One of the best benefits of living alone is that you can dance your heart out at any time of the day without posing a problem for anyone(assuming that you are as horrible a dancer as me and it isn’t really a enjoyable experience to watch you dance). My tryst with dancing  goes a long way back. My first direct contact with it was during one of my mama’s(mom’s brother) wedding wherein i(back then a really small and innocent(which now i am not) child) was just pulled up by a mob of relatives and forced to shake each and every part of my body, it was almost as if i was been shaken to wake up from a really deep slumber that my relatives thought i had fallen into, however, only later on was i to realize that was how people danced at the wedding’s(precisely the baraat’s). In-fact, some uncles of mine even went to the extent of dancing with me sitting on their shoulders. Needless to say, my first stint with dancing didn’t even come close to being fun, it in-fact made me hate it.However , it was later found that during the ceremony i had chicken pox(was in the initial phases) and thus, it did spread on to a majority of people who made me shake it that day, so yes i did have my revenge(loads of evil laughter).

This experience combined with the fact that i kinda knew within that i am surely horrible at it ensured that i stayed away from any form of dancing for as late as the final year of my college life. Also, right until my final semester i was heavily governed by the opinions that other people held of me and i tried my best to ensure that they stayed good, which meant not doing a lot of things which may have seemed idiotic to the world but for me would have meant a lot at that moment. Yet again, it was in Jagriti Yatra wherein i was able to break out of it and started expressing myself freely, i still remember distinctly that it was the 3rd day of the yatra when i danced for the first time in years(in public) and man, the feeling of liberation that it brought was just mind-blowing. My tryst with dancing took a really beautiful turn when on the yatra itself, i got attracted to this cute and sensuous girl because of her dancing, she just used to so easily move with the flow, letting nothing hold her back and just enjoying and living in that moment totally. In-fact, the moment i realized that i was in love with her was when we were both dancing our heart out on a random beach in Mithapur, Gujarat, totally oblivious of the fact that a crowd had gathered and was watching us.  Oh! what a perfect moment it was.

These incidents combined with my decision to live alone provided the perfect platform for my love for dancing to grow. Also, being alone, you tend to shed all your inhibitions and just move your body with the flow of the song. So, you tend to for some moments just give up on all that you are trying to hold back(and all that’s trying to hold you back), letting it all flow freely. Its so so soothing to let nothing hold you back, to be able to easily let all of it go, all you need is to shut everything off for some time and get the songs on a good set of speakers(just for the feel) and just let the flow of the song carry you away. You will be amazed by seeing how powerful this experience is, i have danced on songs varying from rock to Sufi and enjoyed each one of them, for they all have their own beauty. Also, with Sufi songs i was really spellbound at the fact that how easily can the bhakti of the singer take up into his/her world, without us even having the least of idea of what it is, all we need to do this is to just let go. Living alone helps a lot in that for at-least the inhibition of being judged is off the mind. Also, this has made me realize just how much i am holding back, the only other time i had this feeling was when i was sitting on a cliff and thinking of jumping off(just to experience that freedom of being totally free for some moments) but that’s another story for another day.

So, for all those who agree with even slightly, all you need to do is just play some music and get going. Let your mood decide on the genre of music or let it be just about anything, just let it flow.

Hopefully, for me i can dance my way to freedom.

🙂