other. I almost fell over during one step!
And we got down from the stage.. I was confused if I should laugh or cry! What an embarrassment! We were representing our college, for Gods sake :( But when results came we were given 2nd place (Not to mention that there were just 3 participants and now you must be thinking how bad the 3rd prize team would have been!!)

Life is a drama and we are all actors..and mine is extra dramatic(Everyone feels the same I think)

I don't know why God adds the spice of embarrassment to my life!!

Stay tuned for more...

I'm like this only...

Can't and won't change :)

Beauty is only skin deep...really???

Hi all!!
Uma Chechi asked me today if there are no new stories and I told her that there are plenty of stories but the characters are my facebook  friends!I don’t want to die young, you see!!

But the jobless me kept thinking staring at my computer screen..what would I write about?

And then like Archimedes, someone inside me screamed “Eureka”(I did not run out of my office :D)
My favourite topic from time immemorial-External appearance !!Yes..I have already discussed this earlier but picture abhi bhi baaki hai mere dost!

People who have seen me know that I'm “very tall”that is approximately 5 feet and over weight!! But till date I've never ever felt bad about being short..even when I could not hold onto the bars in the bus(which were too high)and when I got a seat to sit down, my feet didn't touch the ground and many a time I used to be lying on the floor,thanks to the sudden brakes of the heartless drivers. And even though I stood in front for assembly in the 14 years of my school life, I never was sad about it. Even then I was happily short!

The funniest part in this is that neither me nor my parents were sad about me being short. But there was one person who was really depressed about me being short-one of our family friends.
The Holy Bible says “Love thy neighbour as yourself” and this man was a living example :P
Every time he sees me, he asks me something and every single time the concluding sentence would be “You are really short!” (Nee height vekkunnilla le!)Being frank I always used to feel like telling him, “Mummy didn't give me Complan!”or atleast ”Its not under my control!” But fearing the same Mummy, I kept quiet.
(I seriously doubt that he dreamt of getting his extra tall son married to me and waited all the years to see me grow,which I didn't! Shattered dreams make people bitter! No wonder he is taking his frustration on me :D )

Then another incident..I believe that you should be beautiful inside(forced to believe so ;) )and how you look externally doesn't matter. Dressing matters..in the sense you should dress neatly but I don’t think the cost of your dress actually matters.. Recently I bought a top from a small roadside stall. So when I went for a movie, it got caught on a nail and tore! So being me, I reported the issue in my FB status and one of my friends was like. “Why don’t you quit buying cheap stuff?” I have no branded clothes and I have no desire to buy them too(Size issues ;) )  So you're telling me, if the dress that tore was branded, it wouldn't have torn?? I really don’t understand that part!

So my concept of not judging people based on their looks and dressing originated from an incident which happened 
to my best friend.She went for some close friends home dressed casually-in a normal t-shirt and jeans(I still don’t understand why she was  dressed so casually!!)

On reaching there she was shocked to realize that they had a party kinda thing happening there and all except my friend were in party clothes.People looked at her as if she landed from Mars. Then the host was quite reluctant to introduce her to the rest of the crowd.She was helpless and had to stay back for dinner and was insulted in front of many strangers for dressing so casually

I do agree that when you throw a party with all esteemed guests who are all well dressed(or rather “richly” dressed) you get irritated to see some of the guests dressed too casually. But she was clueless about the “costume” party happening there.

Just imagine how it would have looked! Poor friend of mine!! :( I bet she would have looked like Kajol who attended Bachchan’s birthday party in K3G!


This particular incident deeply affected me and I get really irritated when people are treated differently based on their looks and dressing.

In Kerala, you show class-by adorning yourself in gold! I've seen many newly wed girls being forced to wear a minimum of two gold chains and five gold bangles on each hand while going for visit to relatives homes-(Visit to somebody’s home,right? And not to take a gold loan na?) But can’t help it! The relatives grade you based on the amount of gold you “brought” from your home! The old grannies and aunties have this fave question which they ask any new mom-in-law “How much did she bring?” (Etra konduvannu?)

If people valued character, then many of the love stories in which love at first sight happens would be a myth( Have you noticed that when in college all the good looking girls get proposed first?)

During my first year in college I was bombarded with a lot of comments regarding my looks. I had a very beautiful friend and once her Mom called me and asked “Are the seniors troubling my daughter?You are so lucky Gayathri,you have no such problems” This implies that seniors will not trouble the not-beautiful me but my friend who is beautiful is in trouble!

 Another friend of mine once called me and we were discussing about ragging and stuff when she told me that some guy in her class likes her and she was like “You are so lucky that you have no such problems.I always have guys falling for me wherever I go,” Which implies that no guy would be stupid enough to stalk me or fall for me!

One incident- As I already told you, the beauties of my college don’t travel by train and so the seniors were forced to target us for ragging. Believe it or not, I go silent when I see seniors that is my sound becomes very soft and I shiver and people who know might think that I'm acting.

But honestly I went silent and out of words only during two situations: 1.Ragging 2.Viva (I think my behaviour during both these situations might remind people of traditional Indian bride in front of her husband and in-laws- Soft spoken-one word replies-scared expression)

So one of my seniors, who looked like he was given punishment (He looked so uninterested in ragging me, people would have thought that I fell on his feet and begged “Please bless my life by subjecting me to your “ragging””)called me and started the usual question-answer session. My otherwise loud and piercing sound failed me and it came out in a whisper. I have a very “sweet” sound, soo sweet that you may doubt if it really belongs to a girl. It has bass. So my whisper also was loud. He noticed my sound and was like “Your sound has bass!”
At that point his girlfriend was one of the most beautiful girls in our college. So naturally he condemned girls like me. It came out through this dialogue, “You sound like a really timid girl. Is your modesty the reason why your kinda bald?” My forehead has a scar from a childhood injury and at that part of my forehead, hair growth is less and it looks like I'm bald.

I felt like hitting him. He is good looking, his girl friend is good looking. They cant expect the whole world to be like them right? I am bald, so what?

I am lecturing on this topics but maybe even I judge people based on their looks.The reason I'm saying this is when it comes to the matrimonial sites, we filter guys based on their looks and only then we even bother to look at their jobs and other details!(‘Every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ policy.You judged me based on looks, now its my turn to judge the world! Hahaha!!)

Many a time, we try to create an impression different from the actual person we are. For people who don’t know me well, I might look stuck up and full of attitude. But once you talk to me, any image previously formed, if good (rarest of the rare cases) will be shattered. Recently I joined a Project and because of starting trouble, I talk very less and only when talked to.(I'm serious!Please believe me when I say I talk less!) So someone from my team asked me, “Are you really this calm?” The calmness before a tsunami!!!

So when I went to Hyderabad for my job training I thought- New chapter of life, so I’ll behave like a matured lady (Hahaha!!!) and let people think that I’m very calm, composed and matured.
To establish the above agenda, I got a golden opportunity! We were made into pairs and I had to tell my partner about myself and also about my goals in life and things that make me unique. Then he will introduce me to the entire group,

I chose my words carefully. Here it goes… “I’m Gayathri from blah blah blah. My ambition in life is to make my parents and family proud of me. I'm very close to my mother and I take pride in saying that I can share anything under the sun with my mother. I love reading and I prefer light books of authors like Chetan Bhagat. I enjoy creative writing and presently I'm working on my autobiography and my biggest dream is to publish it”

Wow!!What a girl! I'm sure that this would have created a good image of me, but he started analysing and he concluded, “You are someone who gives importance to love. You take decisions with your heart and not brain.” Even this sounded nice!

Now he introduced me to the class as “Gayathri from Kerala. From what I understood she doesn't think. She believes in love and loves to read”

Ehh??? The others inferred it as “Gayathri doesn't think and reads love stories!”

I ended up being a silly girl who reads love stories and doesn't have a brain!!! What about the matured girl who’s working on her autobiography and would do anything for her family? L

That was the last time I tried to make an impression :D

Life is a box of surprises!!

So be yourself.. Let people accept you the way you are.. don’t change for anyone but yourself and remember that no one can play your role better than yourself,

I used to be very much affected by the comments made by people about me. Nowadays I’ve started filtering and only what some people who matter the most to me can get through the filter.
You have to have high security for your heart buddy! It’s the VVIP who must not be alerted about silly things and only things which are extremely important should get through the security layers.

So next time you feel that someone is being judgemental or criticizing you about your looks (Like my dearest family friend who recently told me, “Your increasing in breadth and not length” )  don’t feel sad or inferior. Just say….

I’m like this only!