The first of every event in life holds its special memory. I was eight when I was forced with an opportunity at oratorical skills in the form of a farewell speech. The system I studied in believed it was dangerous for boys and girls to read together after qualifying as eight year old.
Initially, the discomfort was just about the ‘first-ness’ of a farewell to my loved friends. Dad helped me write the farewell speech and trained me to speak with a sweeping gaze and never to look too long or too direct into the eyes of an audience. I was more curious about a new skill that was different from writing away on paper. He taught me presentation was an art by itself and unlike the act of writing, how you stood mattered as much as how you spoke. He was a tough critic who tested my ability to understand the modulation of speech and insisted on being free of fear to face a gathering. While at school, I rehearsed my speech during recess while Alan, Vijay and the others sat hearing, re-hearing the farewell I was to address on behalf of all the other girls.
I felt fine until the morning of the farewell event, until dad dropped me at school that morning and held out his strong, handsome hand to wish me well. He looked at me with surprised shock as soon as I held his offered handshake. I felt sheepish as I felt the way my little palm felt still, chill and sweaty against his warm palm. He tightened the clasp and asked, “What is it?”
Silence is always easier when words cannot express the inexpressible. I felt tears form reform, I hated goodbyes, I did not want the farewell but then the tears also held their source in a fear to face a formal gathering. Dad was someone who did not need words to sense emotions. He was a fine balance between the civil and the military. He would never encourage a sob or be physically expressive, but he was a dad whose handshake you carry beyond a grave.
He patted my little hand in his and said in his firm, deep voice, “You are excellent. If ever you feel over-confidence or fear creeping in, just remember, No man is a mouse, No man is a lion”
I entered the hall and as I stepped up the inbuilt platform, I saw before me both mice and lions in the form of my little friends, my seniors, my teachers, my principal and the Reverend. I was used to singing in chorus over the microphone at the school assembly but then in a chorus, you never are conscious since perfection and faults are in company. So I experimented with my first moment alone before a microphone feeling my hands alternate between cold and warm. And just as I sailed away with my skills, I felt Reverend/A lion nodding proud at me.
It was an experience where I realized the essence of “No man is a mouse, no man is a lion”. I learnt a glance into Muhammad Ali the bully’s eyes if held a split second longer could make a mouse of me; and a split second less could make a lion of me. Every time the bully tried to distract me with the toad like gestures, I mentally repeated in mind, “No man is a lion” and every time I saw the inexpressible grief in Alan’s and Vijay’s eyes, I mentally repeated, “No man is a mouse”. And whenever I felt my little hands go cold, I knew how to warm them mentally again.
Through the years, forced to take the skills to other practical levels, I rediscovered the magical power a dad no longer alive to modulate, had left behind to suffice me.
