Chapter 26: Navratri

October arrives with Navratri, and Seaside Fitness transforms.

Not literally — the treadmills remain, the weights remain, the pool remains its chlorinated self. But the energy shifts. Navratri energy is: specific. It's the energy of nine nights devoted to the goddess, the energy that turns Mumbai from a city that works into a city that: dances. The energy that Preeti ma'am has been preparing for since August, when she announced "Garba Special is coming" with the gravity of a military commander announcing: deployment.

The Garba Special. The event that Jaya warned me about in Chapter 3: "Preeti ma'am's Garba Special in October comes close" to killing you. I'd taken this as: hyperbole. It is not hyperbole.

Seaside Fitness hosts Garba Night on the sixth night of Navratri — the night traditionally dedicated to Goddess Katyayani, which Preeti ma'am explains is "the warrior form, the fierce form, the form that doesn't take nonsense from anyone, which is: my brand." The event is held not in Studio B (too small) but in the lobby-gallery (Jai's photographs are still on the walls, the photographs serving as: witnesses to the dancing, the documentary photographer's work documenting: them while they document us).

The lobby has been cleared. The juice bar tables pushed to the sides. The reception desk covered with a cloth. Rohit has strung lights — not the tasteful fairy lights of upscale Bandra restaurants but the full, unrestrained, maximum-wattage strings of coloured bulbs that Indian festivals demand, the lights that say: subtlety is for: other occasions. This occasion is for: brightness.

Vandana is dressed. When I say "dressed," I mean: transformed. Vandana in gym clothes is: beautiful. Vandana in Navratri clothes is: a visitation. She wears a chaniya choli in emerald green and gold — the mirror-work catching the coloured lights, the dupatta draped with the particular carelessness of a woman who knows exactly how careful she's being, the ghaghra swirling when she moves and producing the sound of fabric on air that is: the sound of Navratri itself.

"You're wearing that?" I ask.

"Beta, if you can't wear a chaniya choli at Garba, when can you wear it? At the dentist?"

"I don't have a chaniya choli."

"I know. I brought you one."

She produces: a garment bag. Inside the garment bag is: a chaniya choli in deep blue — the navy that has become my colour, the navy of the power dress and the swimsuit and now: the Garba outfit. The mirror-work catches light. The fabric is: heavy in the way that celebratory clothes are heavy — weighted with: occasion.

"Vandana. This is —"

"This is exactly what you need. Put it on. We have thirty minutes."

I put it on. In the changing room — the confessional, the place where I've cried and held and been held and changed, literally and metaphorically. The chaniya choli fits because Vandana has: measured me with her eyes (Vandana's eyes are better than any tailor's tape — she can estimate a body's dimensions from across a juice bar with the accuracy of a women's clothing professional, which she is not, but which she should be).

I look in the mirror. The mirror that eight months ago showed me a woman in salwar kameez who didn't recognise herself. The mirror now shows: a woman in a chaniya choli with short hair and silver jhumkas and the expression of someone who is about to do something she's never done before and who is: excited, not afraid.

"Ready?" Vandana asks.

"No."

"Perfect. The best things happen when you're not ready."

The Garba begins.

Preeti ma'am takes the centre of the lobby-turned-dance-floor. She's wearing white — all white, the white of the goddess, the white that in the context of Navratri is not absence but: presence. All colours contained in: one. She raises her hands. She claps. The clap that starts Garba is not: a sound. It's: a signal. The signal that the nine nights have arrived and that the appropriate response is: movement.

The music starts. Not Bollywood — traditional Garba music, the dandiya beats, the rhythms that Gujarat has been producing for centuries and that have spread across India the way all good things spread: through dancing. The dhol produces bass that enters your feet. The singers produce melodies that enter your chest. The combination produces: an irresistible instruction to your body that says: move.

I don't know Garba. I've never done Garba. In Lucknow, Navratri was: a festival that happened to other people. We observed it with puja, not with dancing, because Harsh's family was: restrained. Restrained in celebration, restrained in emotion, restrained in everything except criticism, where they were: lavish.

But here — in the lobby of Seaside Fitness, with the coloured lights and the dhol and Preeti ma'am in white conducting the floor like a general — here, not knowing doesn't matter. Because Garba is: communal. The steps are: simple (step, clap, turn, repeat). The rhythm is: forgiving (the beat comes around again if you miss it). And the community is: patient (nobody watches your feet; they watch your: face, and the face that Garba demands is: joy).

Vandana pulls me in. We're in the outer circle — the circle that moves counterclockwise around the central lamp (a brass diya, lit by Sunaina before the dancing began, the flame that is: the goddess, the flame that the dancers orbit the way planets orbit: the sun). The circle moves. I move with it. Step, clap, turn. Step, clap, turn. The rhythm entering my feet through the floor the way the bass entered my sternum in Zumba class eight months ago — through the body, not the mind.

Jaya is here — Jaya who doesn't dance, who has never danced in the six months I've known her, who treats physical expression with the suspicion of a woman who prefers: written expression. But tonight Jaya dances. Not beautifully — Jaya dances the way she speaks: precisely, without flourish, each step deliberate. But she dances. And the dancing is: her version of "not maybe — yes."

Cheryl is here. Cheryl in a red and gold sari that she bought for this occasion because "if I'm going to dance with the goddess, I'm going to dress for the goddess." Cheryl who learned Garba from YouTube videos this week and who is performing the steps with the academic precision of a woman who approaches everything as: a research project. Her steps are: correct. Her rhythm is: slightly off. Her joy is: total.

Aditi is here. With her mother. Kamini Sharma from Jaipur, who returned to Mumbai for Navratri because "my daughter says the gym does Garba" and who is dancing with the fluency of a woman who has danced Garba since she was six years old in Rajasthan, where Garba is: not a festival activity but a language, the language that her body speaks when her body is given permission.

Kamini dances and Aditi watches her mother dance and sees — for the first time — the woman before the mother. The woman who swam in Pushkar Lake and danced at Navratri and who had: a life before Aditi, a life that was: full and bright and dancing, before the years of housework and marriage and pressure cookers compressed it into: the mother. The mother who is now: dancing again.

Jai is here. Standing near his photographs. Not dancing — Jai doesn't dance. But his phone is out. He's shooting. Not commercial photography — the photography that he stopped doing, the photography that sees people in their unguarded moments. Click. Vandana mid-spin, the mirror-work catching coloured light. Click. Jaya's precise feet, each step a decision. Click. Cheryl's red sari against the white wall. Click. Kamini and Aditi, mother and daughter, circling the diya.

Click. Me. I don't see the camera. I'm dancing. Step, clap, turn. The chaniya choli swirling. The jhumkas catching light. The short hair that Faizan cut moving with each turn. My body performing movements I've never learned and that my body — the body that held twenty-seven years of theek hai — my body knows. Because the body knows things the mind has forgotten. The body remembers: movement before stillness, joy before restraint, dancing before the world said: sit down.

Sunaina is here. Not dancing but standing beside the brass diya, her hands in prayer position, her eyes closed. The yoga teacher at the flame. The stillness at the centre of the movement. The practice at the heart of the celebration.

And Nikhil. Nikhil is here, dancing with the easy confidence of a man who dances at every Navratri and who does not need Preeti ma'am's instruction because his feet know the steps the way his mouth knows: conversation. He dances near me. Not with me — the distinction being: important. Near. The proximity of a former colleague who has become a friend and who might be: more, except that I'm with Chetan now, and Nikhil knows this (village — gyms are villages), and Nikhil's response to knowing is: grace. The grace of a man who steps back without being asked.

I dance for two hours. Two hours of Garba — the circles, the dandiya (sticks that Preeti ma'am distributes and that we clash in patterns, the clash-clash-clash of wood on wood producing a rhythm that is: ancient, the rhythm of women celebrating the goddess, the rhythm of a faith expressed through: percussion), the twirls, the stamping, the particular exhaustion that Garba produces — not the exhaustion of the treadmill (walking to nowhere) but the exhaustion of celebration (dancing to: everywhere).

At ten o'clock, Preeti ma'am stops the music. The stopping is: sudden, which is: the tradition, the tradition that says: the goddess determines the ending, not the dancers. The lobby is: silent for one breath. One breath where sixty people stand still, sweating, panting, the coloured lights blinking on faces that are: glowing.

And then: cheering. The cheering that follows Garba — the release of energy that the dance built and that the stopping: unleashes. Sixty people cheering in a gym lobby in Bandra on the sixth night of Navratri, the cheering that is: prayer and celebration and exhaustion and gratitude, all at once.

I'm standing in the middle of the floor. My chaniya choli is damp with sweat. My feet hurt. My arms ache. My face is — I see it in the mirror on the far wall — my face is: alive. More alive than it's been in decades. The face of a woman who danced for two hours with a goddess and a community and who is: not tired but: full.

Vada pav appears. Of course it does. Vandana has ordered: sixty. Sixty vada pavs, delivered mid-Garba, stacked in foil-covered trays. The vada pav after Garba is: not food. It's: sacrament. The sacred meal that follows the sacred dance. We eat standing up, still swaying, the chutney on our fingers mixing with the sweat on our foreheads and the coloured light on our clothes and the everything of: this night.

"Same time next year?" Preeti ma'am says.

"Same time next year," sixty voices answer.