Scottish Dancing Lessons

Scottish Dancing Lessons

It was a time when perhaps the last vestiges of shabby genteel British-ness were still present in the leafy outer suburbs of Montreal. During the early seventies, my English Canadian elementary school classmates - with names like Colin, Nigel, Jennifer, and Holly - took piano lessons in the dusty basements of well-attended churches. I remember going to church once with my friend Jennifer and being impressed even at the age of eight, by the earnestness of the attendees. The entire service was given over to the dedication of a used piano which the congregation had just acquired. There was a strong thankfulness for that piano present in the language of the minister and in the attitude of the church-goers. I had just moved to Canada, having spent several of the previous six years in close-knit Indian communities in the United States and I remember being dimly aware that material possessions were not treated exactly the same here as they had been there. English Canadians were definitely different from most immigrant Indians and they were even different from their American neighbors. Their attitudes towards possessions seemed more in-line with my own, which had been installed in me by my father. Not to be pursued and acquired for their own sake, but rather to be deeply appreciated when you had them. There was definitely a stiff upper lip present here and I liked it.

Culturally, an English Canadian suburb was very far away from the rich and diverse community around Brown University which contained quite a few Indian families even in those days, mostly students. In Providence, where my father was a PhD student, we gathered regularly and held very lively functions filled with music, dance, singing and bright colors. When my father took his professorship at the University of Montreal and we moved to Canada, we (seemed at least to us to be) one of perhaps three Indian families in the West Island area. As far as we knew these types of gatherings were either not frequent or non-existent. Eager to understand our new surroundings better, we examined some of the possibilities for cultural and social enrichment available to elementary school children at that time and place. Piano lessons would have been a wonderful option in my opinion, not least because many classmates were taking them and it was a great way to fit in. But we did not have a piano and the lessons were quite expensive. Just by chance, through a new friend at school, we decided to sign up for Scottish dancing lessons. Looking back, this strikes me now as hilarious. There were three of us who embarked together on this journey that would teach us how to dance Scottish jigs. We were, all three, of the studious and bookish type, and that is what made us friends. But how we decided that Scottish dancing was an appropriate extra-curricular cultural activity, I can’t recall.

I cannot today imagine my daughter signing up for an activity which, in retrospect, seems so obscure. But perhaps then it seemed to me to be a way to partake in the cultural norms of that particular time and place -- although I would have preferred the piano lessons. One of the friends who participated with me was half Scottish and half West-Indian. Maybe that is how my mother learned of this - let me emphasize - inexpensive opportunity to learn the dancing ways of the people of the West Island.

This then is the introduction to how a chubby, gap-toothed, and curly haired Indian immigrant girl joined two natives (Rose was from a long Canadian line, originating in the Maritime provinces, and before that, Ireland, freckled, with scarlet hair, and Lily was half Scottish) to learn how to dance Highland jigs in the church across the street from the library every Saturday during the 5th grade for what seemed like a million years.

The level of excitement in that church basement is best imagined as commensurate with the activity at hand. Our teacher was a matronly woman from Scotland and could easily have been pictured next to a dictionary definition of no-nonsense. Thanks to her strict instruction, to this day my feet remember how to do the Pottibas. And I firmly believe that I am the only child of Indian immigrants from that time who developed such a strong attachment to wearing pleated, plaid wool skirts that I still have two in my dresser drawer. These were purchased as an adult and, in the United States, they were quite difficult to locate. The second was actually purchased on E-bay from a seller in Nova Scotia about 5 years ago and is made by the Hudson’s Bay Company. I wear them with knitted stockings and boots in the fall and believe myself to be at the height of fashion (and am - at least the fall fashion of 1970s English Canada).

Like children all over the world, Lily, Rose and I started our lessons with enthusiasm. However, the dusty basement, the difficulties of moving our feet in exactly the required sequence of steps, and the lack of anything resembling a ‘cool’ outcome associated with diligence on our part, soon resulted in a definite reluctance to leave our cozy homes on Saturday mornings. Add the brutal cold of a Canadian winter and you will understand how in later years my mother would tell me that I made up amazing and elaborate excuses to somehow get out of going to my Scottish dancing lessons. I was not alone. Lily and Rose were equally creative and so it was rare that the three of us ended up at the same lesson on any given Saturday. This unfortunately increased the negative effect of the lesson and a downward spiral could almost not be avoided. My mother cajoled and wheedled and yelled and got me there a good percentage of time. It should be noted that the motivation for all this work on my poor mother’s part was less edification, and perhaps rather more because she had already paid the $3.00 per lesson it must have cost back then. In some ways my mother was inherently more culturally akin to the (stereotypical) Scot than I would probably ever be, even after the Scottish Dancing Lessons.

The net result of these lessons was positive as I have already mentioned. My foot-muscle-memory of the Pottibas and the two kilts which lie snugly in the fifth drawer of my dresser, ready to be pulled out if needed, are but two things I took with me from that experience. The other, less tangible gifts are warm memories of entering a heated room shivering from the cold Canadian air and dancing with the children and grandchildren of families with long histories in that place. These people were unique in many ways. They were somewhat stiff and formal compared to my then-memory of Americans. They had endured terrible casualty figures - population percentage-wise- in a world war not that long before, with family members lost or taken prisoner. Some of them, more recent immigrants from England, still remembered ‘police actions’ against native mutineers under the British Raj. And some had gone to see the Queen when she visited Canada in the 60s and had even, probably uncharacteristically, shed tears at seeing how beautiful she was in person (I would hear them talking). Their ancestors and they themselves lived with winters colder than anything I was used to. Every family had a modest timber cottage by the lake with a canoe to take out and paddle on the weekend, working up an appetite for the absolutely delicious food available in Montreal even at that time (courtesy of French Canada who knew how to eat). They shopped at WH Smith and Marks and Spencers in North America. And - pure joy for an Indian family still suffering from the effects of drinking tepid-tap-water-lemon concoctions prepared and served as tea in the US during the previous six years - they made and served excellent tea. With subsequent immigration from all over the world, and due to the forces of inevitable change, this culture would alter rapidly over the next forty years. But - with those folks, at that time and in that place - looking back, I am very happy now to have had the chance to learn how to dance a proper Scottish jig.