Part 32: Looking glass II
There are few things in life that could take you to another world without a teleportation device. Dance was one, to her.
It had been so long since she'd heard the bells jingle, its music a soft clink in her hands as she carried them to the studio at the gym. She hadn't checked the schedule earlier, but she was glad to find the place to herself without a weeknight group exercise class in session.
It was no one single moment when she'd felt the beat in her heart and begun moving. Or had stopped dancing all together. "I don't understand your fancy with it," her Daarji had told her when she'd asked permission to be taught formally, "With that Kote waalis dance." She'd wanted to throw a flower vase at him then, but had instead run into the fields until she could run no more.
Then, she'd put the same proposition to Dev one summer after their marriage and he'd looked at her, incredulous at her request. "You are 20 years old," he'd exclaimed reading the newspaper and then without any further arguments had agreed to her summer enrollment in a nearby Indian cultural arts center. But that too hadn't lasted beyond autumn when her mother-in-law came visiting from India and put a stop to it; 'a wasteful expense it was when her son's money was used up against her feckless indulgences," she'd said. She'd closed her eyes, taken a moment to feel the weight of the bells around her feet and had shelved it, behind her clothes, like those other things she'd been asked to.
The mirrored walls rebounded her presence with its myriad reflections everywhere she turned. She watched herself tie the bells around her ankle and the first touch of the string against her skin was a welcome chafing, the tightening of the knot a fortitude to her collapsing self.
Ravi Shankar's Gat Kirwani played on repeat from her cell phone and the empty room magnified the sound, intensified the great many colors of emotion in the song and finally gave voice to the part of her that she'd thought to be dead all along.
Her feet tapped against the wooden floor at different paces as the crescendo rose and fell, her fingers molded into the few mudras that came naturally with what the tune asked of her, the every pluck of the sitar strings also tugged at the aching she had in vain fought and failed to understand.
As she twirled and twirled without end, her eyes closed and what she saw in the light of darkness in her eyes was so far from comprehending that it could have been an awakening or a dying calm within her. Or the abating of a risen storm. A receding wave of regret when it was just as possible for it to be a swell of grief that had been waiting to appear. Was she trying to hold onto something else while she was still letting go?
When she couldn't find her sense of balance from all that spiraling - a descent into a mire of questions that wrote the reality of her days - she came to a stop, her one hand high up in the air, while the other in line with her shoulder as though her curved index finger was pointing at something in the view beyond the lookout.
With her gazed fixed at the finger and even as the music played on, she caught her breath and moved out of the stance, by bringing the raised hand down. Unseeing she brought the outstretched hand closer and caught it by its wrist.
It had been a mindless act. When her eyes had remained on his hand for the time it had, she didn't know why she'd felt the need to measure out her hand against his. Amidst the pattering of the rain, she'd run her hand down into his palm and found that despite how small it looked over the size and length of his hand, it had a place being there. In the restitution that seemed to be in the moment.
But, soon the pulse at the base of his hand, stunned her into realizing what she'd done and when she'd been about to pull out of his hold, he'd latched onto her hand tighter. In that drawing, she'd given in to lean on him and had remained that way synchronizing her beats with the small flicker she sensed at his wrist until she could hear nothing but that. Perhaps it had only been her imagining, but she'd gone to bed with that same rhythm echoing inside her hollow being.
Her eyes lifted to her reflection in the mirror, caught in that bearing of examining her hand. In that heaving frenzy of her chest, she breathed life again for the first time in a long time.
***
Much later when she came back to the apartment, she found Meera on call with him. Unaware, she was back from the gym, Meera was still on speaker phone which let her hear the last of their conversations, before she could disappear into her room without alerting Meera to her coming in.
"She hasn't done that in a while. I remember her telling me how much her Daarji hated it and when she was in her Toronto home, her mother-in-law was no champion of the art form. Apparently Dev had no opinion and to my knowledge, she didn't move to another song after that."
"I wonder who she is rebelling against: her daarji or her mother-in-law, now." Meera added after a pause.
"Or it could be, she was rebelling against herself," she heard him say without taking time to consider.
"Did I tell you MK? That you both have that unique way of offering those sidelined insights that is usually ignored at first, but most certainly becomes the only explanation after its presented..."
He simply gave her a quiet laugh. "It only seemed like a contemplation in tune with the mood of the music piece."
Needless to say, he'd seen her dance at the studio.
"Anyways..." Meera started and she then left to shut herself in her room.
Falling on her bed, she wondered if that is what it was? A mutiny she was staging to break away from those rules she'd imposed upon herself - not her Daarji or her mother-in-law. When she had no rhyme or reason for her random gestures, she couldn't help but accept what others gave then. And his explanation was a fine one at that.
Edited by 6th.Element - 12 years ago
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