Her Holi Communion through Dance

No sooner did Shivani step on to the lawns with her hands and clothes smeared in colour, than she got splayed with the coloured water from the pichkaris by the children of her complex. As she went chasing after them, they ran about in glee.

She heard someone calling out her name.

As soon as she turned around, she found herself face-to-face with Srilatha her friend and neighbor.

“I have been waiting for you. What took you so long?”

“Something came up at home.”

“Where is Prateek Bhai?”

“Oh, he got held up too.” Shivani replied turning abruptly to smear the colours in her hands on people around.

Sighting pots of bhang lined up on the table in the corner, she moved towards it.

As she downed a glass, she saw a group of people beginning to dance in the middle of the lawn. Shivani gyrated towards the group and slowly twirled around in tune with the beat of the Dholak by Mr. Rane from the Building No. 401.

As she swayed, Shivani closed her eyes. And the scene flashed behind her closed eyelids vividly.

His semi naked body bent over the frightened ten year old Chutki. 

Pinning her down. 

Touching her at inappropriate places.

“How innocently and wholeheartedly I loved him.” Shivani thought to herself as she wiped off the red sindhoor that had trickled onto her face.

Red was Shivani’s favourite colour. And the colour became part of her personality as she stepped out into the world with the long streak of vermilion adorning the central partition in her hair and a big red sindhoor round spot glowing on her forehead. In addition to her fancy for the colour, it was also her love for her husband Prateek that made her gloat over her marital status that way. 

Shivani loved Indian rituals and customs. She celebrated almost all Indian festivals with a lot of gusto. Holi was one of her favourite festivals and she looked forward to celebrating it every year.

Prateek on the other hand was not very enthusiastic about rituals and he often found Shivani’s enthusiasm quite childish and annoying. Though Shivani was aware of his condescending attitude towards her in this regard, she accepted it as she considered herself to be lucky to have been married to a man who she felt was superior to her in every matter.

After all, she had fallen in love with Prateek when she was still an adolescent. As she was growing up, he was staying down the street from their house. He was this bright student who shot into fame when he bagged fifth state rank in his SSC Board exams.

Both her parents and Prateek’s parents were good friends, and they dropped by at each other’s house regularly. For Shivani, Prateek had become a hero of sorts with his encyclopedic knowledge about varied topics. She held him in adulation as she wasn’t very academic oriented.

When Shivani got through her graduation, her parents approached Prateek’s parents asking whether they would consider Shivani as a suitable wife for Prateek. There was hardly any resistance from Prateek too and that had settled the matter.

Shivani was ecstatic to get married to Prateek. She felt she was the luckiest girl in the whole world to get married to the man of her dreams. 

“How foolish I had been all the while.”

Shivani shook her head to clear her mind of the image. Soon the tempo picked up. As Shivani gyrated frantically to match the tempo, the world seemed to stand still for her. She lost sense of time and place. She was in a trance and nothing seemed to matter except for the music. She had always loved to dance. She felt a connection to the divine as she danced.

As she flowed it felt as though dance was her “Chi” - as though she was communicating to the world through her dance. And she seemed to be sending a very violent message. She knew Prateek would have been quite irritated to see her dance with such wanton pleasure. The thought made her smile and throw herself into it with greater passion. Hers was the dance of a warrior. It was a battle cry. And no one missed it. Soon everyone’s eyes were glued on to her.

All of a sudden they heard it. A loud shriek. The revelry stopped as everyone turned their attention to the source of it. Shivani’s maid Lakshmi came running with her daughter Chutki close on her heels. She looked pale as though she had just seen a ghost.

Pointing her fingers to Shivani’s apartment Lakshmi said “Didi, Saab…” trying to catch her breath.

Shivani continued staring at Lakshmi with her Sindhoor now freely flowing down her face.

“Saab is lying in the tub. I can’t wake him up.” Lakshmi said in between her sobbing.

For a brief moment Shivani’s and Lakshmi’s eyes were locked into each other without blinking. Slowly Shivani turned away. As she tried to move ahead, her legs gave away under her. Lakshmi stepped forward and held Shivani in a protective embrace.