Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Staged Inspiration

She walked to the podium with a determined look. She was to perform Bharatanatyam to a packed auditorium. The Tamilatti started dancing to a Kannada song, "Krishna nee begane baro". He smirked at the horrible diction of the Kannada lyrics. Must be a Tamilatti, he thought. As the dance progressed he observed  that there was no synchronization between the song and the dance moves. Though it was a silly song, he felt, at least, it was from a time when both sexes wore similar dresses and adorned themselves with similar jewellery. In present era, only females could dance to this song written in praise of a male god.Or, maybe patriarchy hadn't entered into this art. His train of thoughts were interrupted when the song ended. Soon a Telugu song started playing and the danseuse continued her performance.

He looked around. Some people were nodding and thought smugly that many were watching with dazed attention. All of a sudden, the music stopped. It appeared as if there was a power outage. People started murmuring. The dancer made a hand gesture for people to be seated and resumed her dancing without the music. Now some people started clapping in appreciation. She continued and now started dancing by kneeling and bending close to the ground. He couldn't watch anything as the first two rows were on their feet. This strange spectacle continued for another five minutes. There was a huge applause once the show was over. Then he heard one guy exclaiming,"Wow! I didn't know that this was preplanned. There was no actual power cut. A brilliant lesson on keeping your cool under adverse conditions. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!".

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Sin, Damnation and the Pope

There were pillars and curtains and possibly we were inside a room. The room was resplendent in reddish yellow as if twilight sky was flowing inside. There were men and women. I was one of them. I suppose there were three women.

We crossed the rooms and entered a hall. There were tables and chairs. We struck up a conversation. The desire was growing. She whispered something that I wanted to hear. I turned to her and saw her completely uncovered. I lifted her in my arms. She clasped me around my neck with her legs around my hips. I gripped her with my right hand and covered her exposed shame with my left hand palm and ran out of the hall. My finger felt something.

I ran and crossed few rooms on my right and came across a gate. The gate opened to a road. I crossed the road and entered a room. That was not our room. I remembered that was the third room and I should be moving to the second. So I moved still carrying her and when I was inside the room, dropped her on to the bed. When I moved I saw other two women entering the room. They said they wanted to join.

It  was a circular arena with reddish soil. I was watching it as though sitting in a Colosseum. A priest was running with a parchment paper half his length. He was shouting "The Leviticus, The Leviticus". The pope was after him saying 'not that scripture, not that scripture'. He was panting and so was I. Now nothing was coming out of his month but he was feeling a strong weight on his chest making it difficult for him to breathe. I was feeling the same. I thought I should calm down and hold my breath for some time. However, even after few moments I wasn't able to breathe. I tried to breathe forcefully and woke up violently and then started breathing normally.