Fall to your knees

I've been going to Bollywood Dancing classes for a few weeks now. I'm not sure 7 years of ballet lessons as a wee girl, plus inheriting many stiff-from-the-knees-up-when-dancing Irish genes ideally suit me for such a "wavy" form of dance, but I'm enjoying it all the same.

One thing I've realised over the last couple of weeks though, is that the women in Bollywood films aren't really wearing long skirts for the sake of modesty, or so that they can look ten times more glamourous than everyone else. No, it's actually to hide the knee pads they're wearing to save them from the huge bruises that result from the occasional 'hurl yourself to the floor' moves.

Interestingly, many of the dances include a lot of 'sign language' type gestures, which illustrate the lyrics of the songs. So if I ever go to India I'll be able to communicate with people in a variety of useful phrases like: "The drawstring of my blouse got caught on a stalk in the cornfield", "my skirt is very expensive, don't touch it", or "there was a bad man in the field who tried to grab my finger".

This is nearly as good as my grasp of British Sign Language (picked up from late night repeats of David Attenborough programmes) which runs to "Walrus", "Wildebeest" and "Flamingo". I had a dream once where I was standing at a bus stop and a Deaf woman turned up wanting directions into town. I was really pleased at the though of being able to help her, until I remembered that all I could say was "Walrus, Wildebeest, Flamingo".