The let-down

I had a clear vision. I had a great production team. I even had a rock star who believed in my idea; enough so to fly across the country -- maybe even the world -- to help me make my dream come true. It seemed like this project was meant to be. Then, one little phone conversation changed it all.

When I first got the inspiration to do the music video, I contacted several key people to let them know of my idea. Among this group was the dance school where I had taken Kathak classes. It was, after all, the dance of the Kaliya-daman that has inspired me to jump in the ocean that fateful day on the Fort Bragg Dunes, so I wanted to make sure I could get proper permission to use the school's choreography. I had heard rumors that they were very careful about maintaining the dance's sacredness and authenticity. In my e-mail, I had emphasized the fact that I had the utmost respect for this dance form and wanted to stay true to its original intent. For a long time, they had not responded to my e-mail, and in the meantime I felt the need to move forward with my production plans. Finally, the day after my first production meeting and my auspicious e-mail from Salman, I got an e-mail from the school informing me I needed to call one of the teachers ASAP.

Often, I get overly worried over things I should not get worried about. I thought that this may be one of those occasions. Perhaps I just needed to relax, hope for the best, and stop anticipating the worst. But something about the tone of the e-mail sounded foreboding. Indeed, they did not seem welcome to my idea, nor did they seem happy with my incorporating their choreography. I pleaded my case, doing my best to make them understand that this was not a Bollywood spin-off but a vision that came from a spiritual experience, one that I believed in the bottom of my heart. At the end of our conversation, they had told me that for now the answer was no, but that maybe once the head teacher came back from his travels they could try to work something out.

By the time I hung up, I was devastated. All that hard work, all that inspiration, all those good wishes from all those amazing people, suddenly down the drain. I did not feel angry at the dance school. I understood where they were coming from, and certainly -- as someone who has studied and come to respect the dance -- did not want to do anything that would be deemed disrespectful. More than anything, I felt hurt by the fact that I had been moved so deeply by this dance, and had meant for the project to be a tribute to it; a way for me to reciprocate the inspiration by my own means of creative expression. But perhaps it wasn't meant to be -- at least for now. I e-mailed everybody on the production team, as well as Salman, to tell them that the project was off.