Surreal Distractions

You know you’re in for a night of total surrealism when you attend a Bollywood dance party with three elderly Malaysian-Chinese women.

First off, there was going to be only one oldie – N, a member of my dance group. The plan was to meet up at Jo Jo’s for a couple of drinks, meet up with some other classmates (more my type) and head to the nightspot.

When I got to Jo Jo’s and met N, though, I realised she’d brought people along – S, another classmate ( whom I never speak to ) and her friend, who really looked like her mother. We’ll call her M ( since I love capital letters ).

Now, the age range of N, S and M seems roughly between – oh, I don’t know – 45-236. Nothing wrong with that, and they seemed a sweet gaggle of girlfriends in their own world. And all very matronly Malaysians, might I add, who seemed quite tight-lipped and defensive at Jo Jo’s, clutching their handbags and perusing the drinks menu for non-alcoholic mocktails. In the meantime my two dancing buddies called and cancelled on me, and our dance instructor said she’d meet us at the club itself. My party non-karma was working itself up – I can smell a bad damp squib night out from a mile away by now.

After several hems and haws over possible fruit juice combinations, they ( read S, who seemed the most dominant makcik type ) decided to leave and head to the club.

Now, Cesar’s, I’ve been warned, is quite the current sleaze-spot in the city, with hired tabletop dancers etc. I made a fair call that the Bollywood dance party would have a non-establishment host getting the venue for the night, and initially it seemed I was right. However there were scantily clad models at the entrance gate, all bindis and bangles and blonde white smiles, which threw the Makcik Group a bit. S derisively went “Oh, is this going to be in a nightclub?” with three bouncers standing three feet away. I tried my hardest to pretend to both not having seen them and not having heard her. So after some more hem and hawing over whether to enter or not ( and there is always such a herd mentality about all this ), we paid extravagantly to enter – an empty nightclub.

I so needed a stiff drink. So I got one.

The Makcik Group Herd Mentality continued. I picked a nice comfy spot at the back, with sofas. No, we all had to move to uncomfortable bar stools right up front near a makeshift stage because “the poster said there’d be performances”. And we sat, and waited for our instructor. And waited. And waited. And drank. And waited. And called. And waited. And messaged. And waited. And drank ( you get the idea ).

In the meantime, the music sporadically alternated from Hindi remixes to hiphop, with sparse results on the dance floor. A threesome of two lovely Aussie ladies and a lanky geeky guy stayed on for a quite a long time, the geek’s awful moves providing mild entertainment. A middle-aged couple dressed as if to attend a flashy Broadway play came in, picked a table and never left it the whole night, incongruously looking on. The man tried to catch my eye, which magnificently failed since I was way into my Double Black by then. A Korean couple walked onto the floor, the guy in T-shirt and white tennis shoes, and just never left the floor the rest of the night. As the music thumped louder, they bobbed slower, till they were intensely entwined while live dhols rented the air around them. Ah, true weird love.

An hour and a half after we’d trooped in, the Indian crowd started to fill up, along with not a few Eminem wannabes. Yet my cronies (pun unintended) would not hear of hitting a near empty dance floor. “Let it all fill up” was their motto. Trouble was every other Indian at the damn place seemed to be thinking the same thing. That however did not stop S from obviously pointing out Indians as they walked in, like you would point at pandas in a zoo. And especially pointing out smartly dressed ones, speculating they may be the promised performers. And also pointing at the DJ booth every time they changed over from the Aussie DJ to the Indian one, that is literally every two songs. I dutifully swivelled my head in every pointed direction, hopelessly unclear as to the reaction expected. Was I supposed to be hopeful that ‘things will start soon’, was I supposed to nod sagely and be suitably impressed at her observation skills, or was I supposed to take charge and march forward to crossly ask for the value of the entrance fee, as they seemed to constantly mutter but never seem to act on?

In the meantime, some of the willowy female bartenders had taken up their ‘coyote ugly’ spot on the bartop, swaying and gyrating to the music. There was the one token Indian chick, while the rest were suitably bindied and peroxided for Indian male viewing pleasure (and not a few of the females).

Soon the whole mix-up hit me, and suddenly I was walking in water taking in this unearthly amalgamation – tabletop dancers gyrating to ‘Jaa re jaa o harjai’, Koreans attempting a cross of hiphop and their video game choreography, watched by at least a hundred bemused black-clad Indians secretly salivating too much at the dancers and too shy to join the Koreans.

Then an elongated session of hiphop started, wherein I made a pact with N that we hit the floor the next time a Bollywood song started. But when it did ( and such a good one too, Aaja Nachle of Monsoon Wedding ) N chickened out saying there was nobody on the floor, and I promptly disowned her.

Luckily the floor filled up soon, and a ditty later S, the matriarch of the group of all people, simply said “Come lets dance” and away we went. I was surprised it’d been her with the guts, but wasn’t about to complain.

And man, did S come alive on the floor! What she lacked in technique, she more than made up in enthusiasm. She repeated the steps in our class, and had a strange smile that was a mix of joy and intense concentration. In a while N joined us, and the trio was made. After a while I started to feel quite maternal towards both of them, two middle-aged Malay/Chinese ladies innocently dancing away stone sober in a melee of black drunken sleaze. S pretty much transformed, she was unstoppable, and couldn’t care less for the looks we were being given. At one point I was quite overcome with ‘awww’ness for her ( that might be the vodka though ) that I went in to do the ‘getting rid of evil eye’ gesture to her – only to be promptly swatted away like a minor distraction before she focused back to the step with a determination that’d put Hercules to shame.

So now that I was convinced at least these women would be okay for the night, I moved on to concentrate on myself, but that, is another story.

Could’ve danced more though.