For me only a few things hold true in this world…out of which two are friends and dance, both of which came together on Shaheed Rajguru’s ‘Cultural Day’ or I can say OUR cultural day on 30th September 2011. When the notices were put up, I was beyond happy!!! It was a dream come true that I would get to dance here too!! For the background information my good old school would happily volunteer that whenever there was music and a piece of ground, I would be found dancing. So I was naturally thrilled and to my astonishment and delight even my ‘gang’ was!! 
Eight of us signed up for this, each of us an enthusiast. We didn’t have the prize in our eyes just the opportunity to be able to get in front of an audience and ‘just dance’. I was in charge of the music and made a compilation of our favourites, 'Desi Girl’, ‘Chammak Challo’ and ‘Bounce’. The best part were the practices that followed. I became the choreographer and started dreaming of cool steps at night. Oh the sweat, the sweat!! Slowly but steadily we developed a style and a look. MJ’s look. The dances were hip and not easy at all but I’m a taskmaster when I come down to it and so, all of the group could pick it up. With the dance came the chance of bunking classes!! We would never hesitate to get up from our seats and start walking and when the teacher would stare, we all would go ‘Sir, hum jeet gaye to aapke department ka hi to naam hoga na’. After a lot of practice and high pitched drama we found ourselves on 29th with tempers running super high. The group was cranky and exhausted and also we had developed a hope of victory somewhere down the line. But trouble was still on its way… the next day a girl was missing a hat, a part of the props. It was three hours of running around and getting worked up and me redesigning the sequence around one missing hat. At the very end a batch mate (not from the dance) went to Laxmi Nagar and got us one hat. We were really inspired and decided of dedicating our dance to her. The day was fantastic after that!! A rock band performance… stand up acts… a self written ‘qawwali’… and then the group dance competition. ‘MJ’s Angels’ as the first group, us, ‘dhak dhak, dhak dhak’, our hearts were beating in a frenzy, but I knew that if we remain anxious then as sure as hell we will sink. I prayed, and suddenly there was music and the compere announced that there would be some Rajguru group dance first!! And for half an hour all of us ‘jhoomo-fied’ on various dance numbers however classy or rustic and I could see my group was relaxing… then when the time was near I gave a very emotional sa speech (very Shahrukh Khan like from Chak De India!) and my group beamed at me. The dance.. was FANTASTIC!!! I’ve never been this proud of my gang ever before, each of them was a rockstar!! I think we did well also because of the dedication, we were so much more attached to the performance now! We came down and gave a big group hug and with big smiles on our faces and inflated hopes in our hearts went back to our seats where our batch mates could cheer on us.
After us the other groups went on stage and this is where our mouth brain co-ordination ruptured. The words in the bracket will be what I was thinking. There costumes are good no? (Helloooo!! What are you wearing??), the co-ordination is just fine (far from it) etc etc... Then came a genuinely awesome group and our hopes of winning were shattered, but we were still happy because we were satisfied with our performance, then came another group and the conflict started. Good sequence girls!! (LOL) But the brain and the mouth rejoined when the results were announced and… we were the last group out of four. WHAT THE HELL!! (PARTIALITYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!). We were not sad that we had lost but sad because the judges made their dear students win even when they did not deserve it at all and the truly deserving ones came second. We were heartbroken for some time but then we were just fine when the DJ pumped it up. Like every day of your life has got a lesson for you, we learnt that even if you work real hard it’s not guaranteed that you will win the competition, but you definitely win something for the longer run… confidence in yourself, trust in your peers and a memorable experience which taught you group work, co-ordination and that you got to take it in your stride even if you fall. So even if you lose, even if you come last and all you hopes are shattered in a cruel way, you need to cheer up and look at the brighter side of it. Later on, my friends pointed out that we WERE winners in their eyes and that is what matters, doesn’t it? So, after all we did win the competition.
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KNOW YOUR FRIEND FROM DU
Tulika Banerjee is a student of Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences for Women. She is very passionate about everything she does... she loves to write, sing, dance, paint, speak so on and so forth!! Her friends love her because she loves them A LOT! She generally takes charge of stuff and sees that they are done properly. She is affectionate, strong and a voracious reader. Life is fun for her and exploring it is her job. She hopes that she can grow up well and achieve all her goals.
