The off-key waltz…

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R never could dance. It was just one of those things.

He could do a lot of other things all right, some even exceptionally well.

But dancing was not one of those things which he could do. And the tragedy of the thing was that here was a man who longed, positively burnt to dance. He had first seen Fred Astaire as a boarding school boy, the middle of the twentieth century movies being considered by the Irish brothers of the missionary school as being “clean” enough for growing young boys to witness. Vaudeville dancing and once in a while, a western cowboy movie being considered enough cultural variety for the growing minds of R’s school.

And in R’s case, Yul Bryner’s quick draw coming a very close to twinkle toed Astaire tap dancing to the exciting beats of the jazz strains. But, tap dancing and twirls were not something you practiced in an all boy’s boarding school or even in an all boy’s college hostel. Not if you were fat and wished to remain without comprehensive isolation. So, for R, things remained right there, up until now.

Madame Tea

Dancing classes (waltz, jazz and contemporary)

Community Centre, Defence Colony

South Delhi

Tel: xxxxxxxxx

(Flexible hours)

The card was slightly gaudy. Not the sort his office got for him. In fact, it was quite eye-catching with its bold playground colours. The telephone number was in larger fonts. R had no idea he had got the card. He was fiddling for his bills in his wallet, from restaurants for his monthly expense sheet when he came across the card.

R looked at the card once again and remembered Astaire’s twinkle toes and consigned the card to his waste bin.

*

The place was like nothing he had imagined. For starters, it smelt. Smelt of sweat and old socks and something else that he couldn’t quite place. R couldn’t believe that he was here.

The phone number was easy enough to memorize and he was blown out of his mind. It was his post-prandial joint which was not an addiction, he would tell himself. He could give it up anytime he liked. R started smoking joints when his doctor told him that his liver was sending out distress signals and would be on its way to collapse if he continued drinking the way he did. He promptly quit drinking and went cold sober for 12 days before he needed to simply empty his brain of its debris.

The college boys across the corridor got the grass for him. There were benefits of being a soft touch for loans towards the end of the month for them. He was quite surprised at the quantity available for the price of a decent drink. The making of the joint came easily back to his fingers as he chopped up and crumbled the dried leaves of marijuana. Once cleaned of the dried kernels and stem pieces, he crushed the grass between his palms and finally taking a few drops of water, he rubbed the sticky mixture between his palms. Once he had the right consistency he crumbled and rubbed off the grass onto a newspaper and finally added some tobacco to the whole and mixed it up with his fingers and finally rolled a slim joint with a filter fashioned out of a small roll of cardboard.

The taste of the joint was still not to his liking. He was a whisky boy and would always be one till the end, but if he wanted to taste whisky for a few more years, the joints would have to be accepted for the next few months or the year.

He hated grass because he didn’t know how to control the high. R never knew when he crossed the line between awaiting intoxication and becoming so. It was simply not a gradual process – one minute he would be a little woozy and slow and the next minute he would simply blur and the blurs were never remembered.

He had apparently called the dance school and arranged for lessons. It was in his cell phone message inbox the next morning, updating directions to the address and time for his first lesson.

*

“Good evening”. It came out more like “goooood avennning”.

Short, slim and middle-aged female were the first observations. Possibly an anglo or even a resident foreigner, possibly Mediterranean even Spanish. God knew he had enough experience dealing with foreigners in his line of work. The lady was speaking before R realized that he was still categorizing her and not listening.

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you are Mr. R and if you are, where is your partner?” came the voice. It was definitely a foreigner; the anglo’s rounded their vowels and elongated verbs in a typical Indian manner.

“Um...Sorry. I don’t quite remember the terms and conditions of the deal”, replied R, still in consultant mode. He was still dressed in his suit since the appointment was right after work. He tried again;

“I mean, I do realize I have signed up for lessons etc, but could you explain exactly what I am supposed to do?”

“You DANCE. That’s what you do. That’s ALL you do.”

R stood in his 130 kilo frame, nearly 6 ft in his shoes, goggled down at the lady in front of him. He was partly lost in admiration for the slightly melodramatic tinge and partly stymied by how similar the voice was to that of his childhood nannies. That voice had harmonics that went down the spinal column; tap dancing over the levers till it came to the one marked “obedience” and rammed down it with a wooden 12” ruler.

“Yes ma’am” crackled out of R, before he could stop it.

It stopped the hawk nose that peered up at him. It was a small round face with a large nose and masses of curly hair popping out it. The face stopped at the meekness of the voice and softened a bit.

“Good”. It again came out as “goooooot”

“Now, you have signed up for waltz and jazz classes for your marriage, for sure. Three classes per week and that’s the basic 2 month course. Fees to be paid in cash or cheque for the whole two months, it is.”

She had tiny brown button eyes and looked like a loony pixy but marriage? He signed up for dance classes for his impending, fuckin’, nuptials???!!!! How blown WAS he last night?

“Erm….the thing is….marriage, not really….I mean..” stumbled out R

“Ah. I seeee. Isss not a probleeem. You wish to charm the girllll. Very goooot, very gooot. Charming boy, well done, I hellllp youuuu. Isss not a probleeeeem” sang out the loony pixy.

R started to speak, and then gave up. It hardly mattered. He morosely nodded and shuffled along to the bench to change his shoes and hang up his coat in the changing rooms.

The damn place was covered with mirrors and far too many high wattage bulbs. He could see himself and the not too flattering contours of his saggy upper torso were visible from way too many directions. This was not a good idea, not even a gooooot idea.

*

Now he understood where the sweaty smell came from. Joints were sending distress signals and his body was cashing cheques with no balance in the stamina bank. His shirt was wet and his face positively dripped and they had just finished with the damn warm-up exercises.

They say in dancing, the strongest muscles are the abdominal ones. You develop a low centre of gravity and create that insufferable grace and style of movement. Pity it looks so natural on screen that the harsh reality of its actual development left him gasping for breath.

“YOU weeeel nowww chooooosh paaartners”

The class was comprised of pretty young things both male and female. R felt like he had wandered into a film set and wasn’t surprised when several of the youngsters asserted their aspirations for celluloid. R’s childhood feelings of inadequacy and insecurity created a dichotomy of both wishing to be like the celluloid stars and at the same time, depreciating both his body and personality under the arc lights to ever consider such a profession.

In fact, on one level, R understood that it was quite common, and on another wished he was not so anal retentive to actually read and understand such nuances of behavior and psychology.

He turned to his right and saw a tangle of hair in an electric blue fluffy rubber-band thingie and a subtle hint of something that was NOT street deodorant. Dancing might not be natural to him, but there were a few things he could do.

“Do you like the sea?”

“Huh?!!” said deep brown eyes and a pert upturned nose. He would learn her name later on and forget it promptly.

“I asked, if you liked the sea?”

“Sure, maybe. Why?” replied pert nose.

“Fancy trying to dance with a whale?” delivered straight-faced with the appropriate twinkle in the eye.

The giggle confirmed the age old balance was intact. The creator had a damn good sense of balance as per R and what he lacked in visibility, he made up in the intangibles as he called them.

*

After a while, you kind of don’t smell the sweat and the funny smells of the audi or auditorium as the damn place was called. It was just a large empty room with stained wooden flooring, lots of light bulbs, a big music system and speakers and roll bars and hooks for towels & clothes. It was his fifth class but he wasn’t sure. He had stopped counting. The suit went into the gym bag and sweat pants, sneakers and a t-shirt went on. Headband, wrist bands and ankle supports went on as well. It was becoming a form of Zen for him to have somewhere to head off instead of trying to find the bottom of a whisky bottle in his empty flat. Or worse have his friends sponging off his expense account for a few hours of hard earned conversation which was not related to work.

So, the smell of sweat disappeared and the funny smell was just the air-freshener sprayed by Madame Tea to disguise the whole edifice. Madame Tea was Russian, originally from the time of the iron curtain, a ballet dancer who had managed to be not counted in the departure lounge when her troupe came to perform in Delhi. The years had been kind to her, though the language was still giving her trouble.

“Gooooot, gooot. NOW chooooosh paaartners”, came the strident call. Funny how such a tiny woman could produce such a loud voice.

The girls now knew better. They were happy to talk to him before and after rounds or reels as Tea called them, but not during. Most of them had stopped limping though one or two still carried semblances of his pedestrian foxtrot and the trampling power under each heel. He recalled reading somewhere that pumping iron was Zen for violent men and wondered where that would leave him stranded.

It was not so much that he lacked rhythm as that his body and ear were separate appendages. By the time, the ear issued instructions and the orders got relayed and acted upon, the beat had moved on.

R was not quite concerned about finding a partner. In worse case scenario’s, Madame Tea would float over and dance with him. She reminded him even more of being a pixy whose feet barely touched the ground and her feet didn’t get the special R treatment. So, he just concentrated on rubbing away the twinges in his calves and stretching his muscles as best as he could.

“It’s not easy, is it?”

R was in the middle of touching his toes or at least making vain attempts to even reach them. The voice was not familiar, but then hardly any voice here was. All he could see were sensible flat heels and old-fashioned girl’s socks. R rose up slowly, he had learned that if moved too fast doing stretches, something would catch and twinge or worse, he’d get a head rush.

The face was heart-shaped and the mouth reminded him of a mouse. Pudgy and well-fed hamster more like with lank hair cut short around the neck. The eyes however had a glint in them not usually associated with the rest of the typical bored housewife image.

“Nope.” It was usually best not to venture much when accosted unless he was doing the accosting.

She was tall and not the usual PYT or even bored housewife. So he waited for an explanation or whatever else came his way.

“Care to dance?”

R was heard the silences around him begin and saw that the glint in the eyes become even more hooded.

“Sure, as long as you have foot injury insurance” he attempted and received no encouragement from the other side.

The lesson for that day was a simple four-by-four waltz, a Strauss. Sounded simple till you actually had to count and move in progression. Not very heartening to someone who missed a beat on every beat. The pairs stood in a designated chalk circle drawn on the floor and were to keep their distressing efforts within the sacred circle. It brought back wayward memories of boarding school gym classes and the beginning of inadequacies.

They started to dance, the cadence eloquent and statuesque, sweaty patches forming and being ignored all over the floor. Madame Tea stood on the wings, a bit reminiscent of Tyler Durden, and called out instructions. R never even heard her since he was too busy trying to keep to the beat and his moves.

It was going well, funnily well and R started having hopes of actually being able to finally dance. He was what you would call the typical forward planner in today’s corporate jargon. As they dipped and twirled and he didn’t once make contact with yielding female toes or insteps, he started enjoying himself.

The bulbs on the ceiling were finally just a blur as the music spun and swung around them. The violins seemed to sing especially to move his feet along, the beat never once troubling him. His partner was content to be led along and simply flowed within the circle. It was like he was tap-dancing on the non-linear catastrophe curve and the curve would flatten out for him without any worries.

This was wrong!!!

This cant be happening!!!

I am dancing ….. and I KNOW I cant dance!!!

Okay….what’s the problem here?

R’s brain was shooting out computations and forking out trajectories of contingencies before his eyes had even slammed open. He continued to move while scanning the crowd and realized that they were moving on a different step than the rest of the class. He looked at his partner, but the eyes were closed and the hair waving softly with their movements. It was kind of pretty, he analyzed later on, but filed this away as not important NOW.

He tried to look down despite his imposing belly and noticed nothing wrong with his feet, what he could see of them. He was breathing deeply but that was normal for any physical activity undertaken.

The music stopped and like cut puppets, the pairs stopped as well. The spell was broken, the magic gone with the lingering chords still hanging in the air like sequin shimmer.

The lady smiled at him, an honest smile of appreciation. R stepped back and gave a short bow, neck down. It only seemed appropriate.

*

“You guys slowed down and hence moved on a slower beat allowing you to catch it without a mistake” conjectured D.

D always had a habit of trying to sort out everything. He had a question and then a thesis for every issue. R quite liked him and didn’t mind the constant problem-solving approach. After all they were in the business of solving problems for the world and it was also something he did privately in his own mind. D was a lanky loose limbed fellow with a shock of hair that constantly fell across his brow and women loved to brush away. He was also one of those lucky fellows’s with a lithe body and a much envied manner of carrying himself. R was honestly and quite openly jealous of the way D would carry off any clothes he wore with such élan while R struggled to merely fit into his old suits. They were a good team anyhow.

“Basically, considering a 4 by 4 beat, you would still be able to dance a waltz on a 2 by 4 beat, which is what must have happened. Did you enjoy yourself?” queried D.

R sighed and nodded. He was accustomed to the last question as most of his friends considered him to be a depression case. He was a fat workaholic who used to drink too much and doesn’t go about much. As old one friend particularly noted, he was inexplicably nice and extremely lonely. Most people took advantage of that fact that he gave far too much value to small kindnesses.

D would regularly caution him on his generous nature and thick skin to snide comments. But in its own way, it was all true. R was a hothead with serious anger management issues in his younger years, but the years had ground down his senses and feelings or even desires. The choices one made between fighting and forgiving often becomes the story of their lives.

R turned back to his report and awaited the hands of the clock make their slow and steady crawl to freedom.

*

The feet were doing fine. He was making the same moves as everyone else. He was even following the beat. It was like the first time he had found his way to the debate team selections in school. Here was finally something that he COULD do. Something that did not require him to even think or analyze, just something that came naturally. He could negotiate his way through a corkscrew in a middle of a tornado without touching the sides, instinctively. This was feeling like the same way. Of course, his calves still gave twinges after a hard warm up but this drifting on the swirling, twirling chords of a waltz was something else.

“okaayyyy, waltz is goooot, fer shure. Now, we do der ……. POLKA”

Polka, whatever in the world was that?!! R was looking at his partner with a sudden sense of unease and saw the same mirrored in her hooded eyes. He had yet to ask her name. For the past few lessons, it was becoming habit to merely stand in his circle and await her entry and then, finally the music which lent wings to his heart, synapses and feet.

As they stood awkwardly, listening to Madame Tea give out instructions, R took his first long look at his partner. She was tall and buxom, if that term was still in usage. Typical Indian wheatish complexion with a stubby nose and slim lips. She was dressed like him in a t-shirt and track lowers with sneakers instead of the first day sensible shoes. There was a beading of sweat on her upper lip and patches of sweat in her armpits of her tee. Not really the type of female company that he used to date in the ancient past.

Someone had categorized his taste in those days as being slim, fiery, short and preferably drunk. Not a very flattering description, but true of those days. He had a thing against women who were even slightly chubby; in retrospect just another projection of his own insecurity about his obesity.

With a start, R realized that the woman was checking him out as well and he found the idea a little scary. Would it sound ridiculous to ask her name now? No, bad idea. He was always good at conversation with even virtual strangers and never needed to know their names till they handed him visiting cards and asked for an appointment.

“You don’t even know my name, do you?”

“No, but I am sure with your eyes, most men would forget their own names”, the glib tongue of the born liar and the steady gaze perfected over the years held him intact.

She had a throaty chuckle, a womanish giggle with deliciously husky overtones. VERY appealing, calculated R’s chronic computational mind and increased stock points.

“YOOOUUUU weeeel nowww DANCSH”, roared out the loony pixy.

It was similar to the waltz, only you had to move to a different beat and worse, change partners.

*

“Exactly HOW did you manage to mash her three toes and instep enough to cause cartilage damage?” asked D, once he was done spluttering over the hospital bill came to the office accountant.

“I’ll pay it. Just asked for it to be sent to the office as they didn’t accept cards and I didn’t have enough cash on me” shot back R from his office in the other room.

“Brother, I will pay the damn bill, if you would kindly tell me how you managed to smash the lady’s toes. Thought you guys were the next thing after Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly”

R groaned. D had gone to the same kind of schools as R had and remembered all the names. R never quite liked Gene Kelly, who was somewhat of a ham in comparison to the great Astaire and resented the slur.

“muttermutternotsamepartnermuttermuttermutter”

“And you will NOT mutter at me, brother. So, what’s this about?” challenged D.

“Not my fault. That old witch made us dance the polka where you have to change partners. Bloody skinny bones got her foot under me just as I was completing the turn” replied R with fervor accompanied with a steady hammering on his laptop keyboard.

“Ah….SO…..Ah, ha!!!” smirked D. D was the sort who would rather say I-told-you-so than eat chocolates.

“Ah, my foot. It was just bad timing. And I was not accustomed to the damn dance. It took me a while to get the damn beat in the waltz. That’s what happened” grumbled back R.

*

It was NOT the damn beat or even the dance. He managed to mash two other toes and came perilously near to getting Madame Tea. Dancing queen was absent in the next two classes. R missed her. It was no more fun to keep counting beats and constantly look out before putting a foot down. He was back to doing joints after dinner though he still detested the taste and the cobwebs in his brains the next morning.

Dancing queen appeared in the next class and gave a perfunctory nod before beginning the reel. It was perfect and the music flowed through R’s soul again.

“Where were you?” R asked, in the middle of the reel

“Ssshhh. Dance.”

“What do you do?” he persisted

“Dance”

“Not funny” R growled as they moved into a slow spiral and twirl

“You’re supposed to be the funny man around here, right?” hooded eyes snapped back at him

They danced in silence through minutes and parvonnes and finally reached the foxtrot through the next 4 classes, before the silence was broken.

R was humming along with the popular jazz tune as they moved through their circle. It was one of the tunes he remembered from shards of his childhood. He had an elephant’s memory for trivia and lyrics, though mostly his memory was an elephant’s graveyard.

“Sing it”

R was wrapped in the lyrical strains that he didn’t hear the soft whisper coming from his left shoulder. He heard it the next time when it was accompanied with a squeeze on his leading arm (it was the hand in which the lady’s hand was, as per Mme. Tea)

“Sing what?”

“The song you are humming to yourself. Sing the lyrics, you know them”

It was such a strange request. He had no singing voice and how did she know that he knew the lyrics? But there was a strange nameless woman in his arms and the wondrous music around. R hitched the equivalent of a mental shrug and softly started singing the chorus.

It was suddenly the difference between a bland condom and the animalistic heated pull of turgid flesh and friction.

The woman melted into him and the dance became something else. Woody Allen or someone equally funny had remarked that dancing was the vertical equivalent of horizontal desire. Damn right and in doubles that too, thought R.

When the music stopped, they were still, but no longer awkwardly. It was like they were sharing something secret and valuable. A bit shaken and still breaking away from the spell, R stepped back and gave her a full bow, from the waist down.

The woman stayed where she was and curtsied. An honest to goodness curtsey, right out of the Count of Monte Cristo with Errol Flynn. Damn if he didn’t feel a touch of old Errol about him as they moved back to their belongings and the changing rooms.

It was the last time R saw her.

*

“She comes and goes. No telling when she will be back next. My advice is to concentrate on your dancing. You are moving quite well and losing weight as well” offered Mme. Tea. The language barrier was as if removed overnight. It was all a matter of adjusting.

“But I can’t dance with anyone else. I make blunders and can never keep the beat” snapped back R.

“Yes you can. You can dance very well, only you dance off-key”

“Off-key?” queried R, not feeling very interested in dancing theory presently.

“Yes, yes, you dance off-key. You dance well, but you dance off-key, because of your weight, one bar behind time. She dance like that too, one bar behind beat. But it is something you can work on and overcome” explained Mme. Tea.

R walked out of the studio. He didn’t want to dance in key.

It was no longer summertime as it was when he had joined the classes. He shivered in his thin t-short and tracks as he stumped over to his Indica. He dumped his gym bag in the back and sat in the driver’s seat. The road was dark and deserted and the opulent mansions on either side of the road were glimmering with lights and people.

R fished in his glove compartment and found the cigarette pack containing his joints. He licked the sides of the rice paper and lit the reefer. Sitting silently with the mosquitoes buzzing and humming in his ears, R finished the joint and tossed it out of the window. He felt for the CD case on the dashboard and slipped it into the player. As the strains of the jazz foxtrot started, he started the car and shifted into gear and slowly let out the clutch.

The roads of Delhi are fragrant with gas fumes, bull droppings, dust, frying oil and the ever present of a million people present in the near vicinity. To someone who has recently smoked a joint, the smells are sharper and denser, maybe because the narcotic slows down the synapses.

Most people don’t even have a song for their own to remember and cherish, thought R as the truck headlights came barreling down the road. At least, I had an off-key waltz, he hummed to himself.

***