July 4, 2018
"Who's dancing and why are they tapping those toes? "
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'Takita taka dhimi, takita taka dhimi' a gentle yet firm beat and then a fainter echo, 'chanana, chan chan, chanana chan chan'
A slow step that would gradually grow to a crescendo, 'tom tom tatom tam takita takajam takanam tari...' and the ghungroo would resound in a ecstatic fury, an expression of rhythm and fluid motion that was a dancer's personification of art. It would also signal the end of the practice of my upstairs neighbour.
I needed no alarm to wake me up; the sound of her feet, with the ghungroo singing along the beat was enough. I would lay in bed, trying to follow the rhythm, wondering what expressions and hand gestures accompanied those steps. I did not even know what dance form she practiced (I knew it was a woman, trust the house maids to get that correct, though my housemaid could not glean enough to identify what dance form it was).
The first time I heard the dancing feet, I had been irritated, for it was something different from my well established routine of waking up to the alarm ring; but subsequently, I started looking forward to it. And soon I could identify when it was a new routine or a repeated practice to achieve perfection. I prided myself that I could judge how well she could dance, for I learnt to time her taal and let my imagination take over. A fast step , takita takita takita taka dhimi, she was a deer in flight; tom ta ka, tom ta ka, a maiden pretending to walk away from her lover; my imagination knew no bounds.
It was a beautiful way to wake up.
And just as suddenly, one day I woke to silence, no ghungroo bells, no tapping of feet. At the end of the week, by which I had run though a multitude of theories as to what could have happened to my dancer, my maid enlightened me, the neighbour had not been enamoured by the dancing feet and unable to put with the daily squabbles, my dancer had moved out.
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Word count - 347 words written out in ten minutes, still failed to post before the date changed.
YOU ARE READING
365 Days- Book I
RandomThis is my collection of writings for the three hundred and sixty five day writing challenge - where one has to write something daily, every day, for one whole year, based on the prompts provided - as part of an exercise to improve creative writing...
