ASHES

Fun is a very complicated word. Often used loosely to mean enjoyment without really sending a definite objective message. There are times when you just have fun, and then there are others when you want to have fun and there are some others when you are trying to have fun. I like the first one better, because it’s so difficult for me to psyche myself up to have fun.

Having seen most of the movies made in India I am pretty much smitten by the music bug and none less by the desire to shake a leg. When I was young I used to lock the room which had the speakers of our small time stereo and danced like anything. I used to be very secretive about it and never wanted anyone to know. I didn’t really have a passion for dancing or music for that matter. But it felt nice to do the brake dance, especially the danger zone song which was on one of the duplicate cassettes my dad had bought. It was a great feeling, but somewhere I stopped doing it. From class 9 to 12 I hardly danced either alone or at public gatherings.

Then I came to IIT and dancing again had the same meaning was again equidistant from the real definition of the word. We used to have birthday parties in the first year at a common place in the hostel and after the requisite ass bumping we would get down to dirty dancing if I may. This was dance in its cheapest yet the most invaluable form. You can get a bunch of guys to do bharatnatyam but to dance the way we did it really needs plain and simple freedom of expression. I danced a lot through those five years and the last time was in the fifth year dancing with juniors on winning some of the coveted trophies in that year.

In the last two weeks I was in three parties, which revolved quite a lot around dancing. The first was a pre marriage party by a senior, who I barely knew. He had invited me to his house where there was going to be a ‘party’. I knew there would be alcohol so I was trying to prepare myself for interacting with some drunkards. Of course it was a dance party so you have to dance. You know think about it you enter a party after riding the bike at 1am in the night, and you know dilli ki sardi, and straight away you are on the dance floor. It’s bad enough for me to be surrounded by inebriated people asking me to dance. But it gets tough you know when people sitting around include the parents and relatives of the groom. I just can’t do it. So there I was, trying to have fun. It doesn’t work.

Next up, there was an office party for the promotions of some of our team members, including yours truly. Now this may sound like a weird construction, but I hate such parties. I mean I like going for dinner to celebrate, but alcohol and dancing in a pub is not really on my list. But that’s exactly what it was planned to be. Since I was not paying for it I was able to at least be sporting enough in planning the party. I went to the party and just didn’t feel like dancing. Fortunately I had a sour throat a slightly abnormal temperature so I bailed myself out of the dancing pool. I sat outside alone, one of my favourite pass times, and was eagerly waiting for dinner to start. Some of my friends forced me to come and dance and that’s when you don’t know what to do. Please anyone of you reading this post, who might have the time of posting a comment please tell me what do you do in such a situation? If you don’t agree to dancing after repeated persuasion you are not a sport and you disrupt the party, and if you do agree then you are tagged ‘ye saala bohot bhaav khata hai’. I am tired of hearing these remarks, I guess the best thing to do is do nothing and let people blabber whatever they want to. Who cares? So there I was, wanting to have fun, but couldn’t. I think I put a very heavy price on fun and enjoyment. I can not just go to a pub and start dancing, I need some occasion or some sense of achievement to groove.

The weekend was great. I went to my cousins wedding and I got to meet my relatives. Most of my uncles and aunts both paternal and maternal, have spent their childhood in Jhansi and know each other very well. That way we are a lot more closely knit than an average Indian clan. So it’s always great to catch up with cousins and actually their sons. Wow time passed by so quickly. The wedding was wonderful, atleast by Jhansi standards. There was a DJ, well if you would like to call him that! But he was playing songs from some CDs and starting and finishing them as if it were a game of musical chairs. But fun was in the air. I stepped on the dance floor and with catchy bollywood numbers, in no time the dance floor was full with people. The cameraman asked me a couple of times to move because I was hogging the camera, you know the wedding was for someone else hehe. But that didn’t stop me and after the cameramen had had their shoot, we went back to the dance floor only to pull the crowd back to watch us. It was only us cousins but it felt as if I was in IIT again. The dancing had the same meaning or lack of it. I think for the first time I danced with my sister, who like me is not a special dancer but likes to dance. I had such a great time dancing, and I am sure my sister did too in the little time she got away from Zui, her barely two month old. I in fact didn’t feel like stopping, but some of us dropped a bit of steam and it was definitely leaked by the man changing CDs (I wont call him a DJ). But there I was having fun, that easy. I never realised that I had shed any inhibition of dancing with people in front of people.

I was just dancing. I mean you don’t step out to every ball you face do you. You see a flighted ball judge the length in the air and then dance down the track to meet the ball on the full or at worst a half-volley. And when that happens, it's absolutely Mauja hi Mauja !!!

Labels: Retro