The Break-Up Dance
Nothing breaks like a heart. As Siddharth Doshi listens to Miley Cyrus croon these lyrics in a track playing at a local nightclub, he nods in acknowledgement of this universal truth. Having his own heart broken a couple of months ago, the 24-year-old recalls how he chose to celebrate his breakup instead of breaking down. “But in all honesty, it wasn’t my idea to have a breakup party. It was my friends who came and picked me up, dragged me to the pub where we had a few drinks and then headed off to the nightclub to dance the night away. That’s how people around me are dealing with breakups. They go out, party, drink, do drugs and try to move on. They seems to think that’s how you deal with a breakup — you forget it as soon as possible, and a party is what it takes to attain peace when your mind is in turmoil,” says he, pointing out that not all breakups can be pushed into oblivion with loud music, colourful lazers and dark dancefloors. “The alcohol though — that just numbs the heartache. But different people react differently after drinking. Sometimes, the drunken state unlocks a deep-seeded emotional reaction which is quite cathartic too,” he says.
In a country obsessed with Bollywood, the ‘cool’ way to deal with breakups is to party. Being inspired by Honey Singh’s Breakup Party, or Anushka and Ranbir playfully dancing to the Breakup Song in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, though youngsters may try out this method to deal with the ending of their romantic relationships, they claim it doesn’t really work.
Sure drowning your sorrows in frolic seems like a foolproof way to get over your past and step into a fun-filled future. But there are some important questions here, like what will happen when the party is over? When the music is turned off, the friends are gone, and the high from the alcohol fades, you are left with nothing but a horrible headache and a merciless confrontation with reality.
You may call it puppy love, but for 19-year-old Anita Shah (name changed for privacy), it was an uphill climb to get over her breakup. Talking about how she took the party practice to nurse her broken heart, she says, “People I know go drinking and partying when they break up. But all this is just a means to an end — and that end is to meet new people. The logic behind partying when you break up is kind of like announcing that you’re out of a relationship, and you’re ready for another one. Personally, I feel that the best way to deal with a breakup is to find a rebound.”
According to Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced online dictionary for current slang words and phrases, operating under the motto ‘Define Your World’, a ‘rebound’ is ‘just some person you use to get over the person you just broke up with. They’ll never be enough but they can be an okay distraction.’
But indulging in a rebound can be a risky game to play. If you’re trying to fill the vacuum inside with a rebound, you better be careful. “When you find a rebound, you need to remember not to get too involved. Keep it casual. But in some cases, this doesn’t happen. People get attached to their rebounds and end up in a relationship with them. Then when they break up, it’s back to square one. So indulging in rebounds can be a vicious circle,” says Shah.
But partying does work for some people to move on. These are the people who have just got out of a casual relationship. “You see when you have an understanding that the relationship is a casual one before you even get into it, there are already low expectations. You know it’s a short-term thing, so you are prepared for a break up some time down the line. It isn’t any love-loss. I started dating someone I met on Tinder. After a couple of dates, when we stopped trying so hard to impress each other, we realised we were getting bored. So we ended it. It wasn’t a ‘relationship’ as such to begin with, but when we broke up, I was excited about having a breakup party. I got some friends over, told them to get their friends, and threw a BYOB (bring your own booze) party at my house,” says 21-year-old Aaron Doss.
