Today started off particularly frustrating! My dear friend Venman decided to bombard my paraplegic self with several YouTube links to these excerpts from 'So You Think You Can Dance'. Now I know he meant nothing of it, we share YouTube links in daily conversation (happening, aren't we?). But to watch those men and women glide across the floor and gyrate and shimmy and shake and all that... was torture!

Don't get me wrong, I love to watch dances. And I love to dance! If it weren't for the risk of being carted off by the men in white coats, I'd choose to dance down the streets rather than walk. Rather, that's precisely why it was torture.

This back injury [see previous post] has kept me from dancing for over a month and a half now. And as I watched the contestants strut their stuff, taunting me with their swishy skirts and anglicized jhatkas and matkas, I couldn't take it anymore! I wanted to dance. I needed to dance!

And so I raised myself out of the comfy haven that is my sofa, swapped my bunny slippers (cut it out with the snickering) for my glittery ballerina shoes, and turned up the music. Loud!

I started by learning to moonwalk (courtesy tutorial videos on YouTube. Hooray, YouTube!). Turns out I'm a fast learner. Within about 20min I was moonwalking about the house to fetch my juice, doing little moonwalk circles, the works!

But there's really only so much one can moonwalk to satiate your inner Ginger Rogers/Rakhi Sawant/Catherine Zeta-Jones/Shakira/whomever you choose to dance like. So off went the ballerinas, on came the steel-heeled stilettos (and my back brace). The song was switched to 'Jazz Machine', and I just let go. And how!

I shimmied, I shook, I twirled, I kicked, I gyrated... like I hadn't done in far too long. I'm not going to compare myself to the SYTYCD contestants, I'm not anywhere near that good. But who cares? I was having the time of my life!

The tracks kept changing. Hispanic, Arabic, Bollywood, disco, jazz, Bhangra... It was psychotically brilliant!

By the time I was done, my pulse was racing, I had broken into a sweat, and I was short of breath. It was the most amazingly orgasmic feeling in the world!

And yes, I needed to pop a painkiller right away and then lie down. But it was worth it! Thanks VenMan! ;)

Today I celebrate(?) a month-and-a-half of being incapacitated. Long story short: autorickshaws and Mumbai's potholes in the monsoons; together, they're a surefire recipe for an injured back.

The worst part about an injury of this sort, is that it gives you a lot of "alone" time. You're pretty much confined to your bed, barely permitted to even move about the house to fix your meals, you can't step out to meet friends... The first few days would've almost been a welcome relief, if it weren't for the pain. After all, people in the metropolis long for such sabbaticals from work and other activities. 'Me' time is something we all want and need, but rarely ever find.

But that's the catch. It's alright for a few days. Much longer than that, and you start to feel the itch. Metropolitan people aren't used to sitting still for long, or not meeting people. To deprive them of their hectic schedules is akin to torture!

First, the unbearable boredom. Where you park yourself on the couch and watch every soap opera, movie, talk show, commercial... even the reruns! Trust me, there's really only so many times you can watch The Holiday, regardless of Jude Law (or Cameron Diaz, depending on which side of the fence you are). I began to speak with a British accent after the 15th time. To make matters worse, since there was nobody else around, I was speaking to myself in a British accent!

Then it starts sliding. Nobody's available to talk on the phone, you run out of food the one night you really don't want pizza...

I can't go on, this is just too ugly. And my upper lip's getting all stiff again.

Bollocks!