Nalini Keshava's Journey- 4. The Unconditional Love

My next hiccup was the talent round. I did not know what to showcase. Cooking? Dancing? Or presentation expressing my thoughts about women? I decided to dance with a story to it. I wanted to make the audience laugh. I picked up one of the incidents of our daily life. We all know that we love cooking but when it comes to cooking every day, we make excuses. Don't we all? I chose to use the same in my dance number. The story started with a high expectation from my husband to cook quite a few things for his friends. The plot is to divert his mind with my dance and use dance practice an excuse not to cook. It was a dance drama with my actual emotions on the presentation running parallel on the background. During my practice sessions I thought it was impossible for me to act. I used to burst out into laughter. On the stage however, I did a good job in acting and dancing. I was quite satisfied as I did not think I could control my laughter, nervousness and pull it off.

I was happy to make it to the final round. I was shivering from within yet trying to smile at the judges. At one point of time I felt like saying thank you for the opportunity and run away. I calmed myself down and continued with the question and answer round. I did a decent job but was not satisfied with my answer. I may have answered with much more confidence if I was not so nervous and sick.

I had never lost any competitions since childhood. It felt weird and bad to not have won the pageant where I was one of the top candidates to win the title. It took a week for me to get over the feeling, but in the process I learnt how losing felt and gained a lot of insight into myself. I understood my strengths and decided to work on my weakness. As a next step I will be taking meditation classes from Nithya Mukunda to focus and achieve more. I kind of understood how our cricket team or any sportsman would feel when they lost and yet get going with their practice to achieve their goals. True spirit of sportsmanship. Instead of cribbing on the fact that I lost, I decided to understand why and how I can improve.

In the end, I did meet a lot of wonderful people. My contestants were so talented and we had loads of fun in our practice sessions. I had gained a lot of cheerful moments with my beautiful friends.  The support from my friends and family made me a strong contestant and a better person. "Irrespective of who the judges will crown today, you have already won and you are the queen of my world" were my husband words. Yes I did gain a lot from this pageant journey. The unconditional love and trust from my family and friends.

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