SILENT GHUNGHROOS

for whom do i dance? just me... ?

It’s a monthly ritual at our dance school. Every month, a few of us have to muster the courage to give a formal dance performance on stage. This is witnessed by our very own local audience, comprising of family, friends and a few lesser-known celebrities. This week it was our team. Ayesha and me were to present a toda, on a romantic meeting between Radha and Krishna.

As I was applying alta ( red colored henna) on my foot, Ayesha walked in with unfinished makeup. “What the hell! It’s the dance they want to see, then why do we have to do all this?” she bawled out and left the room with my kajal stick.She didn’t realize what she had just said, and left me mulling over it.

Rich lipsticks, Kajal,, Kanchivaram sarees, heavy gold ornaments, two meter ghunghroo strings” .and emerges a beautiful women. My performance was due in fifteen minutes, and my makeup waiting to be started. The thought was disturbing, so I left it and continued working on me.

In the night, while washing the alta off my feet, the thoughts reemerged. Did anybody really understand the theme of the dance, the feelings we were trying to depict, or were they busy staring at us?

What is the purpose of wearing this entire burden? I bet nobody noticed our body movements. They must have been busy either looking at our faces or the color we used to lure them to watch us. Was the decking up a means to seize their attention? To sustain their interest in our faces, long enough, till they didn’t get jaded and started looking at what we were doing?

They look up, see a glamorous bright figure, and keep revering till the point it gets saturating. And when the monotony of staring at that face continuously captures them, they observe what the person is actually doing. This interest doesn’t lasts too long. And then they wait to recognize a posture they know an average person wouldn’t be able to do. The acclamations come thereafter. There are some, whose eyes do settle on the wholeness of the dance once or twice, but by the time it does, they have missed too much to understand any further.

How many people really did understand what we were trying to manifest? Krishna’s tryst with Radha, Their ecstasy, Radha complaining on not seeing Him too often, about His dallies, making subtle love”. All in vain perhaps.

Dance is the most beautiful form of expressing feelings, next only to words and actions. Our guruji, proposed her lover, by dancing her way to glory. He is now her husband. And every time she narrates that tale, we all start cherishing our dream, of following her footsteps. May be we have presumed that our Prince Charming would get an inkling. If we call him over to witness a solo performance, being staged exclusively for him, I am sure even a dolt would understand the intent. “It was difficult to say no, under those circumstances!”. Our guruji’s husband brags often, till she prods him to keep shut. They have been married happily for twenty-nine years now. Reason, every year, our guruji performs the same dance, in the same way, as she did twenty nine years back.