Ravi's Idea

One Saturday, while they waited for class to start, Harpreet told Sam a story instead of handing her a snack for once, which was how Sam knew it was going to be a good one.

"Do you know why it's called Pungra, and not just bhangra?" Harpreet asked, settling onto her mat with the unhurried air of someone about to tell a story she genuinely enjoyed telling.

Sam shook her head, sitting up a little straighter.

"A man named Ravi started all of this. When he was young, he noticed something that bothered him — a lot of people who taught dance and music just said 'this is how it's done,' without ever explaining why it was done that way. Ravi always wanted to know why. Not to argue. Just because he liked understanding things properly instead of only memorising them. He learned to play a drum called the dhol when he was about your age, actually, maybe a little older, and even then he used to ask his teacher question after question until the poor man ran out of answers."

"What happened to him?"

"He grew up, moved far away from home, kept dancing whenever he could find somewhere to do it. And then, years later, he saw a video online of someone dancing to entirely the wrong kind of music and calling it bhangra by mistake — an honest mistake, nobody's fault, just nobody had ever taught her any better. Ravi found himself imagining what he'd teach that person first, if he ever got the chance to. And he realised the very first lesson wouldn't be a dance move at all. It would just be how to say the word properly. So that became the name of the whole thing he built afterward. Pungra. The first lesson, turned into a name."

"That's a really good story."

"It's a true one too," Harpreet said, finally producing a foil-wrapped snack from somewhere in her bag that Sam definitely hadn't asked for but was extremely happy to receive anyway. "Eat. You'll dance better on a full stomach. That part I made up, but I still believe it."