Of Dancing - Rewritten, Part I

I read my own piece 'Of Dancing' and felt it needed a face lift, so here it is reproduced in several parts. I think my earlier version was much too long and kind of boring, I must admit. But then, I'm only just learning how to write creatively (been too used to writing official reports) and as it goes on and I'm following other blogs, I'm inspired to keep improving.

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I think everybody has their share of fun. Memories of mine are still quite vivid and fresh like the newly opened dewy buds. As I close my eyes, lost in those times, I can smell their fragrance all around me. It feels as though I am on every flower petal, in a white silky dress gliding around gleefully. No care. No worries. Just happy.

My kind of fun was born from my love and passion for songs, music and dance. Even the rare occasions that I indulged in exercises in college days, trying to look impressively fit, I would be dancing till I could feel my perspiration running down my face and the middle of my chest. If only there had been Zumba then, I would probably be a Zumba Instructor today having earned popularity for bonding Bhutan to South America just as the GNH idea has. I hated following strict exercise rules of ‘one two hands up,’ ‘three four hands down’ and so on. I guess I am quite the kind of person who has never liked rigid rules. One of the ones that I have hated the most is writing down my name in an open register on the office reception desk and signing against it to provide evidence of my attendance in office. It hurt not to be trusted, when all I was guilty of was working mighty hard and dancing during my own leisure time. All I was asking was to be allowed to open up and express myself in a multitude of creative ways…yes, that’s what dance symbolizes and that’s the special reason for my fondness for it.

Showing my passion for dance and music during my growing stage wasn’t easy, I remember. Adults didn’t understand. They thought it was something degrading. The ‘social stigma’ that we hear whispers of today, from time to time??? I thought I was just having fun, but then ‘fun’ did also have a certain negative connotation to it then. I remember even the so-called educated of around my age not understanding my feeling of joy when I danced. A guy (a friend’s lover) once remarked about the wildness of my dance at a farewell party. He thought no husband would trust his wife to dance like I did at that party. That was the first moment in my youthful years of adulthood that I felt hopelessly imprisoned, like my hands and feet were bonded to the prison walls by iron chains of perhaps the lasting type constructed by our very own Thangtong Gyalpo. Would he have known how abused I felt by his noble gesture of creating the iron chain links? He wouldn’t have, for he’s under the blinding false impression that he did indeed pay a good deed.

But, how do I explain that something about music (any – Indian classical to disco) that set my heart racing? My iron chains would just snap and break me free. If only my first love had had that kind of effect on me! But, sadly for the whole human race of lovers, my first love was a painful obsession. I had taken a fast forward leap over the stage of puppy love, which I’m told is a totally sweet experience that I lost my chance with. My passion for dance was truly symbolic of freedom. It drove me out into the vast open space so that I may experience true joy, while my first love dragged me deeper into the dark hole of groping for nothing. There was nothing to it…..only darkness and pain. My dances on the contrary sent tingling sensations through every part of me, as when you’re touched tenderly by the one you truly love.

I knew from the time I was a little girl that my feet felt like they were lifted off the ground when music played. I must’ve been quite in love with myself by the way I would be standing in front of the mirror, watching myself dance. My father (late) would be trying to make me write the English alphabets, I remember, and I would be busier posing in my best attire and dangling ear rings in front of the mirror. Quite a bold girl then, it seems. If not for my short height and narrow shoulders I think I could’ve been grooming myself to become a model. So it appears when I think of it now. My father once broke my pencil with his bare hands. He was angry that I wasn’t paying much attention to learning the English alphabets well. He must’ve taken pride in spending quality time with me, as I understand it today, and there I was immersed in the joy of dressing up, looking good and dancing. I don’t think I was scared, though, when my father snapped my pencil into two pieces right in front of my eyes. I think I was actually more consumed by the thought of how strong my father was for doing that with his bare hands. A might man! That’s what I thought of him. I could’ve felt no ill emotions, I’m certain, having been consumed by such elating thoughts about my father despite the broken pieces of pencil lying pitiably on the floor like a broken winged bird on the ground.

I think of myself as one of the boldest girls of those times. I would always be trying out fashionable clothes (not necessarily expensive, though). Dance and fashion were like closest friends. They could not be separated. They were each other’s life force. If one were to be removed, the other would definitely turn into a lifeless piece of rock as if subdued by Guru Rinpochhe himself. So, ‘dressing appropriately for the dance occasion’ was to me a natural element in the world of music. Fashion designing could have saved me from the nuances of Education, if only fate had had that in store for me. It was with ease that I thought about the possibility of fashion designing after I resigned from government service. I’d be swinging excitedly from spiritual sessions to research topics listing to drawing of national costume based fashionable designs as a monkey would from one tree type to another. My swings were, of course, handicapped without the curly tipped tail. I wondered if my daughter kind of imagined me with the tail while I swung around like that, by the amused look on her otherwise somber face.

In the midst of the mad monkey swinging, an unexpected thing happens. I grab a job at an international NGO, literally rushing off to the remote east. Visiting. Bidding farewell. Storing. Selling off unwanted stuff. Packing. All done in a day’s mad rush! My monkey swinging all of a sudden gets replaced by my commuting to district headquarters and geog (village block) centres, talking about participatory planning. I must’ve grown a tail after all - the only way I could’ve been caught and swung across mountains, from the west to the east. I was supposed to dance and organize fashion contests, wasn’t I? Maybe, it was Guru Rinpochhe himself having made his ‘invisible’ appearance, carrying me off to the other end? He had a message for me and that was perhaps ‘forget dancing.’

Anything seems possible when I look at where I am today. Participatory planning halted. Dancing seasonally. Researching and evaluating sparingly. Teaching mostly a domestic affair. Training farmers’ groups. Training teachers no more. Consulting unspecialized. Doing just about anything, except the nine to five type employee’s job that I developed phobia against during government service days. The thin line between sweating it out to make my dream come true and relying on what fate has in store for me is now a dotted version, enhancing permeability between the two. Perhaps a computer miracle of the type that the box on a word page is rid of its borders. The borders are there, but they cannot be seen. In such a situation, the probability of my dreams being fulfilled is running downhill. I feel my passion getting subdued so that money can grow and keep growing. My money is seasonal like the vegetables in the summer and the oranges in the winter. It comes like it would never go when it comes and then, like the river running dry it isn’t flowing anymore. My dancing appears to be competing with the money flow, except that they hardly coincide with each other. One comes when the other goes and I would say that’s what keeps me going. Like I hate following rules, I hate it when my life gets monotonous. So, thanks to my passion for dance, my life is spared from the mundaneness of being at some office before nine in the morning, doing usual stuff and then packing off by five in the evening. Is that the Aquarian part of me? Maybe…

........to be continued

(Oops! So sorry, I deleted the earlier post and with it are gone all comments of readers. So sorry! Didn't realize that until now. Please forgive me. Please! Please! Please!)