TAMASHA

Prithi was excited. She’d been learning since she was three years old and although she had danced at family gatherings and community parties, she’d never been on stage. Now it was Divali, Prithi was fourteen, and she was going to join a group of Tamasha dancers at the town hall.

They were to meet back stage at four o’clock to go through the choreographed dances and prepare. Prithi arrived ten minutes early with her mother Parvati who kissed her at the door and went to sit with the aunties in the audience.

When Prithi entered the dressing room she was shocked that among the seven other girls, there were no Indians. There were three blondes, one red head, and three dark haired girls, one of whom looked Maori. Seven pairs of eyes looked Prithi up and down.

A white woman, of maybe thirty-five, took Prithi’s chin in her hand, shaking her head and saying, ‘no darling, this won’t do, the eyes are all wrong,’ and without asking she took a makeup remover from the table and started destroying all of Parvati’s meticulous work. Prithi tried to pull back and was told to stay still as the woman smeared a glittery lime green shadow all over the child’s eyelid and removed Prithi’s traditional earrings.

Then the girls were pushed into a rehearsal room and another white woman started demonstrating the dance. It was definitely not Tamasha, it was a belly dance and the other girls all seemed to know it. Prithi, of course, didn’t and though she tried to mimic the others she had never danced that way before. It seemed improper and she wanted to cry.

One of the girls hissed at her. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re going to make us all look bad so you’d better stay at the back where no-one can see you.’ It was time, music started which Prithi didn’t recognise, the girls shimmied onto the stage and Prithi snuck out the back door.