Sanlekh

I:Chanak

" Chanak, Chanak"
The sound of ghungroo's reverberated in the backstage of 'Ravindra Bharati', mingling with the chatter of the excited yet nervous performers. The performers were young, full of life and Urvi sat in the corner, her hazel eyes on them, reminiscing the old moments that she had spent as a teenager along with her best friends in backstages just like this one.

The performers walked towards the stage, the bells on the ghungroo jingling and the music signifying the start of the performance.

Every jingle of the bell was a memoir of the broken chains, that she had been bound in the name of honour and a life that she left behind.
♣
Urvi

I picked up the ghungroo from the plate beside me and touched it to my forehead in reverence, muttering a small prayer to the god of dance; Nataraj, hoping that my performance would go smoothly.

Today, I Urvi Chauhan was going to perform in one of the most famous auditorium's in Hyderabad, in front of living legends of Bharatnatyam themselves and I was giddy with happiness.
It's not every day you get such an opportunity.

As a kid, as a teenager, as a woman, I had lived for dancing. When my best friend was dating her first boyfriend, I went and told my mother that I was in a relationship.
She had almost got a heart attack until I told her bursting into laughter, that I was in a relationship with dance!
We still laugh about it sometimes. How I wish she was here to watch her daughter prance across the stage.

And that brings me to my second love, Vedant Shekhawat. We got married in a typical Indian arranged marriage when I was 24 and he was 26.
Vedant isn't the classic billionaire with the best looks, rather he is an average looking software engineer working at an MNC. The most stunning feature of his face is his honey coloured eyes that always held so much warmth and the power to make me feel like a lovesick teenager. He was always very understanding and considerate of my feelings but I don't know what changed that day.

My parents, grandparents, aunts all had told me that marriage is all about compromise but what they didn't understand was that it took two stones to light a fire and compromise were required by both the individuals in a marriage.
I had to start compromising even before I was engaged to Vedant and I wish I had understood what I was getting into that very day.

I think it was on our second date- after our marriage had been fixed when Vedant had very hesitantly asked me to quit dancing because the elders in his family felt that it was unacceptable for their daughter-in-law to be dancing in front of strangers.
I was aghast for I had very clearly mentioned that I was not quitting Bharatnatyam under any circumstance. When I reached home and told my parents that I didn't want to get married to Vedant hoping for their support, they on the other hand coaxed me into quitting dance because this proposal was way too nice to let go because of something as trivial as dance.
From that day to after the wedding I hardly spoke to anyone more than necessary and did all that was told like an "ideal daughter" because that was what had become my identity now.

I always looked at my ghungroo's lying in the corner of my cupboard, which I had very stubbornly bought with me despite everyone's refusal to my new home. I went on with my life for 5 years, with a prick in my heart about leaving something so precious behind.