SAASWATHA KRISHNA

When I first went on stage I blanked out and felt my knees shaking.  I was pretty sure I would make a fool out of myself and I definitely did. Everything was just so bad at that moment. My knees wobbly, my voice shaky, palms were profusely sweating and I could hear how weird my voice sounded. I just wanted to run off that stage. Even though only about 20 people were in that auditorium, I felt like I was being judged and under the microscope by infinite number of eyes. It was beyond horrendous.  When everything was going bad, I also noticed a faint feeling of belonging (which at that time I mistook it as nausea).  The more I pushed myself to be in the spot light the more I loved the feeling of everyone listening to what I had to say. I realised when I held the microphone, I had the power. The power to say what I want, to show people who I truly am. This estatic feeling overpowered the fear of being ridiculed or mocked.  I've worked 6 years on my stage fear. I

You do not know how your race is perceived in this day and age until a white privileged man on the internet tells you that as a person from my country, I speak "near-perfect" English after years of reading classics like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, P.G.Woodehouse, Fitzgerald and so many others. The casual assumption that we do not speak their language as well as them or even better when my forefathers struggle to inculcate and tech themselves this colonial tongue more than our mother tongue is not only insulting to my race but diminishing the efforts we as a race took to be considered as equal members of this global society.

I will dig deep into my layered insecurities, hold it, in its essence and speak soft existence into it.  Hold it not in an attempt to vanquish it but to understand and pave the way for internal kindness.