When I Last Danced to Tango : The Young India

Kartikey Sehgal

[Fiction]

I dance to Tango. Only, I don’t know what it is. I had seen it once, in some movie. They raise their skirts, maybe they do. But that’s not the reason I liked Tango. The song had a bitter-sweet quality; like you celebrate the birth of a baby while reminiscing about your lover’s death. While the heart sings for the baby, the mind wishes the olden moments of love.

The dance watchers—who don’t dance—clap for the dancers. Then they are inadvertently drawn into the dance. They don’t actually dance; move their feet. But dance is participation. I imagine, while a red hot—meaning very pretty—Spanish girl dances, her Spanish lover, with or without that beard stares into her. The lady then dances to tease him, to show him that she doesn’t really care for his staring at her. The man, then, is also a dancer. He is partaking the Tango flavour of the lady.

Now an old man, who was just moving his legs, coughs, and sits on a chair. A young dancing girl pats his back and presents to him a glass of water. This is not breaking the dance. It is maybe taking a break from dance.

Life is a dance, then. In our sorrows and miseries, we don’t break away from her, we take a break from her. Then we see through a window, see the dancing children and ladies, and remember to dance again. Tango or not.

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The Young India

When I Last Danced to Tango

on June 30, 2009

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