I have reached an age where I can handle difficult people, impossible deadlines, unsolicited advice and most of life’s little disasters with reasonable composure. But, hand me a microphone and I begin questioning every choice that brought me to that particular moment, including my decision to leave the house.
What makes this especially ridiculous is that I have spent much of my life being trained to speak in public.
As a schoolgirl, I attended elocution classes, where I learnt pronunciation, voice modulation, diction and everything else that was supposed to turn me into an articulate young woman. Being raised Catholic helped enormously. Between the convent school and the church, there was always something to read aloud, recite, announce or perform. The chances of escaping public speaking were roughly the same as escaping morning prayers.
I was also part of the student wing of a prominent Indian political party, where I was groomed to address gatherings in English and my native language Konkani. I learnt to hold a microphone, organise my thoughts and speak with conviction.
My finest hour, however, came during a school production of Michael, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, in which I played the title role of an angel. I had what must surely qualify as one of the strangest acting assignments. For practically the entire play, I had no dialogue. My contribution consisted largely of standing around, presumably looking suitably thoughtful and mysterious. Then, towards the end, I had to deliver a monologue so long that Tolstoy himself might have suggested cutting a few paragraphs.
I memorised every word and delivered the entire thing flawlessly. No hesitation, no trembling, no desperate glances towards the wings for a prompt. I was magnificent, if I may say so myself.
I wonder what happened to that confident girl. I could certainly use some of her courage today.
The irony is that my command over the English language is considerably better now. I have spent decades working with words, editing other people’s writing and occasionally arguing over the placement of a comma. I can hold a conversation, express an opinion and discuss a subject without a script. Anyone who knows me will confirm that silence has never been one of my defining qualities.
Yet the moment someone places a microphone in my hand, my brain decides this is an excellent opportunity to abandon me.
I have been trying to understand why age brings such peculiar inhibitions. Perhaps younger people are less concerned about being judged. They speak, make mistakes and move on, while the rest of us have accumulated enough embarrassing experiences to revisit at three in the morning.
As we grow older, we become painfully conscious of how we might appear to others. We can anticipate every possible disaster before it happens. What if I forget my point? What if I ramble? What if I say something spectacularly foolish?
And these days, someone will almost certainly record your finest moment of verbal incompetence and preserve it for future generations.
There is also the uncomfortable possibility that experience makes us more demanding of ourselves. When you work with language professionally, you expect your spoken words to emerge as neatly as your edited sentences. Unfortunately, the human mouth does not come equipped with a delete button.
I find this particularly annoying because I know I have things worth saying. Once I settle into a conversation, I can talk quite happily, sometimes at considerable length, as my friends would probably confirm.
Perhaps the answer is to stop treating the microphone as an examination and remember that speaking is simply another way of communicating. I’m working on it, although I suspect it will take some time to undo years of unnecessary self-consciousness.
And somewhere in the depths of my consciousness, the schoolgirl who once performed Tolstoy without missing a word is probably laughing her head off.