Ever had times when you thought that you are totally incapable of doing something and suddenly lo! Behold! There you are doing the very thing and amazingly enough you happen to be good at it………Well, extempore was something I’ve never tried to do in my life.Ok, alright I’d be truthful I did try it once in my life but it went horribly wrong. Actually ‘horribly wrong’ would be putting it lightly. That experience was in my 12th and embarrassingly enough, that was the first time I knew about extempore .i.e. it was supposed to be ‘on the spot’ speech and how it was different from elocution and stuff.

Anyways, I thought I’d try out something new and braced myself up, gathered up whatever was left of my courage and went into the room where they gave out topics and gave us just five minutes to prepare. If I remember correctly, the topic was something about TV being good or bad.

Having absolutely no idea how I was supposed to prepare. I slowly raised my eyes from the paper before me and took a peek at what the other kids where doing. I saw all of them pondering over the little bits of paper they had and jotting away to glory. I’d admit I was a bit alarmed, ok that’s an understatement I was petrified. I had this tornado developing in the pit of my stomach. Eventually I did manage to scribble down something. Meanwhile, one by one, each of the students were called to the adjoining inner room where two teachers sat judging the students’ performance. At last! After a long wait during which I managed to get so overwrought that my hands turned ice and my legs shook, I took unsteady steps into the small room. The feeling was nothing less that what a man would feel when sacrificing himself as a meal to the lion by walking right into its den. It’s another thing if the lion found him so revolting that it didn’t want to have him. Anyways, I took my position in front of my tormentors. The first few words that came out of my mouth I am sure had something to do with television but then suddenly I gained consciousness from my trance when I realized that I was uttering a word I had read in a poem apart from the sign of small smiles creeping up on the judges’ faces. That was when I stopped; I smiled abashedly and said I’ve had enough. The teachers asked me to try once more but having had sufficient humiliation for one day, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to try. I thanked god that it was just the prelims.

I was lucky to have been saved from the mortification in front of an entire hall of audience “whew”. That was the end of my venture in extempore until one day in the 2nd year of my college life during the arts festival, my friend literally dragged me into the conference hall where the extempore was being conducted. It so happened that there was no one to participate from my group and suddenly everyone was like oh! you are there.. and I was like “Trust me you have no idea how horrid I’m at this” but then it seemed that that day no one seemed to hear what I said. The topic was given “heaven knows when” and all of a sudden my friend was ‘rapping’ points. I told her to save her energy and time because trust me I was in a shock and this time: “There was audience”. When my chest number was called out I just got up and thought “oh whatever, what’s the point in being tensed” I went up to the mike shrugging my shoulders, thinking “what the heck” and blurted out whatever came into my mouth. Yea at the end of it both my knees where doing a dance of their own but you won’t believe it I got second for the competition. That kind of put the whole thing in a different picture altogether. I mean here was something I thought I could never do but then when I gave it a try, I was able to do it. All it takes is just to believe in your self and sincerely give things a chance. Well, the moral of the story? Never quit! or Don’t give up on the first try! Because if you do, you will never know….what it would have been otherwise……………………..