Giving It Up...

I caught up with two friends I hadn’t met in a while last weekend. It was nice seeing both of them after so long…sat around at an amazingly inefficient Coffee Day, and chatted for an hour and a half or so. Talked about absolute nonsense…but somehow, I enjoyed it anyway. One little bit of our conversation though; struck a sensitive nerve I wasn’t even aware existed.

Two of us were listening to a detailed explanation of a topic that we didn’t really know of or care about till said third friend started telling us all about it. I found it so hilarious how into the whole thing he was. We sort of started to tease him about being a dork…when he said to us, “Oh forget it! You keep painting, and you keep dancing!” In jest of course… But suddenly it hit me…that I’m not dancing anymore. And it didn’t feel good. At all.

With teachers being on tour, we would have had to go to Nrityagram to have classes twice a week. That’s two hours, merely in travel! I can’t afford that kind of time… I realise that theoretically, it isn’t the end of dance for me, but putting on indefinite postponement, isn’t pleasant. I can’t help but think that after this, I will never have the opportunity to get back to it.

Throughout this week, it has suddenly started hitting me that I have stopped doing so many things! With prize day practices on, this is the first time in my 10 years in NAFL that I haven’t been in the choir. I didn’t think it mattered to me all that much. We used to have to be DRAGGED to choir practice. But I didn’t realise that we had our little group of people who shared that suffering…and it was actually FUN! And today, I watched the prize day sound check, and the choir students on stage singing the same painful songs over and over with the hot stage lights o0n their faces, complaining, and DYING to go home… and I wasn’t a part of it! And that didn’t feel good either. At all.

Mrs. Koshy was telling me that there are all these competitions to go for, and ALL the dates clashed with unit tests, or exams, or practicals, or prelims. I wish I had known that the last big competition I went for was going to be the last one. I would have consciously enjoyed it more.

Having chosen science, and having the kind of dreams of a career that I have, there has to be something I sacrifice. There are people who have given up way more than I have. And yet, I can’t help but feel really sad that I’ve given up two of things I loved to do the most. I can’t help but hate watching people take my place in my groups, or my part of the limelight. I can’t help but…feel incredibly deprived.