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| Swastik Arora |
- No, it's true, said a gentle English/ Scottish friend, referring to women being the cause of male machismo.
I blinked in disbelief.
Earlier, we had seen the Mela being dismantled in Kelvingrove park in Glasgow. He pronounced it me-la, with a pause and a faint lilt.
- Why do you pronounce it like that?
- It's a Punjabi word.
- Are you bilingual?
A couple of weeks later it transpired he was trilingual, speaking, or at least understanding Hindi as well
- Yes.
He has a lovely embrace. He will dance in the woman's role with me, but only once - on my recommendation and with great reluctance - did he ever dance with a man.
- What do you mean "It's true"? And how do you know? Have you been to Latin America?
- Same culture, he said, pointing his thumb to his chest as he drove me through the city. The mums don't want their boys growing up not macho.
- Why not?
- Because that would mean they were weak, soft.
- So I guess gay is out of the question then?
- Oof!
- Is that why you don't like dancing with men, to learn to dance tango?
- Yes.
He'd grown up being taught that kind of thing was wrong.
- And why none of the guys I've met from the eastern Mediterranean - Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Turkey - are willing to dance in the woman's role with a guy, to learn the dance - even though that's how men in Argentina learnt traditionally?
- Probably, yes.
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