Arangetram Part 4 - Where's the third page? Oops. I think I left it in the printer...

Finally, the dreaded dance of the evening: Thillana. Under normal circumstances, I could make it through Thillana without killing myself, but today was different. I was pooped! The lights were hot, my adrenaline was wearing out, and I was finally starting to feel the heaviness of the jewelry, hair, and bells. I signaled over to the musicians that I would need them to stall for a bit as I attempted to catch my breath and cool down by the fan. Venu Uncle and Durga Aunty had no problem in capturing the audience's attention with their elaborate flute and veena introduction until I was ready to enter.


I came on feeling okay, but the fatigue set in pretty quickly. I gritted my teeth (not literally...that would have looked odd) and pushed myself through until I had one more Jathi left, the hardest one. I thought I might faint on stage if I had to finish that one. Ack! Then, I realized that for the first time, I could actually skip the entire Jathi and as long as I did it confidently, nobody would know. And for the first time, Jothi Aunty would not be able to stop me! Bwahahahahaha. Well I tried to transition into the abhinaya as smoothly as possible, but being the moron I am, I forgot to take backward steps and finish the line of the song. So, like an idiot, I ended up repeating the first line of abhinaya twice (I didn't think to improvise) until Geetha Aunty finally caught on. To a dancer, the mess-up might have been apparent, but I was too close to the end to be worried.


And finally, after one more taxing bit of nritta, I practically bounded off stage, chest heaving, sweat dripping, head spinning, and grinning like crazy. I collapsed into the chair, ignoring the high fives from Nisha and Jyoti. One of them slapped me on the back instead. I rolled off the chair and was about to flatten myself on the ground. Whatever. I had never been so exhausted and so euphoric in my life.


And that's when I remembered (oh crap), I've still got another piece to do! Well, not a real piece, but the Mangalam: where I walk onto stage and thank the God, musicians, and audience. I dragged myself onto the stage one more time for Mangalam. This managed to happen without major issues even though the musicians did something funky at the end. My brain felt like it had detached itself from my body again. I went over to the deity, bowed, went to the musicians, bowed, finally stood before the audience and bowed.



I got the customary standing ovation, which made me sigh in relief (because I was half expecting everyone to have walked out by then). It was at this point that I thought it might look cool if I shed a few tears. I scrunched up my face as best as I could and tried to cry, but it just didn't happen. I guess I'm just not good at that sort of thing.


I gave up and started grinning again until the clapping stopped. I dipped my head one more time and exited the stage. Ah. It was over. Too bad I was in such a daze that I couldn't appreciate the moment. My mom ascended the stage to give her thank you speech and my brother accompanied me as I brought gifts to the musicians, touched their feet, and received their blessings. Durga Aunty had played Veena, Geetha Aunty had sung, Venu Uncle had played the flute, and Naranayaswamy (NS) Uncle had played the Mridangam.

My brother gave his own small speech and demolished the audience with his oh-so-creative borrowed jokes. Then, it was my turn.

You know, Indians really suck at RSVPing. I was expecting to speak before far fewer than 400 people. Usually when I am in front of a podium, my nerves are like live wires. But after dancing on stage for two and a half hours, my nerves were more like burnt wires. I actually took a Speech class this summer...my teacher would have taken off points for lack of eye contact, but I honestly was just planning to read off the paper. Except. It's difficult to read off the paper when IT'S NOT THERE. I realized that I was missing a page of my speech (did I leave it in the printer?). So I made it up on the spot. Surprisingly, I think I actually made more sense when I spoke straight from the heart (imagine that), so all was well.

Continued...in Part 5: The Aftermath