CHENNAI : Do you remember your school Annual Day? Class plays?
Opportunities to be under the limelight and sing, dance and orate? Were you centrestage belting out dialogues and songs or were you the tree in the corner, a mute witness to the proceedings?
When I was a child, my school didn’t have much by way of a production but we had chances to sing, dance and give speeches on Republic Day, Independence Day and the school Annual Day. Throughout my primary years, I was not considered a viable option for singing and dancing, except for one group folk dance where I tried to unsuccessfully pass myself off as a young Rajasthani village belle.
In college, I had a brief and mildly disastrous brush with Group Western Dance and Group Western Singing, during Fresher’s week. I realised then that some of us just aren’t meant to dance. Especially wearing all black and trying to remember which leg to lift to the beat of that wondrous hit song of the nineties ‘Be My Lover’ by La Bouche.
But as terrible a dancer as I was and still am, there’s always been a part of me that wishes I had more of a chance on stage. Maybe, just maybe I had hidden talents that were just waiting to be discovered. It’s these feelings of being denied one’s rightful chance that we suppress. And then we grow up and some of us have children of our own. And as any parent willing to admit it knows, the emotions come flooding back and we project them onto our children. When the time comes for them to have a shot at going on stage or playing a sport, some of us decide that we should live vicariously through our children. They can achieve all that we couldn’t. Their success will be ours.
I won’t lie. I’m one of those parents too. When the boys’ school held auditions a few months ago for the annual production, I did my damnedest best to get them to try out for acting part, singing, and dancing parts. But the boys seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do — things behind the scenes. Things as far removed from centrestage as possible.
I was disappointed. ‘You’ll regret this’ I warned them. ‘It’s not too late to change your mind’ I coaxed. ‘Don’t you want to see if there’s an actor inside?’ I wheedled. But no. They were quite sure, thank you very much. This is what they wanted. Last weekend, I went to see the performance.
And what a show it was. My boys sat to the side and cheered and clapped as their friends sang and danced and delivered dialogues of mindboggling length with ease. Still, the little voice in my head whispered, this could have been your kids. But later when they pointed out which backdrop they’d helped paint and showed me a short film they’d helped script, I finally got it. They were happy with their decision. There was no regret there.
Perhaps one of the hardest things for us to learn as parents, is to let our children make their own decisions. And to support their choices, no matter what we think of them. Easier said than done, but the sooner, the better.