Tashneem Ali Chaudhury

I was a little girl when I saw my mother dance on stage. It wasn’t the first time because she had always been a dancer of the traditional Bihu form, from Assam, that is my home state. As I grew older, I began to marvel at how uninhibited and enjoyable her performance was. Being the daughter of a good dancer can have its perils; I decided to not do what I could never be better at, or as good as. So dancing was one of the things that never belonged on my must-do list. As I grew into a teenager, I started feeling it was silly that people would break into a dance, at a marriage, at a family friends house, at a picnic, as an ode to happiness. I’m sure there were a million ways to show happiness than making some ridiculous moves.

And so, a lifetime through school and college made me look at dancing at something so frivolous that it was not needed, especially for a person like me who was heavily into reading books and animated intellectual discussions on any topic you could think of!

But, as time flew and I grew older and wiser and life taught me that the joyous moments are fleeting and it is the sad moments that can take over one’s life completely, I started understanding the sense and the necessity of dance. I realised one didn’t have to be an expert (nobody but trained dancers are) to be able to express enjoyment, happiness and a moment of paradise that could be encapsulated in that heady moment of dancing your sorrows away. It was like a catharsis to realise this that dance is as essential to life as poetry, art, writing and cinema are. Finally, I understood what my mother felt when she started dancing and is still a very exuberant dancer, to date.

Music, I have always been a hardcore lover of, but its cousin dance was relegated to the shadows, just for that time.

As I grew and evolved, I started loving dance for its expression and energy and ability to take away all the accumulated stress that we are guilty of hoarding inside ourselves. Today when I break into an impromptu jig with my kids, I see my husband giving me a knowing smile with a ‘I told you so’ look because unlike me, he has been a big fan of all dance forms. It’s his way of telling me to join the club, that I ran away from, all these years.

And a year and a half before, we both happily shook a leg with Pulkit Sharma at You Can Dance, Dance Wellness that had just started its operations. It was an enjoyable experience with such an enthusiastic teacher that this young boy is. And I’m hoping, post lockdown and post Covid, we will soon be able to attend more of his classes and jive away to eternity.
As the King of Dance said, “To live is to be musical, starting with the blood dancing in your veins. Everything living has a rhythm. Do you feel your music?”
– Michael Jackson
Actually, yeah. I kind of feel my music now.

(Tashneem Ali Chaudhury has been a lifestyle journalist for the last 25 years and writes with passion on any topic that interests her. Her work has featured in Hindustan Times, Times of India, New Indian Express and Mumbai Mirror, among others. She blogs at www.tashneemreviews.com)