131. Everything You Need to Know about What I Know about Pain

When Amma is young, she stars in a Bharatanatyam performance in a competition in a newly built theater, the boards of the stage so freshly laid that not all of the nails were properly tamped down. She sets her toes down firmly for a pose, and one of those nails pierces through the ball of her foot, deep into the muscle. She blanches when she tells me this story, moaning in recollection, "Aiyo, the pain," but says that at the time, she barely notices, she's so focused on the dance. Pain is just pain, she reasons, but winning is everything. She can't lift her foot from the impaling nail, so she dances in place around it, flexing her legs and rising to her toes in all the correct ways, even though she can't move from the spot. The dark stain of her blood soaks into the new wooden floor. Only when the curtains close does she collapse and scream. Her dance instructor runs to her but falters at all the blood, so Amma grabs her foot herself and rips it free. The nail sticks up from the floor like a thirsty fang. She doesn't remember if she screamed. She limps for months.

There's no noticeable scar, but it probably fucked up her foot for life.