Some time that day

I don’t remember where I kept the book I was reading just an hour ago. But while trying to retrieve that strain of memory I caught hold of another one. I am dancing wearing a crimson shirt and silver shorts. Complementing it, I’ve worn (made to wear actually) white canvas shoes, the kind worn by those old retired men teaching PT in schools. There is a girl standing next to me wearing nearly the same attire except the ugly silver skirt replacing my equally gory silver shorts. Both of us are also wearing wide belts made of cardboard decorated with silver and red craft paper. The haute couture doesn’t end there. How could it without the much-needed makeup? So make up it was! Some generous amounts of powder making us look like Chinese theatre artists. This connection to the Orient further extended with the rouge (called roose by our makeup artists then) literally painted on our cheeks. All my protests against this beautification drive met with stern approbation that this makes our faces visible on the stage when the bright stage lights blind our eyes. I suddenly can feel my heartbeat when the voice from the memory announces, after the lovely dance by Class II next is a performance by Class III. It is time to move our juvenile rumps in the rhythm taught by the teachers of our class. We were told this was dance. A dance that was to be danced in front of our parents so that they can be fooled into thinking that child of theirs was a good dancer. I cannot speak for others but back then, I didn’t get the point at all. A week before the day of the Dance I remember I was caned for dancing in the class and, now, when I didn’t feel like, I was being scolded for not dancing. I had participated only because my mother had told me it was the right thing to do and I was allowed to because my grades were good and hence I could afford a bit of extra curricular activity. Of course, those were the days when Aamir Khan was just a few movies old and had a good 15 years before he made Taare Zameen Par. So there I am dancing. Dancing with a girl next to me and many more like us with red silver clothes around us. While I am desperately trying to finish this affair of dancing, (sometimes I forget which hand to lift and when wiggle my head) with funny clothes, I see my mom emerging from the darkness ahead of me with a camera in her hand. The darkness behind even more full because of the bright stage lights dancing on my eyes making her look like goddess Durga whose come to rescue me from this dance of death (co-incidentally Durga often comes to rescue from Shiva’s Tandav—the dance of death!). The moment I look at the camera the lessons taught to me since childhood about photography come flooding to my head. One such and the most important of all the lessons is, the moment you see a camera you have to freeze (no matter in what position of action you are in) and give your best smile looking directly into the lens. Moreover, being the child who never missed his lessons, I do what I is required to; stop dancing and give a million dollar smile. But the people around me suddenly lose their smiles. My mom’s vanished back into the darkness and I see my teacher mouthing something to me while doing all my steps (If only she didn’t have that horrid expression someone would think she’s gone mad dancing like children). That’s when it strikes me that I am supposed to dance and not stand there like some life-sized portrait of myself. And there I go again dancing away to glory (?)…….Oh now I know where I kep’t the book! Bloody hell I have to wait till my dad comes out of the toilet.

making sense of the nonsense...answer to the question asked below

The world is definitely full of nonsense. But let's not forget that the word nonsense itself has the word sense in it. Being at the topmost level of the evolution pyramid, we humans have the ability to perceive this. This perception it what makes us want to dignify our being. Animals, we are. But the kind of animal that can see and think ahead. That harbours ambitions and emotions. As time passes these simple things start fusing together and gives rise to complexity. With more time, these complexities further get compounded. This gives rise to protocols because the human race needs to carry the burden of this complexity. But surely enough much of this burden is redundant and useless and is just an accumulation as a hangover from the past. It is this useless burden that transforms humans back into mules. It is at this point that we stop living and start surviving. So the choice remains with us as to whether we want to live as humans or survive as mules under the burden of the past's idiots. 

The fact that we can't live alone is an innate facet of human nature. But thankfully our provenance has made sure that we strive to maintain our individuality. Otherwise monotony would have bled us to death from boredom. But indifference due to lack of individuality is an attribute of a cowardly hypocrite. Another interesting aspect of the human nature is, we would never bother to criticize the company we keep if are able to conveniently leave it according to our will. 

Coming to the second part of the mystery; yes, we all love those things which are in order. In fact we covet perfection. But perfection is quite a difficult thing to come by. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the wonders because there aren't many Taj Mahals. As I mentioned above perfection is a very hard thing to come along and hence majority of the time we settle for the second best. This creates a lack of variety of the perfect things, giving us the illusion of something different as something better. But it also has to be mentioned that most of the unusual things which are attractive are actually unusually perfect. That is when the imperfect things become usual and we tend to follow them because they are easier to achieve and they are acceptable too. Shiv Khera's words can't be more apt than at this juncture, 

   "Winners don't do different things,

                                     They do things differently."