Salsaholics Anonymous !!

I've discovered that Salsa, Merengue, Jive, Samba and other latin american dances are a fantastic means for individuals to express themselves. Salsa, to the casual observer, appears to be an extremely intimate dance form, where the lady and the man whirl around the dance floor in extremely complicated manouvres.

A person with insight however, will notice the fantastic emotional dialogue that is actually being carried out by the couple. The entire dance, is an intense conversation between the participants, and their proximity allows them to express their emotions, what they are feeling, angry, happy, sad, flirtatious, et all.... in an extremely expressive and clear manner.

I got into salsa to impress my erstwhile girlfriend, for whom I had decided to give up all my aspirations, exactly one year ago today! She was the daughter of a business tycoon, rich beyond belief, even a couple of years older than myself, but most of all, a fabulous salsa dancer. The first time I met her, was at a party in delhi where her salsa group had decided to land up on a saturday night. One look at her dancing, and I was hooked.

Moving back to bangalore, I decided to surprise her by enrolling for latin dance classes @ The Dance Studio. Its extremely hard work mind you, but tremendous fun. Our instructor pushed us to our physical limits and made decent dancers out of us. Those who were committed to perfection, the instructor pushed even harder, correcting every nuance of our movements and expressions. But 8 months of ardurous practise, I got my first compliment from the intructor. You cannot imagine the joy!!

Little doubt, that I would go to every salsa / latin dance party that was held in Bangalore and even in Mumbai. Nothing gives a person person more pleasure than when his ego is massaged. And you can bet your ego gets rubbed the right way, when every girl at a party wants to dance with you. Especially when they dont even know you, and have only seen you dance.

Well, business school was something I had aspired for for a very long time. And everyone of us succumbs to the lure of money. Today, I have finished my first 5 days of business school (SIMS in Pune) and with the way the schedule has been so far, it seems rather unlikely that my salsa will go much further for the next couple of years.

I have done this very same thing, often in the past. Where I take up something, get to a competent level, then due to some circumstance or the other, give it up or rather dont pursue it (will talk about those in a later post). This time however, I have decided to go the whole hog. I shall take classes for anyone interested (in my college or in pune) in Salsa, Merengue and Jive and stay in touch with this talent I have acquired (they say I have a little talent). Maybe even my instructor from Bangalore down to take special weekend workshops, once I have got my students to a reasonable grade.

Wish me luck guys.

Cheers,

Rahul.

P.S: That girlfriend left me a few months back, but the skill remained with me. I've made so many friends while learning this skill, that I thank her for it ;-)