The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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New year
A new year that changed me
A New Year that changed me: when my mum
was star of the dancefloor
Coco Khan
For one night only she was a Bollywood dancing disco queen, and not even the unkindness of three
strangers will spoil the memory
Bollywood actors on set: ‘Mum practically skipped home, regaling me with stories about how she
could have been a dancer.’ Photograph: DreamPictures/Getty Images
I didn’t expect Mum to say yes. She wouldn’t have normally, but there was something different about
her that day. Perhaps it was the shoes – chunky silver platforms covered in glitter which caught the
light wherever they went. “They were £6 in a closing-down sale,” she told me. “It’d be rude not to
buy them.”
It was New Year’s Eve and we were finishing up a belated Christmas dinner. I’d spent Christmas Day
with my in-laws and this was our surrogate celebration, but now it was time for Mum to go and she
was gathering up her things. The blinking lights from the Christmas tree bounced off her wedding-best
bangles, unboxed just once this year, and in the low light the shoes spoke to me.
Mum was nowhere to be found. I wandered around until my ears tuned in to cheering on the
dancefloor
They said two words: disco inferno. I had a change of heart.
A nearby mega-pub had a large back room it used for occasional club nights, playing that specific
brand of inoffensive, decade-old pop you’d probably hear at a wedding. That in itself was significant.
My mum doesn’t “do” pubs; she doesn’t “do” drinking, even in moderation. Drinking was a source of
conflict between us, but it wasn’t really about the alcohol. Rather it was a symbol of something
bigger, and not just in the obvious way: that I was becoming “westernised”. It was everything else
that followed.