A sweet little dance

📍 Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India (Issue 189)

The women of Gujarat

I often say no to dancing. I'm reading! I'm too busy! I'm a serious person with priorities. I have places to be and often (literally) a mountain to climb.

In what way is a limp paperback, faded, stagnant, cold and dead, better than a little dance with a new friend? Why not get swept away by the music? Likewise, I'll always have places to be. Forever. And the mountain I want to climb is not going anywhere.

Now, let's visit the promenade in West Bandra, Mumbai.

The sun sets over a glossy Arabian Sea. The promenade is alive: crows flap between dusty branches, stray dogs — smelling fear — bark at strangers, and crowds saunter in breathless conversation.

I'm sitting with a friend next to an entire troupe of drummers, all tapping and beating their drums. An Indian woman of sixty rattles a tambourine and invites me to dance. I say no. She asks again, and I pause and say, 'Alright'.

And for fifteen minutes, we dance to those drums, her tambourining, me overheating. I get that rush of energy, that glowing musical thrill. I can't dance, really. I move almost in time with the music (a little late to the beat), perhaps getting every third bar right, accidentally shuffling when the drums expect me to shuffle, arms swaying, sweat dripping, spinning and moving, whirling and overjoyed.

Now let's visit Mall Street, Solan, in Himachal Pradesh.

I'm finally in the Himalayan foothills, and I walk out onto the pedestrianised Mall Street. The sun sets an hour later this far north, and it's just disappeared as I mingle in the crowd that eats street food, buys fake headphones or long socks, sells baby-blue helium balloons, and begs and plays hide-and-seek and takes selfies.

From deep within the crowd rises a low rhythmic drumming — thump cha cha thump cha cha thump.

I walk to the cha cha, and a precession of dancers meets me, cruising down the middle of Mall Street. Some troops are a party of eight, others as many as fifteen boys and girls. A group from Punjab and another from Maharashtra and another of Gujarat, all swivelling and stepping to-and-fro; all in immaculate traditional outfits, some with clay pots on their heads which they throw in the air, others draped in green plumed saris, hair tied up or covered in light silks, decorated in gold jewellery around ankles or hanging from the nose and around the neck, in deep reds or numinous blues, some upholstered in mystical greens with silver edging, and all glittering, twisting in the final dusky moments of the day.

I watch and smile. Suddenly, I feel a tugging at my shirtsleeve — it's a twelve-year-old boy called Krishna, and he invites me to dance. I, again, say no. But he's very tenacious and leads me, weaving through the crowds, past the girls from Gujarat and the boys from Uttar Pradesh, and we arrive at the ruby-red-clad dancers of Himachal Pradesh. By this time, the music reaches an ecstatic crescendo, an unrelenting thumping, and I slip quite naturally in time with the dancers. We move as one, all together, and the minutes turn to hours, and we swish and gyrate, one hand in the air then the other, stepping forward and back; hours disappearing like minutes.

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After it all, still dazed and with my heart roaring, I walk home.

As I walk, I realise we're each always asking one another to dance. I mean, it's rarely an invitation to stomp our feet or twirl, but metaphorically, a conversation, an interaction is an offer to dance with me. Through that flash of eye contact in the queue for the ATM or on the Tube, are we not asking for a quick dance? Even a video call is a digitally manifested dance. To dance is to connect with somebody; it's a moment of emotional intimacy in an ever-lonelier world.

Like you, I want the world to dance with me. We all do! When we ask for a dance, we appreciate a sweet little dance back, a joke, a giggle, a handshake, or a high-five.

But we often say 'no' without a second chance to say 'yes, please'. Refusal is the default. Countless potential dances are missed, lost forever. All those strangers who might have been friends. We are gifted countless invitations; we send many ourselves. We refuse because we obsess about what others will think of us when we can — no, we must! — rip open the invitation and accept graciously, and dance.