I had to go to Chandigarh for a friend’s wedding and I hadn’t had much time to prepare for it. So I just mixed and matched my clothes and packed them all into my suitcase the night before we were leaving. On the few days preceding this visit, we’d had long days at work and I hadn’t had time to properly check the condition of these clothes, I literally only got time to glance at them while packing.
The mehendi function was happening the morning I reached my friend’s house in Chandigarh. After getting mehendi put on and meeting everyone, we were very excited. So we blasted some music and started with our dance practice since everyone was finally there.
I love dancing a lot, so obviously, I was the most excited person about the sangeet performance. We were dancing to “Banno tera swagger”, which involved a lot of thumkas and shimmies, and I am almost a self-proclaimed queen at those moves. The practice went well – we knew our steps by heart and we were going to give an amazing performance, I was sure of that!
I was wearing my ivory lehenga and a brocade choli which had a deep scoop back. The choli neckline was also plunging. My dupatta was pinned across my chest to one side of my body and the fastening hooks for my choli were on the back. My choli also had a knot which tied up on the back to keep it in its place, which also made me feel less worried about all the skin show.
When the time for the sangeet performance came, the music started playing and we got on the stage – I was right in the centre, among nine girls. I knew all the steps by heart – so all girls who had joined in the performance later were standing behind me, in order to follow my lead.
Just as I was doing a step that needed me to stretch, I heard something snap. It might have been the extra loud music. Or maybe I was just imagining it thanks to the multitude of shots I’d had earlier. But seriously, I could feel my choli moving out of its position. I could feel it falling off my shoulders from either side. That knot I had tied up on the back to make me feel more secure had unravelled. I completely forgot my steps, because hello! My choli was starting to fall off my body! I went wide-eyed at this point, thinking of various ways in which I could avoid this embarrassment. I was trying to figure out in my head whether I should step away from the stage in a dignified manner or just do the dance half-heartedly. This was the battle I was fighting.
I could feel everyone glaring at me and I was struggling to smile while trying to recall the dance steps too. I was continuously pulling my blouse back onto my shoulders and I was feeling so uneasy. I literally wanted the dance to end so that I could step away and fix this. All my excitement, all my moves, all my energy had gone down the drain!
The final step in our dance performance was a crazy shimmy in which I had to bend forward quite a bit. But I changed it in the last minute and overall ended up looking quite strange, I thought.
I came out and cried out to my friend’s aunt, “Did you see that?!” And all she said was that the dance had been wonderful, and that I had looked so pretty and graceful out there!
What?! Could nobody spot the awkwardness on my face?! Wow, this was an incident I would never forget! It could have been worse if the timing had been more wrong. I have had some disasters with my clothes before in public, but this had been the mother of all disasters. I survived this wardrobe malfunction, and thankfully, walked away without much damage.
Later, when the video of the dance was posted on Facebook, all I could notice was that my hands constantly kept going up to my shoulders to adjust my choli. But everyone else only noticed was how amazing our dance performance was!
Images: Shutterstock
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