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.