Sunlighting

“We will have tug of war this time” a much elated Rangasayee told us. It was my fourth annual cultural meet at my housing colony. I had attended all of them in the last 3 years. It was highly predictive as what it would contain. Invocation song by Sangeetha Aunty from G block, Twinkle Twinkle little star dance by tiny tots of that year, “jeena yahaan MORNA yahaan, jiske SHIVA jaana kahaan”, highly accented Hindi song by Mukherji babu of C block, if it is not exam time then a bharatnatyam performance by some older girls followed by vote of thanks by Mani uncle which would always cover importance of free India and freedom struggle.

But that year was different. The existing organizing committee decided to give the mantle to a new one and made Rangasayee the chief. Rangasayee did not agree first “ I have been working in machine shop. If you ask me to make a complicated part designed and machined, and I can use all my brains and those lathes and milling machines to deliver you that part quickly. But not this cultural event, for that matter I have never organized any event in my life”. With a lot of persuasion he agreed. He did a super job in planning the event. Magic show, mono-act, a few new items got planned. He could not remove Sangeetha aunty and Mukherji Babu and Mani uncle, he had to honour the eagerness of those senior citizens to participate. Tug of war was his innovative introduction. Though he was almost 6 feet and 100+ KG in weight, contrary to my guess ( I don’t know when I will stop this guess work !!! ), he admitted that he never ever participated in a tug of war competition.

The day arrived. First item was tug of War. The problem was getting a rope. Rangasayee roamed around and managed to get one by 4 PM. We were all set. G block on one side and C block on the other. I took the front position, I wanted to see that kerchief tied on the central part of the rope while pulling. The rope was pulled to make it tight, warm up done. “the number of people is not equal on both sides”, somebody noticed. We relaxed. Head count taken and corrected. We were ready again. The referee tried to blow the whistle. It is not blowing! Somebody went in search of a working whistle, we were relaxed again. We had to relax once again at the last minute, as the kerchief was not tied properly. It took almost 30 minutes to set everything right. Yes, the whistle was blown. In a split second, many from both sides fell on the ground, rope just broke in the middle. One with sprained ankle, one with bruised elbow, one with swollen left eye – causalities were many. I was lucky since I took the first position, no body fell on me ! Later some experts told us that the rope could not have taken the force of even three people on either side! Rangasayee, for that matter any one of us around did not know that! The function went on well, but we missed that Hindi song as Mukherji babu refused to sing that day as he was the one who had his left eye swollen!

 They picked me up as the lead singer. In the final day of our batch in the institute. I told them that people had spotted at very early stages of my life that I cannot sing! They did not give up. Finally I agreed. It was “pennaale pennaale” song from Chemmeen, the award winner Malayalam movie. The song was composed by Salil Choudhary and it is folk song, with catchy beat. One does not need to know Shankarabhrana raga to sing that song, 5 others would be behind me on stage to sing the chorus part, so I felt confident. Only plus point we had, was one of us could play guitar. We brought one keyboard player and a tablist from some other batch. I was not fully recovered from the blow from volley ball I got on my chest by left hander, gigantic Moses, who had represented for the state. It was during our venture into play a game with the other hostel team on the previous day. Still I managed to rehearse well, both male and female part of the song was by me. We were on the stage, my guitarist friend said “Scale, scale”. I was looking around the floor to see whether any scale or ruler available, as I thought he wanted one to fix one of those strings on his guitar. He was just pulling my leg to check how much I know about music. Song went on ok, no hiccups. It was not super as expected, but some people enjoyed. But this adventure helped me a lot in the near future.  One of them who enjoyed it was dean of Mech dept, being a Mallu he could enjoy it more. When I went for my project viva, (as such I was under prepared because the project was done while I was on the job), I saw dean of Mech as the chief evaluator. Not only did he ask me simple questions, but he prompted me to answer some of the tough ones that were asked by other evaluators. That “pennaale pennaale” rapport helped me a lot to clear the viva!

“Two Indians were arrested in Singapore for Moonlighting” I saw the news last evening. I had never heard of this term earlier so googled and found the meaning - “Moonlighting is any job you have secondary to your primary job. It doesn't have to relate to your main job”. (Apparently they were doing barber’s job while on a construction labor visa which is illegal in Singapore) I wanted to write today something about moonlighting. But I could not get any good thoughts or incidents on moonlighting. Then, I thought why not some incidents where one is forced to take up something which is not his mainstream, not a job per se, not for a long duration, not secretive, not illegal- but some role unrelated to what one normally does. For lack of any better word, let me call it “sunlighting”!

Sunlighting is good. All of us have inertia to take up such secondary roles. Be fearless. Even if you underperform you will not get the stick as in the case in mainstream job. The joy you get out of it cannot be explained, but has to be experienced. And it can have far reaching benefits which you would have never thought of. Pick up the next opportunity and let the sunlight fall on you!