It is the apartment building’s Holi Party. And what greater plans can you focus on when the acoustic center of the loud music falls right onto your apartment? I did my formal best to go down and wish a few, but eventually the lack of friends showed. The acoustic center was accompanied with vantage point, yes - my apartment balcony. For the lack of anything else that I could possibly attempt doing, I sat and watched the elaborate proceedings – music, rain dance, and color masti. And when I eventually had enough of observing it, I got my laptop in between the two. So here it goes.
What more can one observe at a rain dance but the rain dance? However if you get the dynamics of the groups right, you can do a lot more than just watch the moves.
The one group you can never miss is the budding youngsters, more teenagers, blessed with agility and grace, and a bundle of self-consciousness. They dish out one dance move after another, fresh out of the latest club dance library. They do one thing very well; make everyone else in the eclectic dance floor feel lesser human. For the sake of nomenclature let’s call them Munni Bieber (sort of defines their preference, attitudes and confusions).
The other group is very similar in age to Munni Biebers, but they also spend their spare time studying and chasing grades (a lot of spare time). Their dance moves are straight out of the Bollywood break they take in between finishing next year’s curriculum. And with every dance move of the same self-consciousness that the Munni Biebers display, these are probably, also in their heads, revising that difficult physics problem. So there is a relative lack in required grace, but they are all priced dance moves nonetheless. For this full-marks display I decided to name them Barkha Dutt Potters (sort of what they might love to be caught doing/being).
The next gang is called Dil Chahta Hai (DCH); because that was the last time they wore a pair of jeans without wondering if they would fit into one (when the movie released). Yes, they are all women. Now clad in their graceful Salwar Kameez, moving to the music, with the moves that defy times, even relativity, but yet break into a frenzy of madness in the middle of nowhere. Their little toddler kids are running around with colorful water guns, wondering once in a while – “what’s wrong with mama!!”.
The next dynamic segment is the husbands of DCH. They are practically doing nothing, as blank as one can be. At best wondering how that pair of jeans would have fitted their women had they been dancing like this a bit more than once a year. Their toddler kids run to them asking for the little pants to be pulled up, and their water guns to be refilled. For the sake of no better name, and for the fear of what may be my next phase in life, I would call them Men.
The last segment-able group is the husbands of women who don’t bother coming to dance floor. They are the fathers of Munni Biebers and Barkha Dutt Potters. They are the morning walkers, active Apartment society members, the ones yelling at the apartment watchman, the ones who once changed their styles with Amitabh’s latest and now their house budgets with Finance Minister’s latest. Their dance movements are much better justified if expressed without using the word dance, but only movements. Their movements too, like that of DCH, break into a mad frenzy, but unlike DCH, there is one reason, more than passion, behind this – liquor. And for that I would call them Daru Power (go get it!)
Latest updates : Munni Beibers have rushed out to look dressed up and gelled before being spotted next. Bakha Dutt Potters have to get back to the seventh revision of their next year curriculum. Dil Chahta Hai women are back home and slowly discovering the two of the ten muscles that they have sprained. Men are back home and still doing nothing. Daru Power had refused to leave the dance floor, made the DJ play two more songs, and are now enquiring for empty glasses and ice, holding something inside a black plastic bag.
