Attending an Indian Hindu wedding is like being a part of cast of a fully fledged Bollywood blockbuster. The show begins with thumping sound of loud music and ends with baraatis burning the dance floor hot. Who cares for the half bald men with fat tummies doing a belly move on a Katrina Kaif number or the overly dressed aunties (sometimes even more decked up than the bride herself) shaking their booties to a Daler Mehndi Bhangra rap. As long as songs keep playing one after the other, the entire floor…err…. roadside follows the musical command of the band, baja and baraat.
However,
when you have a life partner who is not only coy about dancing publicly but is
also unfortunately blessed with two left feet, all you are left is to either
keep cheering the already half-crazy crowd with your claps or join them all alone
while your poor ol’ man stares you from a distance returning unpromising smiles.
Well, by now
you may have guessed that the discreditable dancing couple would be ‘us’. And
this how our dancing-saga started some fourteen years ago.
While dating
each other as fresh and young love-birds, soon to get married, we were offered
to participate in a couple dancing contest at the district level. I haven’t
still been able to figure out whether it was out of sheer excitement or out of
sheer mockery of our inabilities to dance together that few of our seriously-
thoughtful friends got our names registered without seeking our prior
permission. When the idea was brought before us, we had but two choices. Either
quit fearing a face-loss or face ignoring hoots and eggs!!
Attending an Indian Hindu wedding is like being a part
of cast of a fully fledged Bollywood blockbuster. The show begins with thumping
sound of loud music and ends with baraatis
burning the dance floor hot. Who cares for the half bald men with fat tummies
doing a belly move on a Katrina Kaif number or the overly dressed aunties
(sometimes even more decked up than the bride herself) shaking their booties to
a Daler Mehndi Bhangra rap. As long as songs keep playing one after the other,
the entire floor…err…. roadside follows the musical command of the band, baja and baraat.
However, when you have a life partner who is not
only coy about dancing publicly but is also unfortunately blessed with two left
feet, all you are left is to either keep cheering the already half-crazy crowd
with your claps or join them all alone while your poor ol’ man stares you from
a distance returning unpromising smiles.
Well, by now you may have guessed that the
discreditable dancing couple would be ‘us’. And this how our dancing-saga started
some fourteen years ago.
While dating each other as fresh and young
love-birds, soon to get married, we were offered to participate in a couple
dancing contest at the district level. I haven’t still been able to figure out
whether it was out of sheer excitement or out of sheer mockery of our
inabilities to dance together that few of our seriously- thoughtful friends got
our names registered without seeking our prior permission. When the idea was
brought before us, we had but two choices. Either quit fearing a face-loss or
face ignoring hoots and eggs!!
Without much mulling over, it was obviously was a
big ‘No’ from my side until my
partner, strangely the weaker of the two dancers, insisted that we take up the
challenge. Not just the challenge of dancing but also the challenge to begin
doing difficult and funny tasks together. After what he said with a charming
smile, one and one was no longer two but
eleven!!
As least that is what I’d thought until the time
we began rehearsing. Despite meticulous planning, help from a trained jive
performer and step-by-step demonstration like kindergartners on the song was “Itna na mujhse tu pyaar badha…” what
seemed to turn out was anything but a perfect ballroom happy and boppy
dance. Right in the first move trying to swing across, we bumped our heads into
each other and in no seconds, he managed to knock me off giving me a swollen
lump on my forehead.
Love-birds don’t
quit! Gathering my broken hopes and wearing the madly-in-love
gleeful smile back, we continued rehearsing subsequent steps, only to end it up
even more grouse. With every heroic knee lift that my man did, he ended up
passionately stomping with all his might on my tender feet. The lyrics of the
romantic number kept getting punctuated with moans, grumbles and
oops-and-ouches!
By now, all my patient nerves were giving away and I couldn’t
bear it continuing even few hours longer. Nevertheless, before we would start rehearsing
the finale steps, I like a cautious wise girl, forewarned him about the “really
serious” implications on our relationship that could follow, thus, dropping a
hint for him to catch!
As the music rolled-on, there he moved towards me, in a poised
and gentlemanly gait, neatly lifting me up in both his arms, looking right into
my eyes, rocking me from one side to other on the beautiful, romantic lyrics of
the old world and just when I was ready to tuck myself closer to him, suddenly his
grip weakened, he stumbled and dropped me on the floor with a loud thud!!! In a
flash of a nanosecond, there I was, the heroine of the show, lying flat on the
ground and half-wet having dashed myself on a water jug kept nearby.
Before I could even gather up my lost embarrassment, I saw my
partner dropping himself on ground next to me to give company and pouring the
remaining water from the jug on himself to match my wet looks. He looked silly
but funnily cute trying to make up for the heinous mistake he’d committed.
Our neatly planned out dance act had turned into a crazy
fiasco, albeit a delightful one. All my
anger vanished with whoosh and we sat
on floor laughing out loud for many cosy minutes, holding hand-in-hand and cracking-up
at what had happened. Those few hours of
happy moments were worth living a thousand years.
What followed for the next few days were rigorous rehearsals,
sequential bumping, stomping and repeated falling down but laughing away our follies
in each other’s joyous company. By the end of the week, we had prepared before
us an imperfect but effortless ballroom dance. It may be called nothing if
compared to the skills of dancing but an amazing experience of a free-spirited
and doppy couple ready to take the world in their jumping shoes.
Unfortunately, the dancing contest was called off by the Organizers
at the eleventh hour, thus, bringing our short stint to dancing at an abrupt
end.
However, life had something even more beautiful in store for
us. We got married soon after and for fourteen consecutive years down the line,
we would jump in to be a part of dance in any and every of the cultural
functions in our family or friend circle. Our close few know about the ‘few’ amateur
steps that we’d together picked years ago and would not leave a stone unturned
to rope us in.
Last night, when we were impromptu dragged on to a Wedding Sangeet
stage by a distant relative, we unhesitatingly donned the floor with our
half-forgotten jive moves, sometimes bumping and sometimes stomping but all in
good taste. Burning the floor hot with dance is now just a matter of little
laughter and of lots of love!
Difficult times, TV jokes, magazine clippings, social gossips
or even routine arguments, it’s comforting to know that we can stay
unpretentiously silly and happily maladjusted to each other’s weakness.
We learnt to dance
like nobody’s watching and laugh like nobody’s holding!
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