Dance of the Lord

Ghati Dance - a term that, for the longest time, has held a negative connotation for me. I always considered "those" people as outright 'sadakchaap' and everytime I would see a group dancing on the streets, I would wonder whether they realised how stupid they looked.

I always felt that dance, in its purest form existed only in the studios. The one passion that somehow kept flickering, if not burning, within me was dance. Ever since I can remember, my feet would automatically go "1,2,3,4...". From screaming "hey!" at a beat to getting the perfect "Jazz" hands to getting that gangsta' groove, it felt really good to have experienced a little of different dance forms.

But, this night changed it all. Every year, during the festival of Ganpati, we would mentally prepare ourselves for the loud music at the time of visarjan. This time around, my childhood friend Kathy called and said, "Hey, do you wanna go dance...on the road?" Within no time, I was out, "on the road" as we called it, dancing the famous "ganpati dance". As we let our hair down, I looked around me, and wondered, some of these people around me may have never had any formal dance training but can they dance!!

The "I-don't-care-what-others-may-think-I'm-having-fun" attitude encouraged me to follow suit and man was it fun! Never in my life had I ever imagined I would be doing the ganpati dance in the middle of the road.

Maybe it was the company or maybe it was the music that egged me on, but either way, I'm grateful that I did the Dance of the Lord tonight.