Dance - A Beautiful Journey

A mind that writes is a strange one. I wouldn't say fingers since they are mere slaves. A mind sparked with an idea is like a force.. Like a fire permeating through the hand onto paper as ink.

But inspiration itself is a very moody being. She won’t come when you want her to. She decides when she comes and most of the times it will be when you are busy with something else; As if life itself was not ironic enough with its quagmire of problems..  Nevertheless, inspiration comes to those whom she knows will get themselves out of their beds or pull over into an empty parking lot to punch in those keys .. The keys that could change the course of time…But then she should come.. And until she does, the mind is like a drought hit land.. Parched and awaiting the rains.. All it needs is that one drop which would then evolve like wildfire, if let loose.. Until nothing remains of it..

Now I wouldn't attribute power changing abilities to my mind but it does ache to write when the drought runs too long.. And such was the case for some time now.. There I was at an after party hanging out with friends and listening to what they had to say..

About Dance..

Watching them come to tears while describing how profoundly important they considered it to be in their lives. About how they would fight with life’s obligations to accommodate it.. About the sacrifices and they made to keep dance in their lives. About how dance served as a panacea..

And she came..

Dance... I thought to myself..

I had my own story as well.. People had come and gone..Friends left.. Places changed.. But dance was something that stuck by me since I could remember.. I hadn't made much of it since it was something that easily came to me.. That one thing that I thoroughly enjoyed.. Something which I couldn't ever get tired of.. There were periods when I didn't pay much attention to it but it always clawed its way back to me. To pick me up when I was down and in turmoil.. Helping me take my mind off things..

But then I was not sure if it ever left me.. As a kid I would start dancing, all dignity forgotten and unabashed, whenever there was a catchy song playing on TV.. My cousin sowed the initial seeds of dancing in me after which it just grew.. And as I grew, so did my passion for dancing.. I set on along the path less taken.. Alone, exploring and piecing together disparate dance forms in my mind..

I am among them who would be mentally choreographing steps to a song playing on the radio.. Who would dance in the bathroom to a song, albeit not sung in the best of voices.. Moonwalking and pushing grocery trolleys along the aisles in supermarkets.. Suddenly doing a “Susie q” while walking down the street while plugged into the ipod.. Doing side body waves while working on Paneer Burji with the spatula.. Sitting late nights checking out Advanced Samba Dance Videos for an upcoming show ..  Feeling all sentimental after witnessing a contemporary piece about love, loss and recuperation.. Waking up in the middle of the night to perfect “The Six Step”.. And sitting up till 2am to finish a write up about dance.. :)

Prabhu Deva rightly says in ABCD, “Dance ek nasha hain.. Wohhain toh aur koi nashe ki zarrorat nahin.” Exactly the thing I have been telling my friends for some time now when they begin rolling their eyes on knowing that I don’t drink or smoke.

Somebody laughed and I was shaken from my reverie.. People were still chipping in, lending and venting out their experiences.. I let my mind resume its drill..

I was in high school.. A friend of mine had asked me if I was interested in opening a dance school with him.. We were choreographing a Hip Hop piece together and it was coming out well. People loved it and hence the interest. But I shunned the idea and fell back to Newton’s laws and Euler’s theorems.. Not because I was afraid to take the leap; my parents would have supported me with whatever I wanted to do.. Just that I danced because I enjoyed it and was passionate about it.. But I was not sure if I wanted to build a career init. Yes there was little security from a career perspective but more importantly because I guess I didn't completely understand what it meant to meat that point in my life..

So I followed the herd and took the usual path of electronics and software.. I was happy.. I still danced at every possible event I could.. On every occasion.. Or while walking from the kitchen to the bedroom..  I dabbled with various styles and my body responded to anything I threw at it.. I was happy when I was dancing even though my mind was battling a tempest inside.. And then I realized.. That even if everything fell apart and I was stranded, I had a friend I could count on blindly.. A friend who would nurse me back to health.. A friend within me.. My love for Dance..

It’s true, I thought to myself.. Dancing made me happy and changed my surroundings. It brought with it people with whom I could throw my head back and have a laugh.. With whom I could connect owing to a common entity.. Our passion for dancing.. I began looking forward to evenings when there would be practice sessions.. Yes the bonding and camaraderie was appealing.. But mainly because I was able to dance.. To Be part of something good while doing something I always loved.. I would be at work with one part of my mind wondering how to get rid of the darn NullPointerException that was preventing my code from running and the other part remembering the steps to Justin Timberlake’s Suit and Tie.. Checking out videos during lunch to get a feel of the song and the steps.. Popping and Locking by the coffee machine (While ensuring that my VP wasn't passing by :))  

Not all might relate with what I have written. But that’s ok. There are people who can dance.. And there are others who love to dance.. Being able to dance is besides the point.. Dancing is as simple as shaking a leg vigorously during Ganpati Visarjans.. Or dancing big to Nakka Mukka.. Dancing is as simple as moving your body to express what you have in mind. Something that makes you happy..

But then why would you shake a leg when you have two? Something I am yet to understand. :)


So all my fellow dance lovers out there.. Dance is much more powerful than we think it is.. If we let it, it can pull us out of the deepest trenches we have dug for ourselves and help rebuild us if need be.. And if you haven’t realized that yet, in time you will..

So keep dancing and break a leg or two if you can.. Coz there is always time for that one last dance you have been denying yourself.. :)

A Midnoon Mirage

His Beautiful Atlantis. Calm and serene, he had always been fascinated by the seemingly infinite land where he supposed that the sea and the sky met. A seemingly never ending paradise where everything was hedonistic. A place which would mysteriously invite anyone trying to reach out to it, pulling them further into the water, giving the pursuer the impression of a never ending pursuit. He had always felt a mystic aura around the sea something which he could not place or understand. She had always left him nonplussed, with a desire to know more about her secrets.. in a greater state of yearning than he was when he came to her … But she was always there, like the Sphinx, beaming her Lisa smile at him .. mocking him of how little he knew of her.

Today was no different. Maybe that was the reason he was standing by the railing of the speeding boat which was precariously bouncing off the waves into the sea threatening anyone on the deck. The foam was thick and lashing against the boat but he wouldn’t relent. With one hand on the side holding the edge of the door, he stood there gazing into the apparent nothingness of crimson and the fading blue. He didn’t know why or how long he was there.. just that he was bound by strange connection which couldn’t be defined by a single lifetime.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?”

He felt like he was pulled back into the realms of reality. So lost was he in the quagmire of his thoughts that had it not been for the way she had said it, he would have assumed that it was the sea which finally spoke to him giving in to his long perseverance. She stood there by his side gazing at him intently, with one hand loosely holding the railing, completely indifferent to the threat which, with a little twist of her fate or her hand, could send her plummeting into the very dark depths below them. He didn’t know what to appreciate; her audacity to reach out to him or the manner in which their minds were in sync. Sure, he thought. Most people find the sea beautiful.

But this was different. Looking into her eyes, he could see the same myriad of emotions traversing through the many folds of her mind, dancing and giving rise to one another to form a continuous school of thought.

He looked at her. To say she was pretty would be an understatement but not the kind he had seen in the chic women who had tried to woo him in the past. She was simple yet there was elegance in her. The manner in which her nimble fingers were wound on the railing as if they were caressing it as opposed to the firm life sustaining grasp one would normally have considering where she was right now. He felt a sudden pang of jealousy towards the railing.

She was relaxed and completely at ease with the turbulent sea and everything about her, even the slight casual lean towards him, was beautiful. Her hair was billowing in the wind; few strands of which had broken free from their sisters and were now adorning her face. Her mascara lined eyes accented their beauty and he had to pull his eyes away from hers to fall back into the boundaries of decency.

“I have always loved it when the sun sets and the way it reflects against the water.. Makes it look like a sheet of fire but one that is calm and peaceful”, she said

There was strange warmth in her voice which he normally didn’t associate with a stranger. He merely nodded keeping his eyes on the water in front of them, even though his mind had begun racing with thoughts about how warm her hand would feel in his.

“It’s cold out here”, she said as if accusing the sea and he was slightly let down. He thought she didn’t appreciate how beautiful the scene was and was almost going to dismiss her as someone who came close enough ,when she continued in the same breath..

“I bet your arms would be a much warmer place.”

He jerked his head around and found nothing had changed. Except she had. Her eyes had the same warmth but there was a faint smile playing on her lips  as if they were trying to tell him about the aeon they had spent together spread across the various ambits of time. Her feet had begun inching towards him as if they knew how she would feel in his arms. The only question was how?

She let go of the railing and her fingers found solace in his. Her eyes loomed closer and closer and the world around him dissolved. Nothing else mattered. Perhaps she was too close for anything else to make sense. He gave in.

His woke up with a start. He was not able to make sense of the wide expanse of white gradually looming into focus. He was in, what one could term it to be as, a momentary morning limbo where the mind has not yet made the transition from the land of dreams to reality even though one was awake. Bit by bit, he relapsed and found his fingers laced in a tender but firm hold akin to that in his dream. He turned his head to find her sleeping on the chair beside him with few strands of her hair falling on her face. He smiled with the cognizance that nothing had changed.

They had met on the very same boat and it had become sort of a ritual to make the same trip once every couple of years. They were married now for six years now and he still saw the same girl in her who had paid heed to the stars on that blessed day and their fates had intertwined. Again.

Her head was slightly tilted to his side as if it had not yet found its proper place. He moved his shoulder to make amends but she subconsciously sought it and rested on it. May be he was imagining but there was a strange contentment in her face; something that he had always associated with soulful beauty of the sea.

He rested his head behind on the cushion of his chair, gazing intently at her face as if he didn’t want to miss a single moment. This was a dream he didn’t ever want to wake up from.. the dream which gave him strength to survive and was also his weakness. The dream which he sought even though it was his own.

She was his dream.

Angry Rant of an Occasional Clubber

Now before you go any further I did like to clear one thing. This post doesn’t talk about what’s cool and not cool when in a club or about how you should go about trying to woo the opposite sex. These are my observations and mine alone and if I have unknowingly hurt someone’s feelings.. well let’s just say I don’t give a cow’s tail.

I have borrowed the word ‘clubber’ from the generic terminology associated with the folk who haunt the crazy and dazed congregation of people who believe that shifting their body weight alternately on either leg and not hitting a single beat means dancing. Now don’t get me wrong here. I am not against clubs or socializing and this post is not going to be about that. I am just pissed with the way people try so hard to adhere to platitudinous social Gen-X dogma of ‘kewlness’.

I have been passionate about dancing since I can remember and even though I have a keen interest in the same my visits to dance clubs have been pretty limited. Coz if you want to really enjoying dancing, that’s definitely NOT the place to be. You would rather be well off dancing crazy at your home or in your bathroom (Come on, at some point you would have danced in the shower) or on the road after midnight (Now you wouldn’t want to be run over, would you?). I hate to generalize but there has not been a single exception to my above point among the few ones I have visited.

To corroborate one of the reasons of my current angry young man mode, I did like to recount an episode from “Life Sucks”, hosted by MTV VJ Cyrus Sahukar on MTV, about the much accepted and promoted social gesture of going to a club as a couple ( I know for sure that to be true in India and not in the US). In the episode, Cyrus mentions how you are likened to an eel in the overflowing gutters of Mumbai during the monsoons; were you to turn up at a club without a ‘date’. (Well alright he didn’t actually say that and I am just rephrasing it in my own words but the gist remains the same J.. And this doesn’t apply for women.. Gender Reservation anyone?)  So they classify you to be a loser since you can’t get a girl to come with you even if you can do the Rock `N` Roll like Elvis Presley or maybe Moonwalk like Mr. Jackson himself. And as if that was not enough, they punish you for coming alone by charging you more as Entry Fee termed ‘Stag Entry’ over people who come as couples, which clearly doesn’t have anything to do with the antler bearer. I don’t even feel like dignifying the rationale behind such an arrangement with a counter argument so I am going to leave it at that.

Now that you have made your way inside a club, past the beefed up bouncers in the doorway flashing menacing stares, you are reminded of the Mumbai local compartments. No, I did not bring the Mumbai locals into the picture coz I lived most of my life in Mumbai but because they are well known for having over 200 people travelling while standing in awkward positions in a single compartment which has a maximum capacity of 50. Similarly, a typical dance floor in a club has close to 50-100 people swaying (I will flay you alive if you say dancing) in a space where at most 25 people can dance. And what a sight it is.

You walk in to see couples holding goblets of liquor, inebriated and oblivious of their surroundings, moving from side to side without any idea of which track is currently being played. But what’s more interesting is the manner in which the Male component of the ‘Couple’ entity gets all territorial, popping his eyes out like Jim Carrey in the 1994 hit ‘The Mask’ at other males in the vicinity thereby ensuring the safety of the girl with him. (I find this very much akin to what Man’s best friend does around a tree on his morning and evening walks).. As if some masked musketeer was going to gallop their way inside on a horse and kidnap the girl. If you were so concerned about her, why don’t you lock her up a tall tower in some distant land and endow her with Rapunzel like long hair (OR you could also try not coming to the club buts hey it’s your call).

And then there are the ones whom I hate the most. The guys who are in the crowd for no apparent reason, imitating how one would apply soap while taking a bath (Hey you can’t blame them. A disoriented and disconnected sequences of hops skips and frog jumps can also be termed as dancing.. only a more dumber version which could be a good addition to the bloopers section). Now you may want to dance alone or with your group of friends and have a nice time but sadly you can’t coz you will be interrupted by them morons who will be jumping around any group of girls they can find, like a bumbling band of baboons stamping on everyone else’s foot. Frankly, I have seen baboons behave more sophisticated than that on the Discovery Channel and before there are reports of Angry Baboon Uprisings in zoos all over the world, I did like to convey my apologies for having compared them with such douchebags.

My problem is not with the way people dance or with the unfair stag entry fee. My problem is with people who, have no interest in dance whatsoever, come to a dance club coz they think that’s what cool people do( Or maybe tell the world that they were there via a Facebook check-in).. Yes once you are drunk anybody can dance (I know this partly because I hail from Kerala where the word “Pambu”, or Snake if you will, has another meaning which is wildly different from the original and partly since I have a lot of bewda pals ;)) and I feel that’s the main reason all clubs come with a bar.

So the next time you see a lonely figure dancing away to glory not giving a damn about what others are doing and having a nice time all by himself with the music, it would most likely be me or a certain Mr. Chinappa with whom I share my first name (He claims to have danced all alone to house music in a club few years ago since no one was into it). I don’t care if people are more interested in getting themselves drunk or want to flock the place to show how much of a couple they are. For all I care, I would be dancing in the middle of the Kalahari Desert if there was good music to be found(But since it would be too hot and too much trouble to get there and the chances of my finding good music there are similar to Ra-One winning the Oscar’s for the Best Script or Gunda for Best Dialogues, I occasionally turn a blind eye to the idiosyncrasy I am currently jabbering about and have a nice time by myself or with my friends at the not-so-dancey clubs).

And lastly .. after reading all this if you still plan to come to a disco / dance club for any reason apart from dancing all I have to say to you is that “I will look for you.. I will find you.. and I will dwindle the bloody living daylight out of your pea sized brain” ( the last line did not come in its entirety from Liam Neeson in Taken but I needed to get home the point :) )

Shake a Leg Amigos!

The Train

He sat facing the light at the end… the light that was running out of sight, slowly engulfing everything around him in darkness. The slow rumble of the chair underneath him was in sync with that inside him... only that the former was less intense. He didn’t know what to do or what was left to do.. He had not pinned his hopes on her but as they say the anticipation of something happening does no justice to one’s state after it happens. It works both ways, he thought.

“Haven’t I been through this before? Surely, she wasn’t the first”, he thought to himself.. Yes. There were women before her.. Women who got off the train abruptly before her.. His train.. just like she had.. Yet for some reason this seemed different. She seemed different... It seemed like life was running away from him. Or was it just the train?  Life, at times, is like sitting on the wrong side of the train .. A new chapter is when we decide to get up and face the way life is taking us... He knew it.. The only predicament was how to go about it.

His mind flew back to her text not too long ago.. “I am getting engaged.” For him it was not how, but Why? They had been together for some time now and they had their share of problems. Nothing big enough to end everything they shared.. He hadn’t asked her anything because there was nothing left to.. now that she had nodded her ascent to someone else… He  had known that her parents had been searching for alliances and how she would nonchalantly rebuff them…  But never had he expected to find himself at such a juncture.. He didn’t ask who it was.. All of them seemed the same to him.. He didn’t think knowing who she would be spending the rest of her life with would bring about a difference to the all consuming fire inside him.. But then he himself did not know whether the fire stemmed from his anger or his pain.. “Why This Kolaveri Di?” , he thought to himself…

Something inside him caught his attention and he realized it was his friend waving out to him…. Time to put the mask back on, he thought.. “Fighting sleep are we?”,she said smiling at him… Her question came with his alibi and he smiled back at her.. Seemingly satisfied with his reply, she went back to watching the world run by outside the window. She was one of his very close people and he could have told her how welcome sleep was..  More than sleep some time to sit back and mull things over, in his head.. But he knew she would take it worse than he was presently and go on a panic overdrive.. Why trouble her unnecessarily?

Thinking it out would have been cathartic but life had other plans.. In keeping up with it, he couldn’t find time for anything else, not even his thoughts. “The show must go on”, he would tell himself whenever he thought he couldn’t take it any more… He held the fire inside him as a shield; not to protect him from what was there outside, waiting for him but from breaking down within… He knew his shield was waning but then he couldn’t give up on himself just yet… not yet…

His eyes glazed around the surroundings… Everyone was busy.. plugged into music, poring over interesting excerpts in the newspaper, talking into their phones, getting on and off.... People, he assumed, would get on and off your life.. It was who stayed with you till the end that mattered.. People who were going to accompany you till the very end..  until the time when you would have to get off your train.. His eyes rested on his friends, sitting on the other side of him, snoozing after a tiring day..

He knew they would stay with him and get off where he would.. It was a trivial thing but he cherished it like a man, amidst a wreck, holding onto anything that would keep him afloat.. He knew there was more to it, as his friends, albeit few, would be with him no matter what the situation was. And he knew he would do the same for them.. The same reason he didn’t want his friend to know what he was putting himself through.. Life has strange ways of providing you with help for the handicap your choices come with.. Help that doesn’t complain or expect anything in return from you..

He knew he wouldn’t be able to overcome her easily.. He knew he would be completely broken in the process of accepting a future without her…something which he knew was inevitable.. He knew he had to travel that path alone.. something he was sure about... But he knew help would be there even if he chose not to accept it, all the way till the very end.

And with that he got up and prepared to get off.. or rather set off for his titanic task.. Apprehensive yes but undeterred, now that he knew whom he would find waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, waiting with open arms….. As they always did….

The Mighty Sheet

Mortals are hedonists. And I am a mortal. We like our comforts and strive to make our lives happier by doing things that would steer us from harm’s way… More so from Pain’s way. All of us are egocentric and it is just the degree that varies. With the exception of the enlightened who were able to transcend such attributes which we so dearly associate our lives with. I am not perfect. I am a mere mortal. I am not detached enough to live life and not be moved by it. And my guess is that you aren’t either.  

There are times when your body is weak and tired but your mind is waging a war. You lie down but the Sandman has not yet bestowed his mercy on you.. Not until you are so lost in your thoughts that your mind decides that sleep, the panacea, is the best possible remedy for your ailing soul; albeit temporary but it works well. One such time I found myself staring straight into the white expanse in front of me.. It was dark but Lune and her silent shiny friends seemed to mock me through the blinds; enough to light up the room and my mind.

Suspended Animation? Possibly. When your mind idly peruses your past casually projecting random excerpts into the fore.. Like a log drifting sluggishly in the backwaters.. My hands move as if programmed to do so, pulling the sheets over my head... Sheets which had the power to ward off ‘evil monsters’ in our nascent years.. which could save us from the ‘ghost under the bed’… the companion to all our clandestine post bed-time adventures. The Mighty Sheet.

I stop to think. Is it that easy? To just give into to the warmth and lose oneself in the halcyon lands that follow suit. The Sheet, my Excalibur which could shield me from the quagmire that life has become.. It would have been if the mind was not marred by the several conflicts resulting from our actions or the situations we place ourselves in.. Life poses several questions.. Searching for the answers is like trying to find something in murky water. You don’t know if you will find it. Worse; you don’t know what you will find. We all want to be happy. It is the basic driving force of our existence. Take that away and everything falls apart.

They say you get to live only once. Some say you move on to assume multiple lives to satiate your soul. The versions are several and we opt for whichever keeps us happy. You can pull the sheet over your head and give in thinking that maybe tomorrow will be a beautiful day. Or you can try and reach for what makes your heart sing and have no regrets later.  Nothing is a given and that is the axiom of life. Times have changed and so have you. The mighty sheet which overcame everything in the past will not be able to prevail against the gimmicks of your mind… The Gimmicks of your choices.

The Flight

Yonder i run

in the dark lonely cave

away from depths of time

Chasing the light 

that would deliver me

Away from all I thought was mine

I keep running 

unbidden and pursuing

to reach my paradise

I trip and fall 

into the abyss

of the darkness my own device

Now I sit

by the lonely shores 

seeking the cherubins of blithe

resisting the treacherous 

waves of yore

that could take me away with it

The Midlife Crisis

She turned over and tried to make the most of her eyes in the darkness.. Not that she expected to see anything.. It would have been better if she was awake because she wanted to. Worse? Well when you are in pain, anything else is better isn’t it? Pain, like success, is always a relative term, she thought. You compare it with what you already have. Or what others have.. And you know your happiness is short-lived as something is bound to intersect and disrupt your life…

He was busy working by the light beside the table.. God knows since when.. She had been awaken by the pain and had lost track of time.. He was busy but then he has always been so off late. His ascent of the corporate ladder had dwindled out of their lives the very thing she had cherished the most… His time… They had everything a couple could ask for… a decent house, two beautiful kids and the likes that constitute a satiating life….

But was it? In the nascent years of their marriage, she remembered how he used to be inseparable from her.. They were that mad couple in love that others would talk about..That she would talk about now.. But things had changed.. And so had he… The eyes were distant.. She could feel the coldness between them which had nothing to do with the air-conditioning in the house.. The eyes that used to smile on seeing her, were no longer there.. They were taken, she presumed, by someone else… Some damsel he might be having an affair with… A common thing now, she thought..  She had heard of them… the flings and the affairs which accounted for a major chunk of divorces piling up the judicial houses… Pain is truly relative, she thought. And you can’t gauge it unless you are a part of it.

She was unsure what was worse. The pain that had awoken her or the cognizance that one day her thirteen year old Cindrella story would meet a dead end.. They subsumed one another.. After all, differentiating or accounting for doesn’t make the experience any better.. Her emotions found vent in tears but she didn’t bother stopping them.. He wouldn’t bother or maybe it didn’t matter to him anymore.. She had to savor what was left of their life and prepare herself for the axe …

And suddenly she was blinded by a light.. Her vision was blurred and she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. A dream? Quite unlikely since she was visited by nightmares too often.. A warm hand on her shoulder pulled her back into the realms of reality.. The tears were wiped away and she opened her eyes to the same warm brown ones she had missed for so long.

Holding out a concoction he said, “I know this isn’t your favorite chocolate chip milkshake and neither will it reduce your pain.. but this is the best I could whip up at this hour”. She looked from the milkshake to the eyes and realization dawned.. So immersed she had been in her myriad of emotions that she had failed to notice him leaving the room.. He had somehow sensed that she was in pain and wanted to do something to assuage it..

The blocks had suddenly fallen back in place… their journey had restarted.. She realized how wrong she had been of him. He may have been busy but her place in his life was unquestionable… She pushed aside the milkshake and threw herself into his arms… She knew nothing else could make her feel better.. For all she knew, eternity could come and go and she would never have realized it pass..

She would have confessed the actual source of her tears.. She felt no shame in admitting her fears but it wasn’t necessary. He would have understood and it wouldn’t make a difference. What did make a difference at that point was that she could feel the same warmth emanating from him that she was so used to in the past.. It didn’t matter that there were others giving up on their marriage..  All that mattered was that she would not leave any stone unturned to save hers.. And she knew he would do the same….

The Midlife Crisis here is not about the pain or on-the-verge marriages or the suspicions…. They all stem from it though and are fuelled by life’s grueling burdens.. It is about certain things, acts or moments that make the so called rat race worth running for.. Albeit small, they make life a smooth ride on potholes… It rekindles the will to live and with that gone, our lives would be as mechanical as the pods NASA sends out to space every couple of years.. Life is about the moments that take our breath away… Living without them is like breathing.. You do it because you have to…

Find what you want from life and have someone to share it with because life is like a joke… You enjoy it more when you have someone with whom you can laugh your head off..

Life is collage of such moments.. Find and live them together..

Coz life is too long to be lived alone……….