Discomfort for Daandiya
Last night was possibly the most uncomfortable night of my life.
My friends Masooma and Tasneem had been hatching plans to take me to the Daandiya program at the India Club [near my school]. Daandiya, which literally means 'sticks' is a dance in which people use colored sticks as props and the dance is part of the annual Navraatri festival. Navraatri means 'nine nights'... the Daandiya and Garba dances which are part of the festival are held for nine consecutive nights from late September to early October.
Last night was the eighth night of Navraatri, so Masooma and Tasneem booked tickets for us: Arjun, Abeer, Masooma and Tasneem themselves and for me, too.
We got there around 21:00, which was pretty early. People were just starting to show up. I called the guy who had Tasneem's and my tickets and at the same time that I called, somebody in front of me answered his phone. I figured that this must be the guy who has our tickets, so I waved to him madly, all the while barking at him [over the phone] to turn around and notice me. When I decided that was futile, I went up to him and asked him if he had our tickets. He gave me an odd look and said, "No..." Ha! Embarrassment galore!
Anyways, I called the person again and found out that he was actually down the road from the club [we weren't in the club yet - there was no entry into it without tickets]. So I walked up till there, meeting friends on the way, and collected our tickets from him.
But Masooma's, Abeer's and Arjun's tickets were with somebody else. That person took his own sweet time in showing up. The five of us stood outside in the seemingly 100% humidity. I was wearing a paper-silk kurta and loose pants. The damn kurta was stupidly tight. And I was sweating like a pig. I was writhing, trying somehow to free myself from my own perspiration.. but that's not really possible, is it?! Thank God, at least my pants were loose enough to allow ventilation.
OK. 7000 people - members of the India Club and their "invitees" i.e. people who paid AED 40 to get invited to the dance party. More sweat. More stickiness. More discomfort. More writhing. Yet more people.
Alright, so there was a whole herd of cute, even hot Indian/Pakistani boys, some of whom had probably spent hours doing their hair - spiking them up or combing them in the right fashion. Everyone was impeccably dressed, or so they thought. But the sweat ruined it for everyone.
The missing tickets finally arrived and we decided to wait some more before we went in - I dunno why we did that. When we finally decided to go in, we had to go through three sets of blockades - they weren't allowing the whole herd to come in at once, only a trickle at a time. There was even a metal detector to check if any of us Sweaty Sweatersons were carrying explosives.
The program itself had nothing to do with sticks. Nobody, except a very few, had sticks. Everybody was dancing to popular Indian dance numbers, not traditional daandiya music. The dance floor itself was a little smaller than a football field. I guess there must've been around 5000 people on it at any given moment between 00:00 and 02:00. The rest were in the food court or the bar or the sitting area. I think the sweat of about a thousand different people rubbed off on me when they were passing by me in the crowd.
Since I had paid forty bucks to get in, I danced. Even though my legs were killing me from all the standing I did. Even though I didn't particularly enjoy the annoyingly loud music. But the DJ doesn't care about your taste, they just play whatever they get their hands on. I even met up with my school-friends: Jenny, Kareen, Masroor and Adrian [well, Adrian's not in school.. but still!] and danced with them.
I guess what I really enjoyed was doing the lori... it's a really easy-to-learn thing you do with your legs.. right hop, left hop, right hop, left hop, turn around and repeat until satisfied.
The evening ended at 02:15 after I said 'Yalla' [yalla = Arabic/Hebrew slang for 'come on'/'hurry up'] to Arjun for the umpteenth time so we could get out of the sitting area where we were all sitting, some of us smoking, some drinking, others gawking at the hot boys all around. I won't name names. Mr Azam dropped us home - at 02:30 in the morning! I had told him to go home and that we'd catch a cab but he said he'd wait till we were done. I dunno how he did it.
The pictures are few and nasty, so I won't post them.
My friends Masooma and Tasneem had been hatching plans to take me to the Daandiya program at the India Club [near my school]. Daandiya, which literally means 'sticks' is a dance in which people use colored sticks as props and the dance is part of the annual Navraatri festival. Navraatri means 'nine nights'... the Daandiya and Garba dances which are part of the festival are held for nine consecutive nights from late September to early October.
Last night was the eighth night of Navraatri, so Masooma and Tasneem booked tickets for us: Arjun, Abeer, Masooma and Tasneem themselves and for me, too.
We got there around 21:00, which was pretty early. People were just starting to show up. I called the guy who had Tasneem's and my tickets and at the same time that I called, somebody in front of me answered his phone. I figured that this must be the guy who has our tickets, so I waved to him madly, all the while barking at him [over the phone] to turn around and notice me. When I decided that was futile, I went up to him and asked him if he had our tickets. He gave me an odd look and said, "No..." Ha! Embarrassment galore!
Anyways, I called the person again and found out that he was actually down the road from the club [we weren't in the club yet - there was no entry into it without tickets]. So I walked up till there, meeting friends on the way, and collected our tickets from him.
But Masooma's, Abeer's and Arjun's tickets were with somebody else. That person took his own sweet time in showing up. The five of us stood outside in the seemingly 100% humidity. I was wearing a paper-silk kurta and loose pants. The damn kurta was stupidly tight. And I was sweating like a pig. I was writhing, trying somehow to free myself from my own perspiration.. but that's not really possible, is it?! Thank God, at least my pants were loose enough to allow ventilation.
OK. 7000 people - members of the India Club and their "invitees" i.e. people who paid AED 40 to get invited to the dance party. More sweat. More stickiness. More discomfort. More writhing. Yet more people.
Alright, so there was a whole herd of cute, even hot Indian/Pakistani boys, some of whom had probably spent hours doing their hair - spiking them up or combing them in the right fashion. Everyone was impeccably dressed, or so they thought. But the sweat ruined it for everyone.
The missing tickets finally arrived and we decided to wait some more before we went in - I dunno why we did that. When we finally decided to go in, we had to go through three sets of blockades - they weren't allowing the whole herd to come in at once, only a trickle at a time. There was even a metal detector to check if any of us Sweaty Sweatersons were carrying explosives.
The program itself had nothing to do with sticks. Nobody, except a very few, had sticks. Everybody was dancing to popular Indian dance numbers, not traditional daandiya music. The dance floor itself was a little smaller than a football field. I guess there must've been around 5000 people on it at any given moment between 00:00 and 02:00. The rest were in the food court or the bar or the sitting area. I think the sweat of about a thousand different people rubbed off on me when they were passing by me in the crowd.
Since I had paid forty bucks to get in, I danced. Even though my legs were killing me from all the standing I did. Even though I didn't particularly enjoy the annoyingly loud music. But the DJ doesn't care about your taste, they just play whatever they get their hands on. I even met up with my school-friends: Jenny, Kareen, Masroor and Adrian [well, Adrian's not in school.. but still!] and danced with them.
I guess what I really enjoyed was doing the lori... it's a really easy-to-learn thing you do with your legs.. right hop, left hop, right hop, left hop, turn around and repeat until satisfied.
The evening ended at 02:15 after I said 'Yalla' [yalla = Arabic/Hebrew slang for 'come on'/'hurry up'] to Arjun for the umpteenth time so we could get out of the sitting area where we were all sitting, some of us smoking, some drinking, others gawking at the hot boys all around. I won't name names. Mr Azam dropped us home - at 02:30 in the morning! I had told him to go home and that we'd catch a cab but he said he'd wait till we were done. I dunno how he did it.
The pictures are few and nasty, so I won't post them.