4:45 pm, 29th August, AFMC, Pune:
It was a cloudy day. As I entered the stage of the 1500 capacity Dhanvantari auditorium at AFMC, Pune, the water began to hit from all the sides. The silence was broken.
It was a cloudy day. As I entered the stage of the 1500 capacity Dhanvantari auditorium at AFMC, Pune, the water began to hit from all the sides. The silence was broken.
The podium almost hid me leaving my eyes and forehead, making me aware of my height. I began to speak. Not before I even completed my first sentence, I paused. I went blank. At each passing second, my heart pumped harder and my head pulsated along, making me feel so heavy that I almost sank to the ground.
The crowd, now, began to whisper and I looked around. My teammates, anxious and shocked waited patiently behind the curtains for an answer. I just wanted to run behind to them and cry but that would not have made any point. All those sleep deprived nights, a thousand kilometer travel for a day, all that effort and thinking would at once scoop to just a ‘nothing’.
I looked into the center of the auditorium and made a brief laugh staring into its blankness and went on to do what was undone and ran back as soon as my part was done. I was sure of being referred to as ‘that crazy short guy’.
I was ‘red hot’. My mind was bombarded by a million thoughts, all interrogatives. My team asked me to stay cool and get ready for my final part of the symposium. I tried to breathe, slowly but consciously. I went out of the auditorium through the back door. It was pouring now. I noticed that my lost umbrella was ‘getting wet’ lying in the veranda, which I must have forgotten during lunch, and wondered if I should walk till there and get it back. I started to walk, before I made the decision and decided to bring it, anyway. It didn’t matter anymore, for that matter, nothing mattered, anymore. ‘Hasn’t all that could be screwed up has already been done?’ I asked myself. I paced up and down. I was called once again. This time, I knew I had no choice but to live every word that I would utter and stand for what I had come to stand for.
After the speech, there was a brief pause, the same heavy silence, which had passed when I paused just a few moments ago, but this time, the crowd burst into applause.
I wondered if I could catch any glimpse of ‘weeping microbiologists’, if any, in some corner of the hall, to talk about it after I come back home. I gave up and left the podium, a little happy but still disappointed.
p.s. I should speak more often.
