( incomplete )

( A short-story by Arvind Passey. )

DANCING THE MACARENA.

Writing is so much like dancing the macarena. Everything is in a logical sequence. There
are steps for reaching wherever it is that you wish to reach. The heart too keeps time
with the beat and the poetry of one’s feet. Writing is so much like dancing the
macarena... ...even if the poetry falters and the heart misses a beat. It is so much like the
times when the colours of a sunset can do nothing to change the grey clouds shaping
within you. What I ask myself then is how sunsets are ever able to afford this friendship
with colours.
...even if where you wish to reach does not exist. “When you write,” Sigiriya had once
whispered, as if afraid that just one extra decibel might explode something
incomprehensible into existence, “you seem to have stopped existing here. I have often
thought of going through your pockets to know where it is that you are off to so often.”
‘Where do I go to ?’, even I had asked myself just as often and then every time
followed it up by another query : ‘Can I afford it really?’
...even if one step was linked to another. Is the story of the death of dinosaurs or the
patterns and processes in the history of life of any help to any of us ? A link may be an
evolution surely but just look at where I have reached.
With my pen held in my right hand I glance to my left and focus my eyes on Sigiriya who
is on the other side of the service window connecting our one room world (that we had
christened The Room) with the extra large kitchen, swaying, jumping, and waving her
hands, all in some sort of a sequence.
“What are you doing ?”
“Macarena.”
“What are you holding ?”
“Stirring spoon.”
“What are you cooking ?”
“Nothing.”
All linked questions, with answers that seem to be evolving. Even a pattern emerges and

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we get a feeling that we have reached somewhere, I thought. So I decided to continue
with a few more exploratory challenges.
“What is macarena ?” I persisted.
“A creation of Antonio and Rafael.”
There, I told myself, we seem to be reaching new highs today.
“What is that stirring spoon for ?”
“Its my baton with which I create.”
As creation seemed to be in focus, I pounced on it and used it. There was not an iota of
guilt anywhere, for as I see things everybody from gods to godfathers had already
succumbed to this temptation long before I even existed.
“What do you plan to create ?”
This time instead of replying, Sigiriya stilled herself, peeped from the service window to
show herself better and pretended to speak, though not a word was heard.
Why is it, I wondered, that surrounding every little jab into the mysteries of creation
there were patches of silence. I must have looked rather serious because Sigiriya gave a
comically worried smile and said, “I wish I could create something...but I can only cut,
marinate, flavour, microwave, decorate and,” she stopped to think for a moment before
replying with an elliptical swish of her hands, “and massacre your taste-buds.”
We smiled and as it always is with us, we were reluctant to allow just smiles to meet. The
only difference was that Sigiriya gave it a new name.
“Macarena ?” she quizzed.
“Macarena ?” I asked in a puzzled tone.
As an answer she slid through the service window into The Room, swayed up, removed
all her clothes and whispered, “Macarena ?”
I simply moved my smile launching pad nearer to hers.
That is how things are with us. We have a name for everything we have and all that we
do. Who cares how Darwin may have catagorized us. Though the facet getting clearer
is the transluscence where evolution and reach are presumed to be meeting. I have felt
many times that scientists and philosophers care for a solution simply because it rhymes
with evolution, thus waking the poet in them and they end up reaching nowhere. It
should really be a poet to wake the scientist or a philosopher within to discover the
route to wherever we wish to reach.