A Dream to be an Actress – Chapter 1

My husband once said, \”Most of the things in life get better with practice but, there are certain things you ought to be born with and if you aren\’t, then, the practice wouldn\’t matter.\” A Pessimistic view of the world, I was about to say but he ended the statement with a line that simply flattered me. We will get to it sooner and now, I will start the story right from the beginning.
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I was a lucky child. I was born and my dad got a promotion and in a short time, he got a house, bought a car and his first TV. My dad has a constant moving job.

When I was 2, we moved to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh from Tamilnadu. My mom who doesn\’t know Hindi learned letters from my dad and then she used to teach it to my sister and me. I just started to speak and I had to confront three different languages each day. We speak Tamil at home, my friends at school speak in Hindi and teachers speak in English. I was a confused child back then and a really quite one too. Hence, I confuse the languages too and for a question in Hindi, I replied in Tamil and likewise. As days passed by, I felt awkward seeing people with confused looks while talking to me as I mix and match the languages. My awkwardness increased in time and as a result, I became quiet and slowly, turned to be an introvert.

It was mid-nineties and serials(TV series) were starting to bloom in India and people were really obsessed with it. My dad who wasn\’t interested in TV earlier too started watching the very famous serial in Tamil called \”Chithi\” with us.

We were a real planned family of 4 and my dad was really strict about timings. We never changed our dinner timings for any reason. We used to have dinner sharp at 7:30 PM.

One fine day, the serial was changed from 7:30 to 9:30 PM to the prime slot. And for the first time ever, we changed our dinner timings to 9:30 PM. That was the extent of the obsession we had. What happened next was, my mother who really had to shout and scream at a high pitch to bring us to the dinner table every day, had to just switch on the TV and increase the volume.

As the Serial\’s title song plays out, \”Kannin mani Kannin mani, nijam kelamma\” (Meaning: Pupil of my eye, Hear the truth! *How Thoughtful*), my sister and I walk slowly out of our room and sit at the dining table.

Serials go on for years together in India and this particular one was already 3 years old and I was in my third standard then. We just completed our dinner and the serial too ended in a high twist, a typical fashion for most serials to keep us waiting. As usual, my parents started discussing the day\’s episode and their predictions and feelings and we used to get calls from our relatives, back in Tamilnadu, and even during the costly STD calls of that time, they discuss this serial.

I am a person who is easily influenced and all this craziness and discussions and obsession made me feel being a serial actor is the greatest thing one could achieve. I was just 7 remember? So, one fine day, I went to my mom and said her, “Mummy! I want to be an actress too and I want you to watch me on TV one fine day and talk about my acting with daddy”.

My mom laughed hard and kept her face serious and advised me to concentrate on my studies and to get a job like my father and to get married. I was so simple back then and I just replied, I will do all of that and will also act too. She laughed harder and said, \”After marriage, if your husband allows then you can act\”.

She said this as a way to silent her innocent child but, the child, being really innocent, believed those words for a long while and my mother would never have even believed in her dreams that, what I said would finally happen for real.

To be continued.