The Gharbar - Crossing the Rubicon

I had come in from the cold with Alf by my side. Inside, the hall was bedecked with saris, slung over beams that reached from one wall to another, surreptitiously tacked to the walls, wound in pleats and then gathered to drape over the shoulders of the assembled women. To the rear of the hall they were clearing away what was left of the food. Coke, water and orange juice were still being served. The chairs, and those still seated, had retreated, leaving the front half of the hall for the gharbar. I stood to the side and looked on, detached, from across a gap borne of that all too human cleaving of the conscious from the primal. The lights were bright and the music was live, and many of the wedding guests, mostly the younger ones, were lined up facing each other, approaching and then retreating, approaching and retreating with their arms tracing spirals amidst the tidal glitter of gold and colour and smiles crowning wave after wave. The dance was designed for life, bringing people together so that their connections were true, so that they might court with a smile, a movement, a look held fast, unbroken and untainted by self-consciousness. As I looked on, a tangible sense of what I was witnessing - the growing swell of collective exaltation - broke upon me, overwhelming my thoughts. I submitted. I was entranced. I wanted to cry. Tears were forming. Humanity, at its most edifying, in its most glorious guise. The music and the dancing gathered pace. A small group of women had broken away and were spinning as they circled, their feet stepping in time to the music's ever quickening tempo - Neesha's grace was that of a soul dancing. How now can I articulate what I felt ? I cannot. I can only indicate. My whole being was riven by the apprehension of the coming together, of the unity of individuals indivisible.

The music reached a crescendo and then stopped. The dancers broke away from their neat lines to gather up the dhandia - short wooden sticks, a pair to a person - and then returned to line up facing each other, brandishing the dhandia as they rehearsed the strokes. The band struck up again and the guests began to move to its rhythm, knocking their own dhandia together, and then with one step moving towards their partner, dhandia raised and then sweeping in an arc to clash with their partner's, crossing in the air, back and forth, once, twice, thrice. Each then retreated, again bringing their own dhandia together as they spun full circle while moving laterally in opposite directions, so as to emerge face to face with dancers to the left. And so it began again. The solitary clash of dhandia, then raised, each arm extended beyond itself to strike in kinship, wood on wood, self on self, me, you, we, all of us, the world revealed through the fog of thought, laughter, step back, a flirtatious twirl, a teasing thrust mocking swords smelted in the furnace of atman, again a clash, a spin, a missed move, a sideways glance and a sideways step, two streams flowing side by side, in opposite directions, bridged in the air by the coupling dhandia.

I watched, absorbed, and the mist cleared for a moment, affording me a glimpse of sky and earth reunited, the one born of the other, reflecting the other in its yearning to return, to bridge the divide that they may once again coincide in their entangled coupling. I jumped, with the sky on my back, and lay down to soak in the giving ground. I danced, laughed, spun and staggered; a novice again. When we faced each other it was Kunal who leapt. Reena struck hardest when our dhandia met. The swaggering of souls embroidering their steps. The heat and sweat, and the panting of breath. The music stopped. Shailan and I grabbed and held a dhandia together, leaning back and facing each other, holding tight to the dhandia. And then we began to circle around its flucrum. We spun, faster and faster, in staggering circles. Faster and faster, until Shailan was now the fixed point, and it was the backdrop of the world arround us that was spinning. We stopped, finally, giddy and out of breath. I leant against the wall for support. I was laughing. The world was a carousel that I was now riding. I had crossed the rubicon.