For a long time now, and God, most of my blogs seem to begin this way nowadays...For a long time now, I have been trying to ‘find’ myself. A little bit of background info here...when I was a little girl, well, not so little girl, but some time back..I used to love to dance. And I was very good at it. Competitions and that sort of stuff. And I even learnt the classical...for some reason. Bharat Natyam. But, me being me, I quit because I couldn't find the heart to actually complete something that had somebody else’s rules. That was so...structured.

And now...I am not exactly regretting it. But yes, once I stopped dancing...I stopped dancing completely. The wild thrashing we all do in pubs in a semi-drunk state cannot be considered dancing in any shape or form. And I must say here, that I am pretty good at the gyrations too but, I miss dancing. I miss the structure, the learning of new steps. That feeling of tiredness you get only after you’ve danced your heart out. That feeling of oneness you have with the music and the heart of you. That amazement you get only when you have danced well.

I miss that.

And every time I promise myself that I will do something about it...about getting my butt off and not just thinking about dancing again, it’s because of a movie. Any good dancing movie makes me want to dance myself. I can count, on one hand the number of good movies they have made on dancing. And one of them, is one I saw today. A highly stylized, highly dramatic, impressively colourful film by Baz Luhrman called Strictly Ballroom. It is the first film in the Red Curtain Trilogy, which he continued with Romeo and Juliet and later on, the hugely acclaimed Moulin Rouge.

The reason why I really like this movie is not because it focuses on dance, ballroom dancing to be more specific, because scores of other movies do too. But because the style and passion that is conveyed in each frame, the detail that has gone into the burlesque style of framing the scenes, the heightened emotion that is explored through the dance. And the utter normalcy that the lead pair (Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice) lend to each non-dancing scene makes it so watchable. Yes, the movie is about dance and yes dance is about love...but the reason why I connected so much to Baz’s Red Curtain style is because it’s so loud and boisterous and even the quiet contains moments of vivacity in it. Theatre is something that has never been portrayed well in cinema, but I think Mr. Luhrman knows how to do it better than most.

And of course, watching Strictly Ballroom makes me realize I need to dance again. I need to learn the steps and feel that delicious tiredness and sweat that comes from doing the same thing over and over again. I need to feel the music in the heart of me again. And I need to feel love again.

For a long time now, (yes, I end that way too), my wanderlust has been infecting everything I do. The need to learn and be someone new has taken ahold of me, and yes, I won’t be giving it up. It makes me a better writer everyday and that matters more than anything to me. But I also remembered just how much the old me had fun dancing. How much she enjoyed expressing herself through another art form. And I know...I know, the fear I have of deviating away from the writing lest it goes away is something I have to give up.

Someone told me writing is in my veins, and yet everyday I fear if I will lose it. Because you lose the things you love the most one way or the other. I know now, its stupid of me to fear that. Because what is in my veins is a part of me as the DNA molecules that make me are. You can lose yourself, but you cant lose your DNA right? Atleast that’s what my scientist best friend tells me. That you can never really lose yourself.

I guess, what I am trying to say is, if losing myself is not an option then finding myself is a dumb one too. So, maybe what I should concentrate my wanderlust and my writing is to actually become a better me. A mix of the old and new me. A Me that enjoys dancing and singing and writing. And is in love with love and everything that entails.

I wonder, does that even make sense. And then I wonder again, does it matter?