Culture vulture
He studied with Shefali Zariwala,” said the father of the bride, not apologetically but with pride, looking at his son jiving on the dance floor. My mother — who he was confiding in — must have looked flummoxed because he was forced to remind her: “… that kanta laga girl, the item number….” The occasion was an engagement in the family. And in the manner of these things these days, as soon as the ritual part was over, a DJ took over, remixing film numbers and getting the respective families on to the dance floor. But of the assortment of people, in various shapes and sizes and outfits, including aunts in sequined chiffons doing club numbers in the name of customary pomp and pagentary, the brother of the bride, a software engineer, you’d have dismissed as faintly nerdish if you hadn’t seen him move, proved to be a cut above the rest, dancing not just with enthusiasm but skill too. “Shefali’s influence must have rubbed off on him,” chuckled his father.
This took me back to the times when no one aspired to do item or Karan Johar numbers. Coming from a self-anointed “cultured” community, I remember being dragged to vague weddings of distant, very distant relatives, to Holi and Diwali functions, prepped up to break into a song at the slightest invite. As a teenager I resented this deeply, this enforced showing off. I’d much rather have stayed at home with a book. But my determined grandmother wouldn’t agree. She’d much rather have me learn classical music even when all the other kids in the colony were playing hide and seek or cricket, and her remedy for getting over “stage fright” was to sing (and make me) at as many weddings as possible!
Music was an integral part of those gatherings. Much planning would be put into the holding of elegant soirees, where, in the evenings, on spotless “chandni”, white “bedsheets” if you like, would sit not just the women (as in a traditional “ladies sangeet” elsewhere) but also men, often nursing their glasses of whisky, breaking into ghazals or customised songs for the occasion. And these were no amateur baithaks either; guests would come armed with their precious diaries containing entire repertoires, tablas and harmoniums were mandatory, and often, families serious enough would string up dusty tanpuras for the occasion.
The pressure to perform was intense — till you were through with your bit, you couldn’t possibly nibble on your shammi kebabs and pakoras with any sense of pleasure at all. There was also the high of the audience taking to your performance — not the least, for us children, because of the “prize” money we got. But the low of droning on when an audience was less than riveted, of being bettered, or of having your song “stolen” (there were some favourites which always did the rounds) by an early singer was bitter indeed and could break a spirit not so hardy. It was a cruelly competitive world too.
With DJs mixing up kanta laga and the like, weddings have become so much easier to attend now: You don’t need to worry about providing the entertainment, just endure an evening of fancy dress and boring but polite conversation over cocktails. If you are close family, you may be expected to take some choreography classes at best in order to put up a Bollywood-worthy spectacle. But if you choose to refuse citing studies or work, two left feet or a wallflower-worthy temperament, people are definitely more forgiving. In the end, there is always the dance floor, where, regardless of whether you can dance, you can certainly let your hair down. So, I am not complaining. It’s just that when I see a kid, or worse an adult move to “Left, left aage, aage, right, right… dance pe chance ...”, I can’t help but feel a little murderous. And wish the old days were back. Oh! for a little more “culture” in our lives.