If you have ever been to an open mic, you’ll know that the poets are the most difficult to spot.
Musicians can usually be identified via their instruments, and more often than not, you’ll find a group of them sitting together, strumming (and humming) along to some familiar tune.
Then there will be the organisers, who need to set up the microphone, check the sound system, test the camera, and get everything ready before the evening can officially begin.
But there is nothing distinctive that sets the poet apart from the crowd.
It could be the person sitting with a glass of iced tea in the farthest corner of the room, just as easily as it could be the one laughing with their friends at the largest table in the cafe.
I was attending Chaitown Community’s Open Mic Night, held on December 10 at the Park Circus outlet of 8th Day Cafe & Bakery. One of the first open mics of the season, the event was a way of indulging in the Christmas cheer with an evening of poetry and music by some young artistes in the city.
I was one of the four poets participating in the open mic and two years of performing poetry from the confines of a rectangular screen had left me somewhat unprepared for the clamour of people inside an actual cafe, making way for those sneaky thoughts:
What if I forget my lines?
What if I stutter?
What if they’re bored?
And every performer’s worst nightmare: What if no one listens to me?
After convincing the organisers to knock my slot from the first position (yikes!) and place it somewhere in the middle of the list, I settled into the evening, which opened with Prantik Majumdar crooning a soulful cover of James Arthur’s popular song – Say You Won’t Let Go.
There was a fair mix of poems at the open mic, with each one being as evocative as the last, centered around different moods and reflecting a multitude of emotions. Amidst the usual dose of poems about love and heartbreak, we also managed to touch upon more nuanced themes. While Akash took everyone on a nostalgic journey down the memory lane with his poem on childhood, Rashi reflected on the plight of overthinkers and drew big smiles and nods of approval – indicating how her words resonated with all those listening.
There is something inherently soothing about an evening of music and poetry with a bunch of random strangers you have never met before and in all likelihood, will never meet again. There were many different people in the cafe that evening – friend groups, office colleagues, families – and yet they all turned to listen when someone read out a poem about love, they all tapped their foot along to the rhythm of the music, and they all clapped and cheered for the participants. In many ways then, an open mic is a testament to the manner in which art can bring us all together.
No matter how seasoned a performer is, there will almost always be a case of the heebie-jeebies just before the performance. The reason is simple – it doesn’t take a lot for things to go wrong on stage. When you have a hall (or in my case, a cafe) full of eyes boring in on you, it is all you can do to not obsess over every imagined detail that can go awry.
Being on stage is a different experience every single time; no matter how much you practise beforehand or anticipate all the possible ways in which an audience might react, the reality will always be slightly different, and will demand that you think on your feet in order to come up with an apt response. In many ways, it's like preserving a structure on the outside, and “winging it” when it comes to the details. Whether those wings will help you fly or send you crashing is a question that only the moment can answer.
There were many other poetry and musical performances following mine, with some young musicians even sharing their original compositions along with other crowd favourite numbers, but one thing stood out for me that evening.
About an hour into the performances, when everyone was handed sheets of paper with Christmas carols on them, I felt a giddy wave of excitement course through me. In what turned out to be my favourite part of the evening, we all spent the next 10 minutes singing some well-known Christmas carols, including of course, the ever so popular Jingle Bells.
We were still two whole weeks away from Christmas, but inside that cafe right in the middle of the city, as the familiar notes of “Dashing through the snow” floated around us and mingled with the aroma of coffee and freshly baked cookies, it was easy to believe that it was indeed Christmas.
After a couple of more performances, the evening drew to a close with Elizabeth Decker – lovingly called Aunt Beth by the organisers – reading out a story for the audience. It was a cosy, comfortable way of winding down, almost like being tucked into bed with a story for the night, except that all of us had to return back to the world outside, and make our way home at the end of the evening.
When the pandemic arrived unannounced and locked us up in the confines of our home, the world experienced a paramount shift in the way it functioned. In what was a boon and a bane, everything and everyone was now just on the other side of the screen – that rectangle which could bring together people separated by oceans and yet somehow, never be able to compare with an in-person interaction.
At Chaitown Community’s open mic, I felt after a long time, that familiar sense of warmth, where a shared love for music and poetry is all you need to feel a sense of camaraderie with a group of random strangers. Having met new faces and made new friends, I hoped that this would be the first of many more such evenings to come, and that we could go on this way, without having to be pushed back into our side of the screen.
