How to Dance Like Madhuri Dixit
Fiction: ‘I thought to myself that the god in heaven is just a child playing with clay, throwing it around with disregard and then picking it up with the intention of throwing it again with utter delight. The clay loses and gains in this process.’
The only delicate aspect about Him was His gait. The rest was too heavy, too thick, too bulky. Thick arms, legs, hands. Hands with dark lines and dirty bitten nails.
I met Him on occasions when people from our colony got married, had children, retired, or died. People invited His family out of politeness, or maybe to see how they were doing, both financially and socially. Nobody wanted anyone to do too well, especially not better than themselves.
I thought to myself how I wouldn’t have recognised Him outside this familial context of celebration or mourning. He didn’t have hair on His face the last time. I remembered seeing a weird greenish tinge. Just a mustache? This time, there was a beard.
I thought to myself that the god in heaven is just a child playing with clay, throwing it around with disregard and then picking it up with the intention of throwing it again with utter delight. The clay loses and gains in this process.
We talked a bit. It’s unsettling talking to your childhood friends after you cease to be children. The nakedness of being known is too stifling. I couldn’t find any coherence of this almost boyman, sporting a beard over the face of a child I knew, withhands and legs still too bulky and long for His delicate torso.
That is a lie. I’m sure I would recognise Him easily in a crowd. I could always identify him for His walking pattern, how He moved with one leg placed before the other in a rehearsed fashion. Someone had once told me that when one learns to walk on a ramp, you must place your foot on the marked lines. He walked like the concrete road was his ramp, with imaginary lines flying off from his huge burly workman hands onto the road. His heels touched the ground first, before the rest of the foot, with a force.
But He always walked a bit outside the line.
His choreographed walk made Him whole. Can you choose, alter, fix the way you walk? Or does the way you walk chooses, alter, and fix you?
*
He loved Madhuri Dixit, and “Choli ke peeche kya hai?,” the song from Khalnayak where she dances as an undercover police officer. He knew it perfectly. He mimicked the expressions with great precision. A borrowed gait.
The only thing He loved as much as Madhuri Dixit was a necklace that I owned. It was not so much a necklace but a cheap attempt at one. It was a wire with bluish purple teardrop-shaped plastic beads strung on it. He said if you looked closely, you would see Nataraja, the dancing form of Shiva inside it. As a child, He made everyone see it. Every kid in the colony believed that plastic necklace did in fact have some sort of divine power. He made sure we all acknowledged it.
That divine necklace soon became imperative for His dance performances too. It transformed Him from an almost boy to an almost Madhuri Dixit. That dance, the steps, the mood, the expression looked almost natural to His body, as if they were His own. He had learnt the performance well and wanted to teach us all. Can giving make something whole? He wanted us to learn it, learn it with dedication, learn it with all our might. We could be Madhuri more than Him—what a sad and enthralling fact. Could creating a few faux Madhuris fill that void of an almost-Madhuri?
He wanted us to learn it, learn it with dedication, learn it with all our might. We could be Madhuri more than Him—what a sad and enthralling fact. Could creating a few faux Madhuris fill that void of an almost-Madhuri?
But he was a strict, selfish teacher. He never wanted us to dance better than Him.
“At least try moving your waist like a girl,” he spat.
After the intense practice session, He collapsed to the floor, His dark skin gleaming in sweat, a sheen of dew drops on his arms and neck. A tired, resting, and parched Madhuri. His thirst transcended His body; we could feel it in our throats too. Biting. Sharp. Solid. He asked for water.
The rest of us, his fans, turned into His spot-boys, looking around for a solution. Going home was out of the question; it was homework time, and our mothers would not let us return for the half-learned dance routine.
In Geetu, we found a savior. She returned with a giant, 2-liter bottle of water. Her tiny frame suddenly augmented with pride and happiness. A divine glow on her round face. Geetu was the same age as Him, but she too, yearned to be His best fan, the best spot boy, the best devotee. A halo around her head? Triumphant and heroic. We clamoured around her, asking how she did it, laughing, marveling at her ingenuity. She told us that she had prepared in advance, keeping the bottle outside when she came out to play in the afternoon.
How wonderful, we exclaimed.
She offered the bottle to Him, with a wide and victorious smile. It was time for her to be the favourite.
He looked at the offering, and then at her. At her sweaty arms, the dirt under her nails, her baby hair sticking to her small forehead like tendrils, and a toy bulb alight in her eyes. He said that He was not thirsty anymore.
His face was serene then, with no sweat in sight.
The air turned thick, hot and almost solid. The biting, sharp, solid thirst in our throat dissolved into something bitter. It rained a lot that evening. We later heard that Geetu had caught a cold.
*
We girls sometimes talked behind His back. He really thinks He's Madhuri Dixit, we said.
Boys can’t dance to a Madhuri Dixit song, can they?
He spoke about how you could eat a specific type of leaf and not fall ill. About how god is so real that if you look hard enough and long enough, you’ll find him crouching beneath a large leaf like a slimy toad who jumps at you and makes you utter his name in fright, and surprise, and disgust.
“Do you think He’s secretly a girl?” Riddhi said. “My brother told me.”
“Like those people?” Someone chimed in.
Haww! We all giggled and gasped at our own thoughts. Outrageous and scandalous, shameful even. Sinful.
Later we all agreed, maybe out of guilt, that although the necklace suited the fairer-skinned Riddhi, and although I owned it, it was He who had shown us Nataraja. It was He who brought the god down to that cheap plastic necklace sitting on His dark neck. If by chance we dropped the necklace we picked it up as quickly as possible with a gasp and touched it to our forehead.
My mother liked Him a lot. “Lokkhi chele,” she said. He’s not like other boys His age. An anomaly. He’s kind and sensitive and so harmless; he just likes to dance around, So what? Kids do these kinds of things; it doesn’t mean anything.
His family, however, is a whole different story, she muttered bitterly under her breath. They all have something very crass about them except him, she said, something inherently uneducated and low class. He was the youngest in the line of two older sisters and one older brother. “The way they eat biscuits,” mother said, “making sure the crumbs fell everywhere. They were quite old; they should have known how to eat a biscuit properly.”
Still, she was happy to send me to His house to play. I, in my underpants and a t-shirt, and He in His blue shorts and a ganji. He used to hold me on His hip, like mothers in old films held their offspring.
He spoke about many things. He believed that some people are closer to god than others, that his family and Geetu’s were similar but His were a smidge superior than hers. He spoke about how you could eat a specific type of leaf and not fall ill. About how god is so real that if you look hard enough and long enough, you’ll find him crouching beneath a large leaf, like a slimy toad who jumps at you and makes you utter his name in fright, and surprise, and disgust. He spoke about how we need to rub the eye of unripe mango on the wall so that all the sticky substance dries up, and we don’t get pus filled boils near our mouth. He told me about how if you cross the nahar at night you get really sick, and it happened to Geetu’s mother once, and now she has dark black spots on her tongue like some dogs do. It just proves ghosts exist, he said.
My mother and most of the people of our colony used to pity His parents. Three kids are useless, ill-mannered. “And one dances around,” I once heard a neighbour say. “I bet you things won’t end well for this family,” said Riddhi’s mother, with side glances at a kitty party. “The kids are absolutely good for nothing. The son has this long unwashed hair, the girls wear these obscene colored kurtas and look like civil caste people. People should look at what compliments their complexion and the mother has her head in the clouds about god knows what.”
Everyone at the party nodded. Their mouths would be filled with namkeen or biscuits as they spoke, crumbs neatly collected in the hand cupped below the mouth. His and Geetu’s mother were not invited to this party.
With passing time, I couldn’t remember what His siblings or His mother looked like, what they sounded like, what they used to wear, or how they ate their biscuits. I only remember the instances in which He made me sit with His mother while the woman did aarti. The smoke from multiple incense and the camphor made my eyes water and vision blurry. His mother used to tell me stories afterwards, about how a cow is a summation of all gods and hence holy, about how if you believe enough, you can light a diya with water—because some saint did it way back—and about how god punishes the wrong doers, he had punished her jealous sisters-in-law. She would tell me about how she visited multiple mandirs and shrines when He was in her belly and that is the reason gods come to Him. I listened in awe and disbelief, knowing partly that it’s not true, but doubting myself enough to believe in it.
During one of her aarti sessions, His mother had told me Nataraj can also bring misfortune. “He is dancing in anger, so of course it’s unlucky; there's a reason why people don't keep Nataraj's idol in their homes.” Her voice had reached me through the smoke, almost like a celestial message. Was she aware that her son could see Nataraj in a necklace?
He, too, was deeply religious. He used to say in a deep, Shraddha Channel voice, that if you need to excel at any art you need to pray to god. Madhuri Dixit had done exactly that. The necklace on His neck caught the sunlight and gleamed. I was reminded of the snake around Shiva's neck. Do you think the snake thinks of acting as a noose? Blasphemous.
*
On one rainy, humid, dense day, we found a washed-up plastic figure of Ganesha in my backyard, caked with mud. It was the same material the squeaky toys are made of, but it made no sound. He made us wash the mute god with water from His black water tank. He then ordered us all to get empty incense boxes and any cardboard box we could find from our houses. We went and came back as soon as we could. He then sat with utmost devotion and started arranging the boxes in such a manner so that He could make a mandir for the figurine. He tried quite a few outlays until He rested on one and decided that it would be our shrine. We were all so elated and proud that we saved our god from the mud, washed him, and gave him this fragrant monument. We were gods for that tiny muddy, washed up, rubber mute toy.
The game didn’t end there, it didn’t have to. Now that we have a mandir, we needed a couple of devotees with appropriate paraphernalia. With coaxed devotion in our eyes and on our face we each offered our prayers one by one starting from oldest to youngest. He first, because He had made it, He also took the first go at the flowers. Next went Geetu, who picked the flowers from the cardboard shrine and poured them again in a similar fashion the way we had seen people do on the TV. Then went Tannu and did the same and then me and then Riddhi. We had a contest of who has the best pooja routine. He won because He had the necklace, and because when has Madhuri Dixit ever lost at anything?
We played our little game and then quickly forgot about the forgotten god. The god house melted in god tears.
*
His fanbase diminished, and fewer of us attended his dance lessons. He danced only to flaunt His moves, we felt. His abilities, His grace.
The child in heaven must have thrown the clay around. The necklace vanished. Perhaps, Nataraj took it back to the place he dances, or the slimy toad god took it to hide beneath the large leaf to test our faith. Or was it with the saint who could light a diya with water? Or did it melt with the cardboard mandir?
My mother asked me about the necklace. I cried and cowered.
I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Her anger was very unwarranted. Granted, the necklace was divine, but she didn't believe in its divinity. She had told me that long ago. Still, she shouted and shouted and suddenly she went quiet. She took a deep breath and exhaled through her nostrils. She looked at me and said in a calm voice. “He took it.”
When my father entered, my mother repeated her accusation. He took that necklace, she told him. Stole it. Like a thief.
“These uneducated civil caste will remain the same, no matter what,” she said. “You call them in your house, you let them eat from the same plate, you go to their house, you let them play with your child and then they steal your stuff. You know, I don’t want to say it, I really don’t, but people are right when they say not to mix with their kind.”
I couldn’t go out to play with a dancing thief now, could I?
Granted, the necklace was divine, but she didn't believe in its divinity. She had told me that long ago. Still, she shouted and shouted and suddenly she went quiet. She took a deep breath and exhaled through her nostrils. She looked at me and said in a calm voice. “He took it.”
*
When I saw Him next, He had crossed the threshold of becoming an almost boyman. His family moved out of the colony, after His father retired. His family would live in a small house nearby. The sisters would fail to marry, the older brother would be doing nothing, and His gait would have become more pronounced, more noticeable, less childish.
He would outgrow those blue shorts, His many ideas, His words about god. But Madhuri Dixit would still be in His demeanor. That coyness which was indispensable to the dance routine He did as a kid. It would never leave Him, like an invisible mark on the head that makes you painfully visible to the world, the spotlight right in your eyes burning white in your retina, leaving you desperately trying to wipe it off, without success.
The day we heard the news about Madhuri Dixit, I ran to His house, while my parents were taking their afternoon nap. I’m almost certain I did. I’m not sure if I ever reached there.
Madhuri had gotten married, I told him. To some Doctor with small eyes in America. She wore something blue and red, as per the newspapers. He told me that she loved someone else, didn’t she? She also has amazing hair. Is that a three-step cut?
Do actresses like Madhuri Dixit dance at their own weddings? He wondered. The newspapers said Madhuri’s mother accompanied her at every audition and shooting. Is that true? Will she have kids? Will she kiss her husband? On the lips?
Does she have a special divine necklace? Can she see Nataraja in it?
Meanwhile, the Nataraja kept dancing with all his might. He was bound to get tired, something would break, the beads would scatter, never to be found, and the tandav would cease, but at great cost. His hair flowed in every direction, reaching far and wide, getting caught in people’s mouths and throats, causing them to cough and gag.
The colony spoke about him now in with louder conviction. Told you it was not going to end well for that family, they said.
Saw the older sister recently, looked so bent and dark and her skin was stretched on her bones.
I heard the brother just roams around, some say he now hung out with people who pick up trash.
The other sister is teaching in a school I heard from someone, saw her yesterday. She didn’t stop to say Namaste even, what attitude was that?
I changed the sides of the road and kept walking. I felt a tightening in my throat. The necklace was lost. It is. It is. It is. An invisible noose.
Saw the youngest son near the market, he’s still the same.
*
His father died soon after Madhuri Dixit’s wedding. No one knows how. People in the colony found out very late. Some say he was drunk and walked in the nahar which was raging at that time. Some say he walked into the nahar in full awareness, does that make it a suicide? Some said heart attack, some said his two unmarried daughters, trash picker befriending son and that almost boyman son had sat in his four chambered heart and had eaten and clawed at its walls and that had made his heart wispy.
Eight years after Madhuri Dixit was married, I was in class 10th, returning from my tuitions, when and I saw Him walking with someone. I didn’t wish to recognise Him. I wouldn’t have if not for the way He walked.
The boy walking beside Him had his arm around His shoulders. Now, He only slouched a bit. His shoulders were not in the correct posture they used to be, the posture He had mastered while He danced as Madhuri Dixit, wearing that necklace, summoning the muddy, rubber god from the earth, making him witness of His art.
I don’t think He recognised me.
Madhuri was doing a comeback with a movie about dance. It was all in the newspapers. She looked old now, not in the face of course, but in her wrinkled veiny hands. Had He seen those photographs?
I changed the sides of the road and kept walking. I felt a tightening in my throat. The necklace was lost. It is. It is. It is. An invisible noose.
*
But He had been right after all. The necklace had blessed him.
“You will not believe what I found today,” my mother told me when I returned from school one afternoon. She handed me the necklace. It had been found in a five-yearly whitewashing of our government quarter. “It was in some random bags with my office papers; I must have kept it while cleaning or something. Do you remember this? Oh, you loved this necklace so much as a child!” she laughed.
I looked at the necklace, felt the cheap plastic between my fingers. It looked so greyed, so puny, so insignificant.
“You don’t need this anymore, do you?” she asked. “We should really donate some of your old toys…”
Yes, I nodded. It seemed as if it had been stripped of its divinity. Nataraja’s misfortune.
***
Sanchalika Das is a writer from Uttarakhand. She is an alumna of Delhi University. She likes to dabble with the themes of family, loss, identity, and struggles regarding them. Her work has previously been published in Kitaab Magazine, Monograph Magazine, and Mean Pepper Vine. She currently lives in Banaras and is pursuing her Master's from Banaras Hindu University. You can find her on Instagram: @sanchalikaa_.
