Dancing Shadows

If my mother had not gone to Dhaka University, maybe she would have let me dance. If my father had not gotten a PhD from Yale, he would have not expected me to do the same. If I was not on my school football team, my best friend would not have laughed at me when I told him how my feet - he pointed out my “muscular calves”- move in rhythm to the beat. If Dadi was not a conservative, religious lady, I may have had the courage to tell my favourite person in the world what I really wanted to do with my life.
But none of that happened because some things just don't work out, for better or for worse. And I accept that. Because maybe I was not born to be a dancer. My bold silhouette only made to scare off opposing teams, not made to make an audience fall in love with theatre lights. Dinner conversations conducted by my father,consisting only of talking about staying focused on the “real goal”, whatever that was; not talking about how I noticed my guru smiling at ajob well done at dance class - that is, if I had ever been allowed a dance teacher. My “brilliant IQ”, as Nana likes to point out whenever my mind drifts elsewhere, only meant to memorize names of bacteria and viruses, not to notice the little girl learning how to do her mudras.
I fell in love with the girl next door because she was a Kathak dancer. I sit at my study table, carefully placed away from the television in the corner so as to prevent me from getting distracted. But the television never could capture my attention. It is the girl on the other side of the window every evening when I sit down to study after another glorious football practice, or after the swim meet, and she comes back from her dance class, when she practices the day's lesson, that makes me forget about the next day's test. From afar I noticed the sweat trickling down her back, breasts heaving, her smile whole – the dance item was perfect. It wasn't necessarily her, no. It was how she expressed herself in her dance. The way she felt the tunes, the music taking her into her own world, and turning and turning in rhythm, with such charm, a single eyebrow raised, half a smirk. She was grace. Would I be grace too?
When Ammu asked, “Ayman, how will you ever become a doctor if you get so easily distracted?” my neighbor was about to break her own record of 25 turns. My eyes were fixated on the number of twirls and I told my mother to go away: biology could wait for now. She said no. She called me a pervert when she saw where I was looking. “But I wasn't looking at her, I was looking at her dance.” Would she ever understand? Of course not. To her question of “Why?” I replied with all the courage I could muster up, “Because I want to be a dancer too.” I ran to the bathroom, tears streaming, fists clenched, so that I would not have to hear her retort, “Are you out of your mind? Why are you talking gibberish? Take a nap. Baba, come out of the bathroom now. What will others say about us raising you like this? Oh, we've given you too much freedom and time for your thoughts to muster up. What will others think of you if you blatantly say such things without any regard?”
But I heard her anyway.
With my back to the cold, tiled bathroom wall, fists still clenched, I said under my breath, “Let them think what they want to think.” I could only imagine myself on stage, in front of an applauding audience, thoughts free of my family's expectations. If society wasn't the way it is, maybe I could have been a dancer too.