The Connection Between Zor ka Jatka and Sheila Ki Jawani

I stand facing the Dippu, oranges all over the country waits to be exported. I watch the sun slowly setting in for the night, turning dusky grey to orange.

The Toorsa River spreads before me as its flow disappears into the misty fog created by pollution; the orange store houses cluster the banks of the river.

The smoke from my cigarette swirls upwards as it thickens the air above me.

I can hear a Bollywood song being played in one of the so called “dance party” shed built to attract the creatures of the night in Phuentsholing.

“Sheila ki jawani” a typical Bollywood hit item song is being blared from a “Sany” music system made in China.

There are some fat potbellied local business men who can barely stand on their own feet, intoxicated by alcohol, hanging onto smiling young women who look desperate to replicate Katrina Kaif’s dance from the Sheila number.

It’s like one of these high school house parties back in the 1990s. The only difference is there are a lot of commercial factors that heat up the party.

Older men and young girls remain coupled together as the single young men look at awe at the power of money.

My friends and I try to make an attempt to be a part of the crowd, since we stand there, just sliding to the right once and then to the left, given the limited space we are given to show our very own Sheila moves, we remain unnoticed.

There is nothing but bamboos woven together to form our roof and the four walls and the sand deposits from the Toorsa River as our dance floor.

The night would have seemed far too long for sure, if Bhutan Highland Grain Whisky, blended with selected Scotch Malts had not come to our rescue.

After taking the last drop from the two 750 ml bottles of Highland, we were showered with all the energy that could have possibly been required to summon at any night club in Thimphu.

Out went Sheila Ki Jawani and in came my very own favorite Zor Ka Jatka.

I take a seat in front of a table which had lost a leg. Somewhere, someone had tried to experiment a pole dance on the table. As I sip on my Highland with coke and blow out rings of smoke, the lyrics of the song takes me to another phase in my life.

And there is one guy who made it all the more clear by singing it out so loud, stressing on the word SHADI.

“Shadi bhan ga yi omar ket ki sa zha,” he sang it with so much passion, his marriage seriously might have become a life sentence to him over the years.

But then it was a good sight, because the young girl who walked in with him selflessly did a poor but well choreographed belly dance for him.

The guy in the middle of the song started singing Sheila Ki Jawani, pointing at the girl.

It’s always the Zor Ka Jatkas that makes a man miss Sheila Ki Jawani in his life for sure.