Ugly feet are beautiful

The scars we bear are badges of honour

Renuka Narayanan

An old, teenage love for the ballet refuses to die and I still collect ballet books in a mildly demented way. Last week I found a children’s book called Ballet Stories which was an anthology of fiction and extracts from the autobiographies of great ballerinas like Canadian Lynne Seymour and the ‘assoluta’, Margot Fonteyn (I found her life story in a bookstore in Rotterdam’s famous Lijnbaan ten years ago! Until then, I just kept borrowing the copy in the British Council Library in Delhi).

One story in particular really touched me. It’s about a younger sister who’s just signed up for dance class. She can’t understand why her elder sister, who’s been learning ballet for six years, is hostile to the idea. She lies awake at night puzzling over it and suddenly realises that her sister never exposes her feet. She digs out a torch and tiptoes to her sister’s bed. Even the way the sister sleeps is so graceful. Carefully, the younger girl shines the light on her feet and recoils in shock. Her feet are so ugly! Several toenails are black, one seems to have fallen off and her heels are rough and scaly. The elder girl wakes up and starts crying. There’s a big audition coming up for membership in a professional ballet company. It will decide her life. “What if I don’t get selected? Will it have been worth it?” she agonises. The story, alas, ends right there, at a moment of existential doubt.

It’s bothersome, because so many of us have to abandon something after years of punishing investment in it. We are left with a feeling of ‘waste’. Perhaps we can overcome this negative feeling through a parlour trick or two. One, if we still want to persist in that project or relationship we can remember a couple of history’s great tryers, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, who was so desperate for the wealth of India that he invaded us seventeen times, until he finally cracked Somnath. We need not admire his greed, but certainly we can learn from his persistence. And frankly, the luxury of time long past allows us to admire Babur for his grit and determination. Yes, we know he would never have won at Panipat but for his Turkish gunners. But to inspire his men through so much hardship, to cross the Khyber with nothing but a couple of tents (which he gave his mother): objectively speaking, if these are not feats of endurance, what is?

My mother’s favourite example was the Scot, Robert the Bruce. Repeatedly laid low in his fight against the English, he was greatly depressed. Brooding over his troubles, he noticed a spider that kept falling down but never stopped trying to spin its web exactly where it wanted. Greatly inspired, he regained the heart to fight.

The fact of the matter is, that somebody is always doing something wrong to the other. It seems to be a horrible ‘sansar ka niyam’. Given this macro-drama of attack and injustice, should we really expect fate to care for us as individuals? And should a ‘result’ devastate us if it holds back its reward, even if we almost killed ourselves for it?

Everything hurts us as human beings: an unkind word, a devious colleague, disappointing relatives who won’t include us in their lives because they’re too busy, an unfaithful friend, an accident, a theft, the weather, a shabby outfit, an unrealised dream, a failed relationship. But isn’t that the texture of life? We win some, we resoundingly lose some. That’s why the idea of God is a very comforting thought to clutch at. God doesn’t seem to mind our scars, emotional or physical. They are our merit badges, that we tried, in our own silly ways, to make some sense of life. As Margot Fonteyn sums up, “What is happiness but brightly coloured moments that we try to clutch as they float past?”