I was running late. It was the first day of my Zumba Dance workout session, an advertisement which I had chanced upon the previous week in the newspaper. It had come as a welcome relief for me as I had some kilos of my post pregnancy weight to lose.
Jumping out of the auto, and taking the stairs two at a time like an overenthusiastic kindergarten kid, I barged in. The class was already in progress. It was an air-conditioned hall with a mirror for a wall. All the dancers danced facing the wall. The instructor waved to me to join in. Discarding my handbag on the floor, I took my place in the second row and tried to match her steps earning an encouraging look from her in the mirror.
All that dancing I had done in school came into play and soon I had picked up the beat and was easily imitating her tantalizing moves. A furtive glance revealed five women all in various degrees of corpulence clad in tights, T-shirts and canvas shoes as was instructed to us. The two on the extreme right looked fit and young, maybe college students, joining a hip dance class to be a part of the ‘happening crowd’. The rest seemed to be housewives like me, there to regain their own confidence, or the love of their husbands, whichever of the two, or both had diminished.
There was one lady who suddenly caught my eye. Wearing black tights and a flowered red and black top, she seemed to be covering the entire left panel of the mirror. She, with her beginner’s overzealousness and ample frame threatened to crack the wooden floors. Suppressing a chortle that threatened to escape, I observed her antics .Whilst we all emulated the instructors sexy expressions and lithe movements, this woman in the mirror seemed to be dancing a mishmash of Bharatnatyam and Red Indian war dance. Each matka and jhatka sent tremors across her beefy midriff and bosom causing the rolls of flesh to jiggle and resettle urgently as if to beat each other to find a more comfortable space in her overcrowded frame.
After the first twenty minutes, we were all a little out of breath, but were immensely enjoying ourselves. The choreography was amazing, a mix of hip hop and salsa.As Kalpana, our instructor moved seductively to the beats of ‘Kaun hai Ajnabi ‘ from the latest Abhishek Bachan thriller ‘Game’, we all struggled to maintain posture, timing and expression.Feeling the fast beats of the music get the better of me, I decided to check out our lady in the mirror.There she was, still upto her hilarious tricks, twisting and turning and grinning foolishly from ear to ear in an effort to copy the cool smile on Kalpana’s face.But she had an air of determination, a belief that she could beat the odds. She seemed to know that she was going to win ultimately. She knew the rolls of fat would jiggle less and less and finally disappear. Unmindful of the beads of sweat glistening on her brow, she toiled away , a warrior in her own rights.Finally , Kalpana signalled that time was up and we gladly packed up to rush back to our real lives after the brief romance with our reflections.
Thinking of her,after I got back home in evening, I was proud of the woman in the mirror. I was going to make her disappear slowly, and at the end of three months, there would a slim, pretty, confidant reflection of me who would replace her in the left panel of the mirror.After a shower as I put away my black tights and flowered red and black top I thought,' Just you wait, you woman in the mirror, a metamorphosis is due'!
