One-two-cha-cha-cha

This piece is actually 3 months old. I had written this and stored it somewhere in my PC and forgotten. Finally got my hands on it while scrounging for porn in some folder hidden deep inside "c:\windows\system32\", and hence publishing it now. Here goes:

Well there's no polite way to break this in, so I'll be direct: I've joined dancing classes. Ballroom dancing, to be precise ( ballroom dancing, for the uninitiated, is a collection of various dance forms whose names end with -ba: Rumba, Samba, old-monk-ka-Khamba, kuthe-zhaala-aahes-re-thaamba, to name a few). Actually it wasn't entirely my idea. A good friend of the female kind brainwashed me into taking it up. She noticed that i was basically doing nothing on weekends ( by nothing i mean getting myself piss drunk with random people at nights, and nursing the hangover at days while constantly moaning about the glory days when all the bum-chums were right here in Bombay and we would travel 40 km back and forth on a weekday to get drunk at the South Bombay pubs). She also happened to point out my belly which had begun hiding my belt completely now, and the spare tyre that magically sprang up around my waist whenever i sat down. I tried reasoning with her that God didn't want me to dance. But then her raised eyebrow seemed to make much more sense at that time, so i gave in and signed up. I didn't realize that i would be using the popular Hollywood cop-flicks line "i didn't sign up for this" a bit too often from now on.

Anyway, Day One. I enter the room, and see this Greek goddess of an instructor.Oooh lalalala... what a bottom. God must have designed her bottom using AutoCad 9.0, I swear. Absolute perfection. I liked her. (Until she gave me the nickname of "pansy hands", because my hands would always flop out in a girly manner while dancing a particular step). You see, although I had my reservations about taking dancing classes, I didn't have even a bit of doubt in my mind that i wouldn't be absolutely awesome at it. Dancing to me comes like swimming comes to a duck. I was the number one dancer in college ( some would disagree with this, but they're just jealous little cunts). I was the step inventor, step propagator, and the change-the-step-at-the-right-moment-er. Yes, i was the Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh of dancing. i knew all the steps - amitabh bachchan step, dharmendra step, kite flying step, chapaati making step, chai-waala step, las ketchup song step, the macarena,dil-pe-kataari step, you just name it! Ballroom dancing, apparently, is a whole new ball game. You have to keep pointless things like technique, posture, tempo and mood in mind while doing it.

And it doesn't help that these people take their ballroom dancing bloody seriously. For example, this is how they introduce you to the dance step called cha-cha: " The cha-cha has a base step structure of "1-2-3-cha-cha", with a base tempo of 32 bps ( beats per second), and the primary mood for this is naughtatious, which is a combination of naughty and flirtatious. The base step structure for the cha-cha used to be "1-2-cha-cha-cha" instead of "1-2-3-cha-cha" until 1991, when the Internation Assosiation of ballroom Dancers ( IABD) changed it following a lawsuit by Greenpeace." These guys seriously need to take it easy. It's a dance step, not the technical specification document for the Chandrayaan, for God's sake.

Initially I did have trouble keeping up with all the ultra-precise mumjo-jumbo. I ended up breaking a substantial number of my dancing partners' toe-nails. But things have begun to look up. I am no longer confusing rumba with samba, samba with cha-cha, and left foot with right foot. Give me another 2-3 weeks, and I'll be John-fuckin-Travolta.

But you know what? Ballroom dancing's actually fun. After you've gotten over all the technical crap like 'bend your left ankle at 45 degrees, and take your right foot forward perpendicular to your partner's shoulder-line while bending your left arm at 37.6 degrees to the window on your right while juggling while making love to a tiger', it's actually fun. The best part of ballroom dancing is, that the guy gives all the leads, and the female has to whatever the guy directs her to do. For once, women are listening to me ( good for them). This false sense of power is overwhelming, actually. Imagine... one moment I'm dancing the straight step, and WHENEVER I WANT TO, I can make the female do another step. How bloody awesome is that!

You know, just about a month back, I was at the Hawaiian Shack ( a discotheque in Mumbai) and somehow managed to find a girl to dance with ( all thanks to my superpretty friend petti, who with his cute face always manages to find a girl to dance with, and then gets me her erstwhile partner to dance with). Anyway, we were dancing our stupid random steps, when the girl suddenly asked me "Do you know jive?" The following conversation ensued:

Me: What? i couldn't hear you... it's too loud here.
Her: Do you know Jive?
Me(Doing the I-am-deaf action): Whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Her: Jive! do you know Jive?
Me: hell yeah I know Clive...he's my boss... but how do you know him?
She: Not Clive, JIVE!!!!
Me: Yeah man.. this party is so ALIVE!
She: {some Konkani swearwords}
Me: Oh Jive.... no, i don't know Jive.
She: Ok, I'll teach you :-)

She then proceeded to teach me the basics of Jive. In the following 30 seconds, I broke her left toe-nail, elbowed the poor guy behind me, and broke my 5th pint of beer that I thought I could manage to hold while dancing Jive. So hopeless I was at doing the Jive, that another WOMAN came and plucked the girl I was dancing with from me, and started doing the Jive with her. Imagine... a girl coming and stealing your girl. I sincerely can't think of a worse insult. It didn't help that all my haraami guy friends were on the floor laughing when they saw that. That day I swore that I would learn Jive, and hunt this woman down, and do the Jive again with her. Now guess what? I can now do the Jive, goddamnit! Now all I have to do is find that girl again. (I have enough information to hunt her down. Her name starts with S, and she's a Goan... I mean how many GOan girls can there be with their names starting with S...).

Anyway, that's that, and before I sign off, here's a Top-Gear top-tip: Guys, learn some dance form other than what your seniors taught you at college. Your awesome kite-flying step isn't appreciated by the girls anymore. Neither is a good heart, solid moral values, beautiful brown eyes, and a body like a Greek God ( All this I've learnt through personal experience). Girls want you to know the Jive now.

Update: 3 months since I've learnt the Jive. No sign of the girl yet. There are way too many Goan girls with their name starting with S. And they slap a lot when they're drunk.