Did I mention that I love to dance, asks Noirtanki

I low-key convulsed in my chair at birthday parties when “Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen” came on the B-Side of Baazigar cassette and no one asked me to go for it.

Listen to this essay in the voice of Noirtanki, where she responds to a prompt from

raju tai

This prompt made me realise how tragicomically out of touch I am with myself. It is most certainly only rivalled by the Ambani kids’ understanding of poverty. Or moderation. 

Who am I? What do I like to do with my time? What is my purpose? Existential questions have done little than push me further into existential dread. What the hell is with the question “Who am I?” anyway?

How can you say with finality who you are? How can you be so sure that you will be the same person tomorrow or were the same person yesterday?

I for one don’t know who I am. I am pushing 40 and still don’t know what I want to do with my life. But some things have always floated a few notches above the perpetual clouds of confusion hanging over my head. 

1. I love to eat. Obviously. 

2. Nothing can undo me as badly as a lack of sleep. 

3. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play lawn tennis 

4. I LOVE to dance. So much so that roughly 85% of my favourite songs of all time are dance numbers. 

I participated in school activities involving dancing from kindergarten to Class 12th. I begged, cried, and promised not to let it affect my studies so my parents would let me.

At home, I danced while making the bed and while standing in front of the pateela till the chai brewed to achieve the desired brownness. I threw up my hands in the air when Backstreet Boys told me to and leapt out of bed when another boy band, Blue, sang “All Rise”.

I low-key convulsed in my chair at birthday parties when “Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhen” came on the B-Side of Baazigar cassette and no one asked me to go for it. And felt intense FOMO upon discovering that another girl gang had snagged “Rangeela Re” for the school's annual function. 

Once, after observing me for a few weeks during the summer break at my grandparents, an uncle pulled me aside to say that I should wait for people to ask me at least twice before launching into impromptu performances. 

A few years before that, I tripped while dancing at a new year’s party, cutting my lower lip on the edge of a chair as I went down. I was promptly brought back home and given first aid. The next day, Jan 1, my mother utaaro-ed nazar, asking me tentatively not to dance in front of people. 

In my first year of college, I bolted my PG room shut and quietly danced my heart out to Jamelia’s “Superstar” when it came on unexpectedly on the radio. After FM radio, the second brush with big city life happened on the sticky dance floors of dimly-lit clubs, where my friends and I could be found grinding on boys we wouldn’t recognise in daylight.

It’s hard to believe I could be this person when just two days ago, I fumbled through a 2-minute conversation with a neighbour because I made the mistake of looking them in the eye. 

I was 13 in 1999, when I rounded up a group of friends, chose the song “Dholi Taro”, choreographed the entire performance and planned outfits for an event in school. 

It was such a high throughout… only, we were dropped from the line-up at the last minute as the programme was running behind schedule. I mouthed some words of encouragement to the group, told the programmer to put our song on and we burst onto the stage as the audience made a beeline for the exit. 

Most of them sat back down and we danced our hearts out, intoxicated by the theatricality of it all. 

It was the year of Sanjay Lela Bhansali’s “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam”, and I was equally obsessed with other songs from this album, such as “Nimbooda” and “Man Mohini”. 

And how can I forget AR Rahman’s epic “Taal” album? The soundtrack was replete with such timeless, lilting beauties as “Nahi Saamne” and the title song. But what held my attention was the reprised version of the latter, called “Taal (western)”.

A sleeker, more feverish and rowdy (but in an urbane way) upgrade on Dil Toh Pagal Hai’s “Dance of Envy”, made me want to dance till every bone in my body begged me to stop.

Honourable mentions:
“Iss Deewane Ladke Ko”
With Sonali Bendre as the lovelorn leading lady to Aamir Khan’s cop in Sarfarosh. Revisiting the music video made me realise how drop-dead gorgeous she is. It could easily pass off as a commercial for lustrous hair or slimming pills, height boosters or skin lightening creams or lip-liners…or even as a PSA that sometimes, even the most stunning girls are doomed to pining for mediocre men. 

“Saajan, Saajan Teri Dulhan”
For Madhuri Dixit’s sublime screen presence and moves. But on a deeper, more insidious level, it appealed to a side of me innocently gorging on sexist bullshit that women do not exist except as a receptacle of a man. 

“Sabki Baraatein Aayin”
Sexist bullshit on steroids

This is the fastest I’ve submitted on this writers’ group and probably also the longest piece I’ve written in a while, which I hope will reflect my feeling about dance (did I mention that I love to dance?).

And the funny thing is, I’ve not tried to do more of it through the years. Never tried to seek training or incorporate it into my life in a bigger way, never considered the possibility of using it to take care of my body and my mind. 

Noirtanki is a neurospicy writer-in-training.

Write to Ochre.Sky.Workshops@gmail.com for more info on upcoming writing workshops facilitated by Natasha Badhwar and Raju Tai