Tick…tick..tick…

Time and tide waits for none. So said a wise guy. He obviously spoke from experience. Alisha Chinnai and Anu Malik crooned and croaked (respectively) the same darned thing but I kept changing the channel.Sadly my good taste in music made me miss a valuable moral lesson!

But people like me don’t care much about learning from other’s mistakes.Infact we don’t care about learning even from our mistakes!

I have a plethora of short comings. But having a total disregard of the concept of “time” tops the lists followed very closely by a very high degree of self-worth!

Last Sunday, these two qualities of mine joined hands to mess my day up!

But to understand this mess-up…you need to know the history-

I have always loved dancing. Its one of the few things, I am not terribly bad at. . I grew up doing “thumkas” to bolywood numbers in my room. You have heard this crap from me a dozen times…but I am reiterating the fact to justify being proud of my dancing skills!

Just before I left hp, I had danced along with two others to the song “khaike paan banaras wala” from Don. It was an impromptu dance…with hardly any practice at all.

But somehow everybody ended up liking it! It was my first public performance (in front of 70 odd colleagues including my boss…and section head)…and I was still riding high from that experience.

Anyways,these past two months I have been taking “bolywood dance” classes and it has been great fun. Hindi film songs have the most vivacious, lively steps…and being free form…gives you the greatest scope to express your style and individuality!

We were learning a dance routine of nearly 7 mins with two songs. First 3.5 mins was for “Aaj ki Raat” from Don and the other half was for “Beedi Jalaile” from Omkara.

The steps were full of thumkas and jhatkas! I was younger than most of the participants in the class. Everybody was nice and sweet. There were one or two good dancers, but secretly I thought I danced better than most! Ah!the elusive quality called humility!

Last Sunday was the D-day where we would do the routine in front of our family members. We had decided on the costume-black pants, black top and a colorful chunni tied to the waist.

Needless to say I was going cuckoo with excitement. I heard the song again and again to know all the nuances of the song, practiced in front of Saif…and one late evening even did half a dance in the park where we go to play badminton (Luckily no one saw me making a fool out of myself)!

The day before the show, I practiced again wearing my full costume. After Saif applauded my efforts…I proudly told him “Tomorrow, you’ll see me kick some ass!”

Next day I got up early and got ready. I didn’t want to be late this time. I still had 1 hr to spare. So I watched Robin Williams’s stand up comedy videos on youtube ! By that time Saif got ready…and well after having breakfast we just had 20 mins to spare. The dance was at 11.30 am.

We were in our car at 11.15am…and just when we were leaving Saif remembered that he had not gotten the camera. Since I had dreams of sending the pics to family and friends…and even posting it on my blog, I made him go fetch it.

The dance class was just a 5 minute ride from my house. But to our dismay the road leading to it was blocked due to some “Art and wine festival”! Saif made a left turn and to our dismay we got stuck in a traffic jam. The road was totally jam packed with cars of people trying to find parking space. ! I nervously looked at my watch as the minutes ticked away. The nervousness slowed changed to frustration…then anger…rage and finally panic! My immediate reaction to any such situations is to burst out crying…but I couldn’t afford to mess my mascara up. So I sat there cursing everyone and everything….stomping my foot…and wringing my hands!

After what seemed like eternity…we made our way to the dance class. We were ten minutes late. They had already started…and were midway through the song. They all looked pretty in black. But I didn’t see any point to stay there any longer. I rushed back to the car tears rolling down my eyes (composure-not my strongest point)…Saif slowly turned out of the parking space…and he didn’t know what to say. He just drove aimlessly. By this time my giant tears had done their work…and my cheeks were streaked with mascara…the eyes red…and the nose well-red and drippy! I looked at the side mirror…I looked like Dracula’s bride!

We have never reached any place on time. Till now…it was always fun getting lost or getting stuck. But it felt really bad to miss this dance thingie; it was nothing spectacular or life-altering but just something I had looked forward to from two months. After bragging so much about being good…I didn’t get to prove it.

Anything sympathetic at that point would have led to another bout of crying. With an intuitive understanding of this Saif decided to leave tact out of the conversation. He grinned and said-

“Finally…it was your ass which got kicked…huh?”

That made me giggle in between sobs…and I totally feel for the Mexican woman who gave me a terrified look from the curb while the signals were changing… I looked like a character out of some Ramsay productions!

So as to make up for the lousy start I had for that day…Saif took me on a shopping splurge.

So by the end of the day…I was recovering from having my heart broken! It was then that I realized the healing powers of shopping. A few hours of shopping will cheer me up irrespective of what the set down was!

I will join the next session of Bollywood dancing. Hopefully next time I will make it on time. All my friends…will be thinking that I have finally had my lesson in punctuality.

Well, don’t bet on it!

Moral of the story- Don’t cry with eye make-up on! You wont make a pretty sight!