Suno to Diwana Dil

Well for those of you, who could not make sense of the title, it is nothing but a song by Kamal Khan (the one who sang "oh oh jaane janna" - salman khan dance number) to which we danced.
Now the we comprised of Vineesh, Akhilesh, Kartik, Adarsh, Vithal, Ashwin, Pranay. I am not very sure how exactly we had started the whole process...but it was Akki's brainwave, if my memory is right...!!!
This was almost to the end of ragging when our seniors said that we would have to perform something for the fresher's party..some dance or skit or something of the sorts...and we were unsure of what to do exactly..!!!and then akki came up with this idea of dancing!!!
now before i get into how we started off and how we prepared ourselves and got guys to dance...let me tell u something...all those guys who danced for this..were novices?? no not even that...they (including me) never ever thought in their entire life till then that one day they would be dancing on stage and that too for a fast number..nothing folk or slow!!!
anywy it was intially for the freshers party and so the above said guys were all forced to dance along with me n akki..the entire choreography was directed by both of us only..!!!Basically we tried to recollect all those dance steps we had seen over the ages in the movies and on stage in school and tried redoing that!!
First myself and akki used to try the step and we would perfect it....and once we had perfected it..we would teach the rest of the guys and make them practice over n over again...until they were comfortable doing the step and even in their sleep, if asked, they would be knowin the sequence of steps..!!!we started with one step at a time and after perfecting each step , the song was played and we danced in one shot till the point where we had perfected..!!
I dont know if dance pundits (the girls - remya, shivani, anila etc) would call our dancing as dance but atleast we were giving it a shot and that is what mattered..!!we were, frankly speaking, doing more of aerobics than dance over there...!!!Lots of steps where we jumped, did splits (almost), made few formations...(picked up from watching numeroius dances over 18 yrs of life) etc etc..!!we initially had started off practice in A-22. We used to move the beds to the sides and create space and dance...and slowly coz of the music (whch was vey upbeat) we attracted a small crowd from the neighbouring rooms and iut became a everyday routine for 7 of us to dance and practice for our fresher's party while the crowd just looked on...!!
anyway we had reached only half way thru the song when one of the guys, Shantanu Das, asked us to perform for the first year Rotract function. He was a member of the Rotract Club of RECT and they were conducting a function for the first years and this guy wanted us to dance for the same..!!initially we were very reluctant...as none of us have danced before and we were not sure if we could pull it off together..and moreover our Ragging schedules might clash and we would not be able to make it after all..!!so kept declining but he never gave up and kept pestering!! the 7 of us sat and thought abt it.and decided to give it a shot..!!we told him that it might be the case that one of us might not turn up for the dance due to some ragging calls by senior and if the dance went bad...never to point the fingers at us..!!after all this was said and dance..the practice sessions became even more vigorous...coz the Rotract function was just a week away and we still had another stanza to put the dance steps for and then practice from beginning to end for a few days..!!we shifted our dance room from A-22 to the bathroom verandha...where there was just sufficient space for the 7 of us to dance together..!!!
the main problem we were facing was that in between one of us without fail ended up forgetting the steps...and thus it would look bad on stage..slowly our confidence level was going down but then we held together. In between Adarsh even gave up sayin, it was beyond his capacity..but somehow convinced him and all others and gave them the incentive that this might be the chance to break the ice with the girl folks.
Which guy would not like to be famous and attract girls?? in my opinion None..!!and that indeed was the driving force...it worked like a charm!!myself and akki used to dance less for practice sessions and conc more on coordination and perfecting everybody...!!!
we jst did 2 -3 rounds wherein all of us danced together!!!
anyway the finaly D-day arrived..!!!We wore our cargoes and tight t-shirts, and shoes for the first time..(remember it was ragging time and we were not allowed all this little happiness' of life) and to avoid being called for raggin at the same time...what we did is..we invited all our second year seniors (both mallu n NRI's) for the program and it helped to some extent that few of the NRI n Mallu seniors(3rd yrs n Final yrs) were members of the Rotract club and they warned us not to skip the dance and go for ragging..else we would be done for..!!that was the last straw!!there was nothing that could stop us from dancing now...and after days of practice and perfecting the steps...finally the D-day had arrived...!!morning we bunked couple of classes to practice on what was going to be our final stage for the evening!!We were committing mistakes now...getting tensed..our first dance performance and thoughts of getting battered by tomatoes and rotten eggs did pass thru our minds!!!
anyway like they say in mallu "randum kalpichu njangal irangi" meaning leaving our faith in the ONE above we got onto the stage when we were beckoned upon by Das!!and the music started and we started dancing full fledged...emotions on our face..atleast we thought so...and in between mine n akki's eyes were darting behind to check if all was in sync!!and amazingly everythin seemed fine..!!we were dancing our hearts out and when one of the steps came where in myself and akki bent backwards...did a step and then fell to the ground and jumped back up...the crowd was on its feet...everyone were shouting, dancing clapping...in APPRECIATION and finally the song came to an end...we bowed and we had a really loud ,strong and all superlatives possible round of applause...!!that was one of the best moments in my life...!!!
This had put us the NRI's of 1999 batch in the lime light...everyone knew us..and the following days we spent baskin in glory and then for the freshers party (every state) the first years (our batch mates) came to us..to learn the steps and all of them performed the same for their freshie and it became so famous that we were ordered by our seniors(mallu) not to p[erformthat dance for the freshie...!!every tom, dick and harry were performin that for the freshies now and we had established our stand as NRI's...the STUDs..and later on known as the DUDES in final yr...!!!
And this incident was just the beginning of my talent in dancing...;-)