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| Kishore Singh: Taking a rain-check on fun |
| Kishore Singh / New Delhi Jun 13, 2009, 00:05 IST |
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I don’t know if other cities have it, but Delhi has a tradition of organising rain dances in the hot summer months, mostly at clubs — though if you have a lawn large enough, anyone should be able to do it since all it requires is stringing up a web of pipes overhead that act as shower heads, a dance floor below, some high wattage music, and of course, a generous bar. Twice a year, our club manages to pull it off, though it has been unlucky on several occasions because the artificial rain has coincided with thunderstorms and real rain, robbing the dance of some of its romance and sending party-goers fleeing inwards, since food, or snacks, or even sitting around in the actual rain is hardly an option.
Despite several unseasonal storms in the capital this year, the club managed to pull off both its rain dance nights with aplomb, though in case you think I’m a rain dance junkie, it was only the second of the events for which I rallied together a group of friends, and the children their considerably larger group of friends. If you’re a rain dance virgin, you might think of it as something decadent, and even though there’s a little of the pagan about it, it’s really nothing more than Holi without the colour but with as much water as you might like.
Because we’ve been doing it for some years now, our state of preparation is well documented — towels to rub your hair dry with, a change of clothes for when you’re really drenched, separate plastic Ziplocs for the money, the watches and the mobile phones, and bedsheets to spread across the car seats to avoid getting them damp and smelly. On arrival, chairs and tables are hastily reserved, fans bagged and turned towards the tables, rupees exchanged for coupons with which to buy food and beverages, some surly spoilsport identified to keep vigil over bags and flip-flops and cellphones because he or she won’t dance in or outside the circle of artificial rain, and the cribbers who’ll wonder aloud if it’s the same water that is falling down over everybody that keeps getting circulated over and over again…
For all the suggestions of barbaric hedonism, this year’s rain dance was a fairly sedate affair. For starters, no woman in our group wore a white shirt, then complained that the water made it transparent. Nobody got drunk either, or threw up, or cracked dirty jokes, or was unpleasant with the management. The girls went off dancing, and when we saw them next, the music was winding down, the showers running dry, and all they wanted was a lot of food — I can vouch for it that dancing in the rain can leave you cold, exhausted and hungry! The boys appeared more interesting in counting the number of bottles of beer they could down, and ogling the girls, but since no one seemed to mind, even that was okay.
Unlike previous years, or was that at Holi, not one of our friends decided to entertain people by changing in public. There were no accusations of dirty dancing; no one danced on the chairs or tables either. No one attempted cabarets to amuse the non-dancers. Most of the women managed to hold on to their coiffed hair; most men got away with getting just their toes wet, but kept their humour and dry clothes on. “We are truly a cosmopolitan lot,” I addressed my wife later at home, “everyone’s behaviour was exemplary.” “It’s true,” agreed my wife, “the rain dance has become so boring, no one bothers to misbehave any more. I suppose we will now have to find something else to keep the level of excitement in Delhi going.”
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