The Dance-Halls of Old

Let me say it out loud, right at the start of this piece—the Indian Railways were the life-blood and the life-line of the Anglo-Indian community. This remained true up to at least the mid-1970s, when the dismantling of the steam-engine juggernaut was finally completed. In any case, many Anglo-Indian parents, at about that time, realized that the Railways were no longer “Home”. To “stay” meant exploring new avenues, especially education, as well as the trade-certification programs that guaranteed jobs in the private sector and which also saw the rise of entrepreneurship. The railway-man of old succeeded in finding gainful employment overseas, while the enterprising tradesman—the fitter, the mechanic, the electrician, the plumber, and so many others, found for themselves brave new worlds of opportunities galore in the other English-speaking countries of the world. Good on all of them, for they most often forged a new way of life for themselves in faraway climes, not really giving in to reverie and nostalgia, but certainly carrying some of their cultural heritage with them. Tradition and culture are deep- rooted, ingrained attributes and, I am afraid, no one can get rid of such excess baggage completely.

Which brings me back to my topic for today. Growing up in the late 1950s and the 1960s very often meant having a decent home in one of the railway colonies found everywhere the “lines” traversed. It also meant having your peer group in close proximity and that meant the sharing of ideas and dreams and hopes and, in some instances, affection and love. I was never a railway-man myself, but I always had the greatest respect and even awe for those magnificent machines that ruled the tracks. I wrote it somewhere, some time ago, that the Anglo-Indian who does not stop to watch a train hurtling towards its destination, is not really an Anglo-Indian at all. Those days have passed, sadly, but the playing fields of our youth still remain, not as they were in their heyday, but still hanging on, a stark reminder of the truth that all things must pass.

Last week I mentioned the dance-halls of the past. Because of our love for dancing, the Anglo-Indian community cherished the railway Institutes of old. Most often debarred from the hoity-toity burra-sahib clubs of the Gora class, the community, in the Madras of yesteryear, carved out and maintained the Institutes in the city and the railway towns that dotted the landscape of the State. I remember the Institutes at Trichy and Madurai well, but there were similar places in Podanur, in Erode, in Arkonam, in Villupuram, not forgetting the sprawling one in Perambur. Madras had its own hot-spots, at Hawk-field (I am not entirely sure I have the right name here), near Perambur, Abbotsbury on Mount Road, the Hotel in Egmore which hosted more than one event every year, and the smaller community pockets of Pallavaram, Mount, Royapuram and Royapettah. It was almost always a very select crowd of people, all eager to have a good time and take the proceedings right up to dawn—at least—so that the “faithful” could trudge off to hear the First Mass.

The situation today is quite different. So called “Dances” commence at six in the evening and continue till about eleven at night, but even these five hours are broken up for dinner “on the house”, but which has already been paid for. In the old days, if there were any brawls or scuffles, the conflicts or gang-wars would be taken outside, but the scenario has changed utterly today. Only late last year there was a serious skirmish within the dance-hall premises and the combatants were women—imagine that!!!

It is no wonder, therefore, that ornery folks like me steer clear of dances and dance-halls. Like good old Tom, I now prefer dances with wolves. Can you blame me?

But what about “release” that I wrote about earlier? Even literature on the community, from the Memsahib or the know-all Burra-sahib, or even our own fellow-Indian writers, almost always mention the dance-halls and the dancers; the dancers especially, as they seemed (to the all-seeing, all-knowing eye of these “fantastic” writers) to be frenzied—nay, frantic, or even frenetic—as they traipsed around the floor, totally engrossed in the ritual, as if their lives depended on it. This was the all-important “release”, momentary and fleeting, but enough to give the actual dancers an ethereal, transcendental passion, caught up as they were, in the moment (of their lives!).

So, the “highs” of our lives were not brought on by pulling or by snorting or by spirits (of the spurious kind), but by simple joie de vivre. Can you blame us for that?