Dancing With Madonna

I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange sense of elation which seemed strange at that time of night. Then I recollected the dream I had just experienced. I had dreamt that I was dancing with a pretty girl. As it usually happens with dreams, I could not remember who that girl was, or what she looked like. Lying there in the bed, for a long time I tried to figure out what had triggered that dream, since I have been physically handicapped for last thirty years, and all this time I could have never even imagined dancing like that. Then I remembered talking to Imtiaz couple of days back, after renewing contact with him, because of my writing on chowk.com. Imtiaz, with whom I used to play cricket at Abadan cricket club, in Iran back in 1977 .

Suddenly it became quite clear that talking to him must have evoked those distant memories of that lovely night when we held a party at the hut housing the Abadan cricket club. Perhaps it was the moonlit Iranian night, or perhaps I was a little vain about my looks at twenty, I asked the pretty and petite wife of a fellow club member, a thorough gentleman from U.K., for a dance. I danced guiltily with her for some time, while her husband looked on. Much later, when I heard that the couple had separated and gone back to their country, I could not escape an unfounded nagging feeling of guilt. I wondered what had happened to their two doll-like cuddly little daughters. Next year, I suffered a stroke, while playing with fellow students, shattering my life for a long time. Dancing became a forlorn memory, until twelve years later, when during a Christmas party in Moberly Tower, where I was staying in the Manchester University, Mary, a friend of my neighbor Mike, seeing me sitting unoccupied, asked me to dance with her. Never feeling undaunted by my disability, I tried my best to accompany her, as far as my body would allow me to, all the time mesmerized by her pulsating presence. Soon after that I became lost in my endeavors to finish my Ph.D., losing all track of gracious Mary, who was once good enough to ask me for a dance, ignoring my disability, and treating me like a normal person. Her friendliness at different times often haunts me ever since, especially when somebody in no kind way reminds me of my disability by showing pity or distaste.

An ordinary merry Madonna showed me how to help and encourage the disabled, a streak of unadulterated kindness; I have not been able to see in noble people driven by a religious snobbishness to do good. Dance has been impossible for me for a long time, but my soul has never ceased to dance. I watch dance performances with great fascination, following each movement of the dancer, and in my mind's eye mimicking them even though I know well that my body can never replicate those beautiful movements.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that dancing helps in developing, not only a beautiful body, but also a healthy mind, and that it should be encouraged in the society. I have observed that in groups, which could be families, or nations for that matter, in which the urge to dance is stifled; individuals develop a sense of frustration, which they could have vented out through dancing. This frustration often leads to violent behavior. Perhaps it is the prudence of the intolerant societies which often leads them to violent schizophrenic behavior. Dancing is an innocent expression of human desires, expressed in a socially acceptable manner. Dance in some manner does exist in almost all societies, only the permissible limits of expression of human desires vary. In some intolerant societies, dance is limited to expression of martial feelings, and display of physical prowess, taking the example of Khattak dance, of the Pathans, who view any expression of love or physical desires, in a dance with distaste. I cannot help wondering if the violence in the N. W.F.P. is to some degree related to very human causes like the inability and frustration of the people there to give expression to their carnal desires in dance form.