In the quiet town of Lalgudi, where the school hall still smelled of chalk and old wood and the annual elocution competition caused more silent terror than any examination, young Krishnan had begun to dread the sound of his own name being called to speak. Even when he knew the subject well, his heart raced, his palms grew damp, and the carefully prepared words seemed to scatter the moment he stood before others.
One evening on the terrace he confessed this fear to Uncle Venkatesh.
“Uncle, I prepare carefully, yet when I stand up to speak my knees feel weak and my tongue refuses to move properly. Even the boys who speak well seem to suffer. Is there no cure?”
Uncle Venkatesh opened his copy of Seneca’s letters and smiled gently.
“Seneca noticed the same thing long ago. He observed that even the steadiest speakers, when facing the public, break into perspiration as if they had been working a treadmill. Some tremble in the knees as though an earthquake were occurring. Others find their teeth chattering, their tongue sticking to the roof of the mouth, or their lips quivering. And this, he says, happens not only to the novice but to the most experienced.”
Krishnan looked surprised. “Even the best speakers feel this?”
“Yes,” his uncle continued. “Seneca gives both the bad news and the good news. The bad news is that what is implanted by nature—this tendency to nervousness—cannot be completely overcome. The good news is that through steady training and practice you can tone it down so thoroughly that the audience will not notice. Practice prevents the natural tendencies from taking full control.”
Krishnan decided to test the advice.
The next time he had to read a short passage in class, he did not wait for the panic to arrive unprepared. In the days before, he practised aloud in his room—once, twice, many times—until the words felt familiar in his mouth. He practised standing straight, breathing slowly, and beginning with a deliberate first sentence. When the moment came, the old symptoms still appeared: a light sweat, a quickened heart, a slight tremor in the hands. Yet because he had rehearsed, the symptoms no longer ruled him. He spoke through them, and the class heard only a steady voice.
He continued the practice for every small opportunity—answering a question, speaking in a group, reading the notices. Each time the nervousness returned, but each time it grew a little quieter and passed more quickly. He learned to expect the bodily signs without fearing them. They were natural, Seneca had said, but they need not be masters.
Weeks later he sat again with Uncle Venkatesh as the evening sky turned deep blue.
“Uncle,” Krishnan said, “the nervousness is still there when I stand to speak. My hands may still feel damp and my heart may still beat faster. But through practice I can keep it from taking over. The audience no longer sees what I feel. I am learning that the implanted tendency cannot be removed, yet it can be tamed.”
Uncle Venkatesh nodded with quiet approval. “That is the practical wisdom Seneca offers. Do not expect to become free of every natural tremor. Expect instead to meet it with preparation so thorough that the tremor remains your private companion and not the ruler of the moment. Continue the training. In time the steadiest part of you will speak, even while the body remembers its old fear.”
In the soft dusk of Lalgudi, while other boys still avoided the front of the class or suffered in silent dread, young Krishnan walked home with a calmer confidence. He had begun to understand that the body’s alarms were ancient and persistent, yet they need not have the last word.
Through simple, repeated practice Krishnan was learning to hold every speaking hour in his grasp—perspiration and all—and still deliver what he had come to say. And in that steady daily work, the boy discovered a quiet freedom that no natural nervousness could finally take away.