Argentina in India

Some reminiscences of dancing tango in Pune

The author dancing tango in Pune, India, with Manish Dharmani (for video of us dancing, see below).

I’ve been nostalgic for Buenos Aires lately. It’s partly the fact that Javier Milei is so often in the news and I work, after all, for a largely political publication. And I’ve also been nostalgic—thanks to Facebook memories and evocative Instagram posts by friends—for Pune. It’s a layered nostalgia: I not only miss being in India, but I miss thinking about Argentina while I was there.

I taught Argentine tango in India and therefore Buenos Aires was always on my mind. And the tango songs themselves are full of wistful recollections—of beloved porteño neighbourhoods irrevocably changed, of dark-eyed sweethearts who drank mate in the shade of a vine, of sweet, self-sacrificing mothers long since dead. In the tango songs, Buenos Aires—the real Buenos Aires—is portrayed largely as something already fading, already lost.

I had come to India in search of my Parsi roots and likewise found a rapidly ageing, dwindling community clinging to ancient traditions in palpable danger of disappearing forever. What follows is what I wrote at that time, one night, after returning home by rickshaw and eating cumin-specked dal and rice at a local restaurant. At dusk, the waiter patrolled the place, swinging a censor, priest-like, and diffusing clouds of citronella, sandalwood and neem to deter mosquitoes. (It didn’t work: my legs, as always, were pockmarked and bleeding with scratched bites.) I slurped up the sweet, slippery noodles in an ice-cold glass of hot pink falooda and I wrote this.

I am more than three-quarters as far from Buenos Aires as it’s possible to be. Time is upside down here: our early morning is their late night before. The seasons are reversed—though in the cool of the Pune evening you could forget that you're in the tropics. And I've gone from the beef-eating capital of the world to a place where the consumption of bovines is strictly forbidden.

Back home, women wear hotpants and micro-minis with spaghetti strap singlets in the heat. Here, they go wrapped in sarees or sporting jaunty gold-and-jewel-hued kameez, arms concealed in bracelet-length sleeves, legs demurely encased in churidar. Many walk shrouded in the funereal jet of burqas.

Back home, we grab people in bearhugs, we ruffle hair and purse lips at cheeks; we stroke hands and arms to emphasise a point; we drink hot beverages from a single, shared straw. Here, this is a country of head waggles and prayer hands, of respectful distances and sexual taboos.

But tango creates its own culture. No matter where you are on the globe. No matter what the local mores. It’s a dominant allele; it’s an invasive species; it’s a tune so catchy it will displace every other music with the slippery ease of its earworm melody.

It’s the embrace that effects the transformation, I believe. It begins as method acting, a gesture we assume to try to convey a mood. But, just as arcing your lips into the rainbow-shape of a smile is reputed to make you happier—just the physical action in itself—the act of embracing turns us from a set of poor players, lovers whispering muffled endearments through a crevice in a wall, into the beloveds of Oberons and Titanias.

Tango is a recent development, a young culture. And India an old old civilisation, a prism of a thousand facets. But yet in a blissful tango embrace, everyone feels Argentine. Shut your eyes and you are in Buenos Aires. Even if your ombús are straggly, split-ended banyans and your mate is frothy chai streaming through the air, arcing from one metal cup to another as the chaiwalla cools it like a juggler. Even if you have never seen the wrought iron balconies and pot-plant filled roof terraces of Buenos Aires; the slabs of steak and brimming 4am glasses of ruby Malbec; the greasy pizzas and elderly couples in shiny suits and sausage-tight dresses; the pampas grass and herons; the jacarandás’ lilac riot in November. Even if you have never even licked the gloopy drippings of dulce de leche ice cream off your fingers or twirled a handkerchief seductively at a partner in zamba. Even if you have never been to Buenos Aires. Once you're in the embrace, you’ll be there, instantly teleported. Resistance is futile. We have you in our tractor beam now. We’re bringing you in. We’re bringing you home.