And A Thousand Sticks Clapped As Once…

Last night I went to a Dandiya dance again.

A few months ago, a member of India’s intellectually aware elite woke after a deep sleep. He had three choices. “Should I,” he asked himself, his hand stroking his stubbled chin, “have a cup of coffee? Or read the newspaper? Or should I file a public interest litigation?” He blearily evaluated these options. The coffee his maid kept in front of him was a paler brown than normal. The newspaper, folded alongside, was a faded pink, and drooped listlessly. “No!” he roared to himself, aware that roaring aloud would frighten his maid into leaving, and thus invite the wrath of his wife, “I shall file a PIL against Dandiya dances! They are a veritable nuisance and a horrendous disturbance to all honest, law abiding folk. They must be comprehensively banned! Forever and more!” This is how most of the Indian bourgeois speak, especially before shaving.

Soon, the scene shifts to the venerable High Court. “Aha!” says a Judge. “Ah-ha! Finally, a case one can sink one’s teeth into!” And saying thus, he reaches for his dentures, simultaneously confining to the pending bin the huge roster of cases piling up on his desks, involving murder, political corruption and wholesale burglary. From that moment on, the lights of the High Court building blaze through day and night. Senior judges, law clerks, paralegals and peons pore and peruse and ponder. They surmise and they presume, they submit and they argue. And then, a surprisingly short while later, in a burst of rare unanimity, the High Court banned all Dandiya dances from continuing past 10 PM.

This ruling caused furore. Thousands of citizens, mostly young, male and frustrated, rail against this sheer injustice against humanity. They are joined by hundreds of dance organisers, whose glittering dreams of untold wealth are disappearing faster than darkness at dawn. Varied artistes (singers, musicians, deejays, and such) protest and refuse to ply their trade in such reprehensible conditions. Parallels to Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain are drawn and quartered.

While all this was happening, in some households, life continues as normal. The common man wonders whether he should buy a pair of green Dandiya sticks. Or blue for that matter. We common people are not choosy.

As the pressure built to the point where there would be rioting on the streets and blood flowing in the gutters, another righteous citizen appealed this verdict with the Supreme Court. Here, too, the revered Justices acted with merciless dispatch. Imagine, if you will, the scene in the Supreme Court – a hoary Justice sweeping off all the files from his desk in a grandiose gesture, causing clouds of dust to set him sneezing till his chest heaves. Or the milky gleam in another’s half closed eyes, the most evidence of enthusiasm in many years. Breathless anticipation filling the offices, the former more due to age and asthma than anything else. No public assassination ever received so much attention and action. No stock market scam ever held a candle. How do these mundane issues matter, when the critically important issue of the duration of the Dandiya needs to be addressed?

Hearings were held, personal interviews conducted, religious tomes studied, and cultural angst explored. Newspapers and TV stations followed this erudite process with bated breath and blaring body copy. The whole city of Mumbai stood still, waiting on the Supreme Court’s verdict.

While all this was happening, the common man’s daughter appeals to her mother that she needs silver ghaghra-choli, which costs Rs. 5,500.00. After much tears and recrimination ensue, her other acquiesces, and compensates for her initial refusal with matching slippers, jewelry and bangles. The common man settles for ordinary unpainted sticks that can be found in the public park behind his apartments.

As the Supreme Court weighed its decision, India lost two cricket matches, three hurricanes ravaged USA and four hundred Chinese miners disappeared into the face of the earth.

The city writhed in an agony of suspense, with half of the citizens supporting the ruling, half of them opposing it, and the balance not caring one way or the other. Strangers in the local trains asked one another, grimacing while disentangling their limbs, “What do you think the Supreme Court will do? Will they allow the dance to go on to midnight? Or won’t they?” Kitty parties became hushed affairs with desperate housewives wondering whether the common man’s daughter would be forced to fling herself on the bed, sobbing as if her heart would bleed through her eyes. Corporate lunch rooms rung with the sound of raised voices wondering if the city’s fleeing artistes would return, their proud stances vindicated, or whether they would forever eke out their livings in exile…

Finally, a few days ago, the Supreme Court’s hardened heart melted. The Chief Justice stood on the podium, his arthritic knees protesting the unaccustomed athletics. “The Dandiya dances may continue till midnight,” he said, in a six hundred and eighty page judgement. “We have taken pity on the toiling masses, who need to party once in a while,” summarised the verdict, “and have ignored the cries of the aged, infirm and musically challenged, who prefer to sleep rather than listen to Indipop remixes late into the night.”

The crisis was resolved. Anarchy was averted. While the bourgeois fumed and muttered imprecations, India returned to worrying about less consequential issues such as disinvestment, potholes and insurgency in the North East.

When he heard the news, the common man sighed, and put his white kurta and churidar under the mattress so that they may be pressed. His home becomes a flurry of dresses being tried on, make up being appliquéd, phones ringing in cacophonous tunes and the steady flutter of bills as they softly accumulate on his desk.

The night of the Dandiya dusked. The common man slips on his festive best, straightens his shoulders, gathers his Dandiya sticks, and with visible pride trails his glowing daughter and wife out of the door, to attend the dance.

Now, I know that it has been presumptuous on my part to believe that the uninitiated reader knows what I have been talking about. Many questions must be jostling for place in your puzzled mind. No, I was not referring to what exactly do birds do to bees. Or why Bush was re-elected. Let’s address the more top-of-mind ones – what is this Dandiya? What is the occasion for this dance? Where? Who? How?

Gujaratis (those belonging to the state of Gujarat, in Western India) perform the traditional dances of Garba & Dandiya-Raas during Navratri. Dussera or Navratri is a festival of worship, dance and music celebrated over a period of nine nights (Nav – nine and Ratri – nights), usually in October. This festival celebrates the worship of the Divine Trinity – three days devoted to Durga (Goddess of Valour), three days to Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) and three days to Saraswati (Goddess of Knowledge).

You are aware that India is a traditional country, where casual dating and love marriages are largely frowned upon, and some times shot at, with large caliber guns. These group dances are an accepted custom wherein young singles may form (or attempt to form) romantic attachments in a socially acceptable milieu. Needless to say, such romances rarely last as they quickly culminate in marriage. Over a period of time, this tradition of dances has percolated past the borders of Gujarat, and has become an annual ritual in various cities across India. More than religious, these have become huge social functions, organized by various cultural societies, apartment complexes and politico-social groups, transcending community, caste and ethnicity.

Now that I have revealed all, and the lamentable mists of your ignorance have been cleared, let us return to the dance.

We walked towards the community ground where the dance was organized. The night was balmy, even though the skies were clear, and the stars competed with a waning moon to feebly illuminate the darkening sky. The streets were busy with people moving with purposeful energy and briefcases or bags in their hands. Shops bustled in a burst of energy before closing for the night, children darted in and out of dark cul de sacs, their shrieks of laughter resonating off concrete walls. As we walked, the faint streams of music, barely audible from afar, strengthened into steady flows of foot tapping rhythm. Sedate ties and formal skirts began to give way to the bright plumage of lehngas, stone washed jeans, churidar-kurtas and bare midriffs.

Ah there! The grand pandal! Fashioned of cloth, bamboo poles and hope, it glitters brighter than the sun. Spotlights and strobes illuminate the age-old battle between constancy and promiscuity. Banners flutter in the limp breeze, buntings swooping and soaring, sometimes crashing and lying wounded on the unyielding ground. The music has now become a gushing roar of sound, sweeping all thought from the mind. The common man’s leisurely walk picks up pace, and his daughter skips as we approach closer.

We produce our passes at the crush near the entrance. Sweaty young men with large, colourfully pleated badges adorning most of their left breast, usher us in.

Imagine, if you will, a moderately sized piece of ground, about an acre, bracketed by coloured canvas held up by bamboo poles, precariously swaying in the non-existent breeze. Imagine, then, a rude stage at one end of this ground, dominated by large items of musical equipment. Finally, stretch your already quailing imagination to visualize two thousand young, colourfully clad people jostling with one another, attempting the intricate movements of the Dandiya. That was the scene that met our amazed eyes when we stepped past the cloth barriers that kept this disturbing spectacle from the bypassers’ eyes.

There was heat, as Ruth Prawer Jhabwala would succinctly put it, and dust. The former was more than just the combined temperatures of two thousand gyrating warm bodies. There was heat in the clash of the Dandiya sticks, and in the sway of lissome youth. There was heat in the slicing of glances, and in the rhythmic judder of four thousand feet hitting the ground at the end of a reel. The ground yielded into dust, which swirled and swayed between and around the dancers, the motes catching fire as the strobes alighted on them, and then winking into temporary oblivion, only to gleam again.

There, you could see a young couple, unmindful of anyone but each other, swaying to a tune no one else could hear. Beyond them, was a boisterous group, their laughter drowning out the sound of clashing sticks. Here was a sedate harem of matrons, contentedly performing the intricate movements that allowed them to meet one another, clap their sticks in a tuneful cadence, and then swirl away to meet the next person in the circle, and on and on. Further away, you could see some disenchanted young men listlessly beating their sticks, their eyes following a swirling skirt, skipping to a bangled arm, alighting on a heaving breast.

The common man’s daughter waved her hand, shrieked once and disappeared into a disheveled mass of bodies. Her mother sidled away into the maws of a group of ladies standing and sitting on the sidelines, oscillating paper fans and drinking large Pepsis. The common man looked around. Ah there! He spots a group of middle aged friends. He waves and weaves through the jostle, and seamlessly joins the dancing group, sticks clashing while the state of the nation is analysed and dissected. The body loses its identity and becomes one with the surroundings. Speech ceases. The raucous blare of music, the clash of sticks, the tympani of feet meeting the hard ground, the swish of silk, and the tinkle of bangles and chains hypnotise. The movement of feet, the raising and lowering of arms, the deft twist every four beats, the crossing of sticks mesmerize.

The singers sang, the amplifiers soared, the strobes flashed. Steady beats would yield to crescendos would change to slow rhythm would shift gear to a rapid staccato. Bodies gyrated and slithered and spun and swayed. Faces gleamed, make up streaked, blouses soaked, hair straggled, hand fans fluttered. Now, one perfectly synchronized group would disappear, replaced by another fumbling one, forming a new kaleidoscopic pattern. There a couple would move closer past all decorum. Here excitement, there envy, here frustration, there serenity. Different steps of the dance.

And then, midnight tolled.

The ground now seemed vast. And eerily empty. The last stragglers were leaving, leaving behind stray peals of laughter. Paper cups and fans lay scattered and crushed as if beaten by a marauding army. The security guards walked around the site, switching off lights, stacking chairs.

The common man stood with his wife and daughter beside him. His eyes looked into the distance, or was it into another time? Did he see sparkling, kohl rimmed eyes clash with his, and then demurely give way? Did he smell the fragrance of lost youth? Did he hear the rustle of silk across a swaying hip? Did he feel the blood pounding through his head as he saw her gracefully move towards him, and then lose herself in the crowds?

I tapped him on his shoulder. “Come,” I said, “It’s time to go home now.”

His eyes returned to the world around us. He turned to see his wife looking at him. His daughter seemed tired, but a smile he had never seen before tugged at the corners of her mouth. His eyes met his wife’s and he smiled, a smile of ineffable beauty. He took her hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. “Yes,” he said, “it’s time to go home.”

Venkatraman Sheshashayee
09 October 2005