The day when i had given up

Memories, the priceless jewels earned by man, the non-perishable wealth that stays with him till the last breath. Well all I can say is, they are very pretty things, if you don’t have to deal with the past. I am sure every one of us carries a book of memories and we often keep flipping the pages. Some of these pages are keepers for life, but then there are some you wish you could tear them off at the very sight. I carry a book too and it too has some pages I wish were never written. Having said that, we ourselves are to blame, coz some of these books are storied in our infinite wisdom when we were teenagers. So of all such books that you carry the one that contains the chapters from your college life looks the most colorful and animated. And, so is mine and the page I wish I could rip off the book comes from my 2nd Year of Engineering studies.
Here I was, nineteen, having spent a year at the college I would pretty much walk around as wise man who couldn’t do a thing wrong. But who was I kidding? The thing that could prove me wrong was just around the corner. That year, our college had announced an alumni gathering for the former students and had asked students from existing batch to perform stage plays as a part of entertainment program. 
Have you ever pictured your best friends as your worst enemies? I did, when they dragged into one of their plays throwing at me all kinds of “Be a Man” and hopes and dreams speeches. Yes, I call them enemies coz they dragged me into something that I was never good at, “Acting”. I sucked at it. Being a shy boy, I always kept away from those Christmas plays in the school time. I was never good enough for the shepherds who just had walk across the stage and sit in front of mother Merry or the people of Bethlehem for that matter who would just stand and stare, how hard was that? You see what I mean, acting was never my thing. I am not saying that I am scared of performing, you ask me to do a Bryan Adams and I will do it all in style.
But then you would wonder why didn’t I just walk away? The answer is my “Go Get it Moment”. Yes, one of those stupid rushes of blood where you confused between “stepping out” and “giving up”. I am sure everybody had a “Go get it moment” during their college life. For some, it was asking a girl out on a coffee, for some proposing a girl, for some peeping into the neighbors answer sheet when they know they might be just couple of marks short and they have absolutely nothing to write. Well for me, the stupid rush of blood was to be the part of that drama.
Written for the alumni, the story was about a bunch of friends getting together at a railway station all set to go to their alumni gathering. The scene was set in a Railway compartment where the friends just got together after many years and would talk about the days of their college life. The script was wonderfully crafted to leave you clueless right from the first page to the last and all that you could conceive was a puzzled face and the big WH question, why? And that is the same question I kept asking to my friends, why do we have to do this? The answer lies in the introduction of my friends or the “Characters of the play”.
So, we were four guys including myself and three girls, and here’s the reason why they wanted to do it. One of them loved to be the centre of attraction, no matter how “Left of centre” were the things he did to achieve that. One of the remaining guys truly believed that the script was good and that everything would be alright. And last one was a guy with some sort of acting experience as he had done some street plays in the past.  Well I have high regards for people who can do street plays. All I want to say is that in a street play the audience could stop by and leave at their own will. So the experience could not actually help in a hall full of few hundreds of audience not willing to leave their seat apprehending that someone else would grab it. The remaining characters, the three girls claimed that doing Plays was really a hobby to them.
So, it was time for rehearsal, and it went exactly how I thought. To start with one of the Girl character was named “Sadafuli”, and the friends would link her to one of the guys by saying this, these are the exact words, ” you remember how you used to give Sadafuli a ride on your bicycle during our college days”. At this point you must be thinking that I am just and unreasonable critic. But guys, the Character “Sadafuli” was extensively flaunted in the script, just like a bond girl in a 007 movie. So after the 20 minutes of pure torture, the hard provoked actor inside me was already dead.  The words would just not come out of my mouth. So, instead of just stepping out of the drama we decided to introduce a character, “a random stranger” in the railway compartment who would just stare at the group of friends who had just boarded the train on their way to the alumni function. So now, as if the characters weren’t shitty enough, we introduced a dumb character just to spice up things and induce comedy. The dumb person was played by me since he did not have a word to speak in the play. By the end of the day I was pretty sure of what was going happen on the day of the alumni gathering. So I went home, with the deadly script in my hand hoping for some kind of sign that will tell me “Please don’t do it”. And along came the sign. The next thing I knew that my sister had read the script which I left on the table and she had tears in her yes. Yes tears, the one that come when you just couldn’t laugh any harder. In all that laughter she managed to put up a sentence, “Please don’t do it”. “Kavishwars”, they will never fake a confidence boosting pat on your back. At one point I even wondered if she was thinking, “Brother, if you do this play you’ll never be a part of our family”.
The next day I had my heart set to drop out of the drama, but then  got carried away with another hopes and dreams speech. I still wonder what the dream really was.
So here we were, the day had arrived and we’re all trying to be closely bonded unit to pull this act together. I turned to one of my friend, clearing my chocked throat I asked him, can’t we just back out? Only to hear him fake confidence and reassuring me that everything will be all right. The next thing I know was all my friends were on the stage and I was waiting for my chance to enter the railway compartment. And so I did, somehow I did not gather the courage to look at the audience who had already gone crazy over “Sadafuli” and so I did what the character really demanded, I kept staring at those people in the fake railway compartment. However, I did manage to catch a glimpse of the audience at the corner of my eye. According to the script, I was then supposed to go off the scene, so that the friends could joke about the irritating existence of the dumb stranger in the compartment. However I was also supposed to come back with my second entry. Walking off the stage I had a hard look at the audience and it was dreadful. Some could not believe what they were watching and that this was being performed by 20 year old students, some couldn’t stop laughing, and some of the teachers had the look on their face like we had just ruined the evening. And after seeing all that I was supposed to go back on the stage. Suddenly, I drew picture in my mind about what could happen if I went back on the stage. I pictured myself being called the by several names in the remaining two and a half years of my college. And that was the moments I found clarity in the midst of confrontation with myself. The actors on the stage were waiting for me to come back, they looked at me only to find out that I was trying my level best to come up with a short and sweet gesture to explain to them that I am not stepping back on that stage. Nothing after that happened according to the script. And just like the script, the drama ended leaving people clueless about what it really was.

Some would say that I don’t have the fighting spirit and that I am a gigantic looser. But the truth is most of the people, including my friends thought of me as a legend who stopped the martyrdom and carnage. At that point I would have done anything to avoid another hopes and dreams speech.
It’s been eight years since then. But the memory is as fresh as yesterday. Now I feel that though I ripped that page off the “Memories” book, I never threw it away. In fact I quietly slipped it back into the book just where it was. And now the first thing I notice about that book is the torn page that stands out slightly from the other properly bunched pages and somehow it always brings a grand laughter in my life. Friends, some of the best moments of your life can be the most embarrassing moment of your life. I am glad that I was a part of that show and I am glad that I did it. Because every time I think about it I only laugh harder….