2.2 Hot Fiesta

After an early dinner, he headed to Vedun Point where the stage was set in front of the island office.

Thirty girls lined up on the platform performed a Bandiya Dance carrying pitchers and singing choruses. On the left side, three drummers sat on the deck and the harmonium or the pump organ player sat on a chair and he happened to be Multi-Ibre. A woman standing beside them with a microphone on its stand was the lead singer. Dressed in blue bell-bottoms and a sleeveless buttoned blouse tight on torso. Her hair curly long and black, skin beamed under the lights. Her face touched with a mask of talc, natural red lips and eyebrows drawn in ink. The band instruments arranged behind the dancers.

Those girls wore plain white shift dresses, very simple and petite. Their hair let loose down to the waist and threw from side to side as they danced in rapid twists and turns. Their steps fast and precise, forming patterns and circles, as they danced while strumming the pitchers with rings worn on their fingers and singing chorus lines on a flat note.

Bandiya Dance was performed by men in ancient times. When it came to girls, their long hair became their signature move to throw them from side to side. All those dancing girls wore them long to the bottom.

There was a good crowd, two hundred youthful folks, some danced while others got engaged in Eid fun. He caught Ashwar seated on a boundary stone and close to the stage. Muaz extended greetings, “Happy Eid! Where are those girls from Malé?”

“Forget about Malé girls!” Ashwar returned over the noises, “Look at those girls on the stage! Watch their bums! There is my girl. Her name is Gulish.”

“Where?”

“Third one on the left, front row, wearing a pink underwear.”

“Huh! Pretty girl!”

“I’m going to marry her.”

“When?”

“You know, these girls love outsiders,” he raised his voice, “I am from Mavah actually…been here working in the watermelon fields for over four years. I’m thinking of settling down. On the contrary, it is apparently vague for these girls are under the influence.”

“Under the influence!” repeated Muaz.

“Oh yeah, they do not trust their own folk.”

“Who is the singer?” asked Muaz.

“She’s damn hot! She is the leader of Moonlight Club. Her name is Farida Ikhtak.”

“Are you from this club?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Who is that girl?” pointed Muaz.

“Golden hair! She is Huda.”

“Not her…I know her,” said Muaz, “She is albino white. I know her family. We are related. I’m talking about that light skin in the front row.”

“Light skin in the front row!” All the girls looked extremely pale under the lights. Only those with very fair skin gleamed brighter like Huda and Farida whose arms were uncovered. “In yellow undies?”

“No…no, green panties…” they continued to talk aloud, “the one with gold on her body…”

“Kishala!” uttered Ashwar, “Brown skin. That is tailor’s youngest daughter! Be careful! Tailor Don is a hot character. She’s not that easy.”

“Not that easy!”

“She’s crazy here,” he tapped his temple over his voice, “I haven’t seen her accompanying with boys.”

“She looks pretty innocent to me!”

“Looks can deceive you.”

“Noxious!”

“You can find her on Women’s Lane.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. All the girls go there but be warned, better not go alone.”

“Why?”

“That area is haunted, deserted, malevolent. You find spooky things.”

“What kind of spooky things?”

“A woman in red dress,” responded Ashwar, “a hundi who wanders around there.”

“Have you seen this hundi?”

“Of course,” he replied, “few times.”

“Tell me, what happened?”

“One day I saw her climb from the water carrying a straw on her head. She glanced at me and headed the opposite direction up the beach. Paused to look back. She was dry, not a sop of water on the cloth…she climbed hip deep from water, you know! They say those spooks keep the beaches clean. If you do not disturb them, they do not disturb you.”

“You scare me!”

“I use to go to Don’s place. I can tell her that you want to talk to her.”

“Forget her! Who is that girl in red…”

Strappingly, he was blinded by a sudden fold of fabric on his face and it sounded like bluster on a sail. A woman dropped her kandiki over his head from the rear. She held him between her legs while some girls screeched and emptied bags of fish broth on his lap. They scattered. He could not tell a single girl.

“Karima!” cried Ashwar.

Muaz got on his feet and chased the girls in the darken corners who screamed and dispersed. It was his turn to spell. Shortly, he entered the water under a bright moon, bells rolled to his knees and put some seawater on his clothes.

Bandiya was over and The Pink Sharks climbed the stage dressed in pink and white. Long-sleeved pink shirts with large collars and white bell-bottoms with wide leg openings of a metre in broadness. Then a large crowd watched from the shadows. The band began to play their electric guitars and some loud music. Crowd stepped into a spontaneous dance. Among them scores of visitors and the lady from Velidu. Muaz joined her on the floor – sand-filled ground.

Nisha gave him a tangling moment. She was prolific in her dance and blowing the skirt over the hips rendering a pair of neat-looking legs.

One moment, his flip-flop came detached from a foot and he picked it in his hands to fix its strap. Drove its toe post through the hole, dropped it, stepped on and joined her again. He was so attached to her dangling on her waist and never let her go. Sometimes she had to stop her dance and cackle.

Meanwhile, further away by the beachside, Wafig rested a shoulder on a palm and observed the frolicking crowd before the stage, his arms folded.

 

The show ended at one-thirty. Muaz came home and entered his room. It was very dark. He removed the torch from his hip pocket, turned it on and placed on the table. Then he removed his shirt as the girl came in with the kerosene oil lamp. She reached for the mosquito coil and lit it. She was done.

Muaz grabbed her from behind reaching for her tits and his face buried in her hair. She wore a two-piece dress; olive-green top and white skirt. The girl turned to face him. She gave an insignificant jerk and in the next instant pulled his face up to her lips. She kissed him and he was all over her. She released those giggles that drove him mad.

A moment later, she got free and ran out of the door into the darkness.

 

The band members sat down for tea in the island office compound. This was their first night and the show went well. Salt the bass player and Mannan were engaged in a chat with Farida Ikhtak.

“I listen those songs,” said Salt, “The Olympians do great stuff.”

“I heard on the radio,” spoke Farida in a coarse and flat voice very different from her singing voice, “Ibre doesn’t like those songs and he didn’t want to play them in Bandiya.”

“Why?”

“He thinks it’s not the genre.”

“Those songs are composed by Gini Dombé and he is good. I like his work more than Mannan’s.”

“Come on!” cried Mannan, “His melodies are just three notes and three chords.”

“It is more complicated than that.”

“Are you married?” interrupted Farida.

“We are separated,” explained Salt, “I have three children staying with me. You?”

“I’m thirty, single, with two kids,” replied Farida, “I married three times.”

“Bandiya girls remain unmarried,” disclosed the singer of the band, “So I hear.”

“They are under the influence.”

“Under the influence!”

“Don’t talk about it,” Salt chuckled.

“I was thinking that I join a band in Malé. Is that possible?” Farida asked.

“Everything is possible,” said Mannan, “They tell me you coach the girls. Won’t you be missed by the club?”

“True, I am a veteran dancer,” unveiled Farida, “I still dance. Our singer is Nasheeda actually. She left last year married to an outsider and Ibre is recruiting another girl, Sawsan. She is pregnant. And I’m having too much argument with him these days since I started dating my new boyfriend, Adam, who is from North Ward.”

“Sunlight Club?”

“Right. They always quarrel over a fishing boat.”