Happy Ending or a New Beginning?

2008 rather ended on a happy note. It revived a hidden talent in me. Here goes the story:
In a strange way, suddenly the thought of doing a group dance performance came in my mind. I was among the first few people to know what the theme for group dance was. I was also among them who first cribbed about it. But then I gave up because I was sure I would not be doing it. But still I want to do it and let the people in my class come upon to the stage. I had set a few rules to the dance for it to be friendly to all the shy or orthodox girls of our class. First was that there would be no boys in our team, second that the costumes would be comfortable and well covered, third was actually my motive “I would not mind if you stopped in the middle in the stage. But what I want is that you people should come up” for this extreme struggle, I could get only 2 new girls from the class, 2 others were my friends who wanted to go in for it because they were sure about me. Against all odds, I pooled in 3 more girls. This seed of thought came into my head on the 23rd of December, where our performance was scheduled on 31st December. Group dance is a grand show in our college always, and just practically 6 days was not at all sufficient to give a decent performance. I had vague ideas on 23rd.
I came home and sat online browsing the net for the festivals that I had in mind (I had navrathri and shivrathri in my mind). When I also browsed through you tube, I found inspiring videos for shivratri. So I decided that I WILL do shivratri. I had learnt formal kuchipudi dance when I was about 3 years old. My education had been intermittent. But the basics of classical dance were well embedded in the early stages of my life. All that the college friends knew about me was that I dance well in the DJ session after every function in college.
When I went up to my group members with my idea (this was on the 24th), they all said a straight away NO for the extremely tough steps involved. For the song that I had managed to find online to download, I could make it a fusion tandav. I told it to them again, and again, and then they agreed. I was keen that it should be a top secret. One girl could not come for practice until Sunday because of Christmas (kalpana). All of us were responsible girls at home, we had many things to attend which took its priority over this, but my determination that dint seem like arrogance to them is what made it possible.
On 24th, I put forward the idea clearly. We had only about 30 minutes to spare on the 24th. I asked them to practice the basic half sitting and sitting postures of the classical dance. If one knew this, dance is easy. We dispersed and I asked everyone to come to my place on Christmas for practice. This day was the last day for registration, and till 23rd there were only 9 entries. By 24th there were lots more. With people dropping out and some others joining in, I went and made some amendments on 26th in the final list while making a fair list myself.
On 25th, there were 4 of us out of the 8 membered team, and two dint even know the theme. One of them was shiva the main character. On 25th, I choreographed the first 2 minutes of the song, and one full episode (neelakant episode). I almost did the second episode too. But we could not do much that day. Jyothi and supriya were new to dance. And they made up for it by vigorously practicing. I had designed the costume and organized the steps well by this day.
On 26th we had only an hour to practice in college, we had to go to koti(a place in hyderabad) to rent costumes. Kalpana attended the practice session, so did samyuktha(sam) who did the role of shiva. To my surprise sam was happy about her role. I also asked her hesitantly if she could do somersaults on stage. She was elated by now. She was perfectly fine with it. We went to Baburao, and got the dresses after a long time. It was tough for me to explain what was in my mind. Rupa did that job better than me and got our costume. It was about 10 -10.30 when we reached home. (I have never been out of home this late). On 27th, Saturday, we practiced for an hour at my place then assembled at my place again on 28th (Sunday) kalpana and rupa came late due to their commitments at home. We finished almost the whole thing perfectly. By then I had added tough steps and I gave them training to balance on one leg (its an art that one can learn easily. But needs a knack) .On 29th, we bunked the first three hours of class and practiced ashlesha joined in. she picked up the steps. But rajnigandha did not. Then we dispersed during lunch because the college did not allow any team to practice inside the classrooms. We then went to rupa’s house. All 7 of us perfectly finished our dance. In 15 minutes sam and I did our rudratandav that followed the daksha yagna episode. On 30th, we could not practice. We had our own competitions. We decided to practice on 31st morning. We all went to my place and were to disperse to get our costumes. By then I had fallen flat on the sofa, almost fainted. I was too exhausted. So the others went to get the costumes. I went with jyothi to get the soundtrack mixed and put in a disc. The ones who went to get the costumes reached home around 12.
On 31st, I went to rupa’s house not bothering about my health. Then, we took the costumes and went to college. By then I was called upon stage for the veena competition that I had totally forgotten. It has actually been a very long since I played it. I went to the stage, messed it up, and ran to the room to get dressed. By then we called up rajnigandha to find out where she was and when she would turn up. She ditched us with a lame excuse. She did not respond to our call when we retried. Another girl who came in to wish us luck, was dragged in. we asked her, and she agreed. She learnt her steps fully in one hour. We did not have a one full rehearsal till we finished our make up. Then we did our rehearsal in the small room. We went up the stage and rocked. Lot of people got goosefleshes and vibrations on seeing our dance. The whole college was in appreciation for our dance. My mother who saw this was almost in tears. Lecturers came up to us to personally give us the compliments. Wherever I went, I heard compliments on our dance. The next working day, all of them told me that they were unable to sit comfortably on a chair due to excess strain on their thighs with highly complicated steps.

My mother is now serious that I get back to dance and not let the talent rust.

A short summary of compliments:
1 inspiration to perform shivtandav as a concept- shri Parimal Phadke(his video gave me a good inspiration) (i shall add the link to his website when i get permission from him)
2 getting my ideas of costumes to reality- Rupa
3 a supporting hand at the time of need- prasanna
4 absoulte co operation and deication- jyothi, supriya, rupa, kalpana, samyuktha, ashlesha, prasanna, amritha
5 Make up- rupa and sowmya (mom)
6 (kicking the I back) concept, choreography, costumes- Amritha