The ecstasy of Gold

Cant stop man.....Cant stop reliving the adrenaline running thru my body, as everything went from wrong to right.....

The title of the post refers to a righteous piece of music created by one Mr Ennio Morricone, which padma asked me to use in the beginning of our presentation. And lo behold, the opening of the butterfly coincided with the peak of ecstasy of gold !!! That gave me goosebumps when i was watching it from the wings, and it still does, but it got amplified when the crowd applauded the effort put into the butterfly justly by dear padma again !!!!! Probably nobody else knows how much effort she has put into it, after I helped her "give the butterfly a shape" !! Please, for my sake, take a bow as u read this madam, for sheer creative imagination, hard work and talent !!

I mean I had NOT dreamt of such a beginning to our presentation, and yet it was happening and I was supposed to be on stage next !!!!

Well this being my blog, I should talk a tad more abt my own contribution.... First of all I must be honest and write here (Wats this sudden unusual spurt of honesty !?!?!) that I was quite unsettled many a times during our practice sessions and the whole music front of our show had given me quite a testing time ! Practices used to form a sinusoid, with encouraging and dismal performances following one another....A ten member group song aint no piece of raasathi..err...cake !!

But one another truth that I need to document, for my grand kids to read, is the fact that it steadily got better....the whole thing put together with tweaks here n there, i must admit, had started approaching the original song slowly but steadily.

And now we fast forward back to the present.....Lights shining, as I walk out into the wild....Yes the wild cos there were some hooligans in the crowd (no other, my friend ... no other word) !! The booing had started in full swing from our closest and bitterest rivals....And I was in no mood to be booed in my first ever stage full fledged stage performance (hard to believe...)

Mikes adjusted and ready......I remember padma telling me "When u go on stage to start raasathi, take a moment" ..How sound her advice turned out to be.....One last look back at my comrades in war ! And a breath ! And off we go....

'raasathi en usiru ennadilla (don think there were any messups)

poochchoodi vakka pattu pora pulla (Damn for the last time its Pulla and not Bulla !!!!!!)

nee poanaa en udambu mannukkulla (Small mess in mannukkulla, correctable)

raavodu sedhi varum vaadi pulla (AWWW screw it ... I cant get pulla outta me!)

raasathi en usiru ennadilla'

The booing was still going on, although my attention was diverted towards the song more....But as soon as i stopped singing my part, it caught me again and i forgot to restart singing a small part in the chorus.....That made me angry... Angry at myself for letting them distract me like that !!

So then onwards I just looked into the bright light shining into my eyes and let my testicles....tentacles...tonsils (aaha!) do their stuff !!!

There were one or two hitches, but none of them affected me any more as i thought not to think abt them....

At the end of the song, the applause was not what i expected....It caused me to bow my head and thank the crowd for recognising what we had tried ! Involuntary reaction.....

The rest of the performances.....Well I couldnt catch the one that mattered to me the most after my own song...padma's dance.....I've heard rave reviews of the dance, but one glimpse of her smiling face, that i could catch during her performance on stage, told me then and there that it didnt matter to her what happened.....Cos she was just gonna dance her heart out there ! ashte....that put a smile on my face and helped me run around for the next event........

And well....the rest as I say is history....perhaps the others didn't perform as well as we did and perhaps they did, I'm not here to judge...Probably the fact that we were first on stage helped us a little bit......But I felt it in my guts that we had done just THE right things ! And turns out we did....We won habba 2006 ! A culmination of all that I'd worked for, for around 2-3 weeks, in a few, glorious, priceless moments of ecstasy....

The ecstasy of gold !!!