"Hips don't lie," croons Shakira, her hips twitching suggestively... and we, denizens of the urban jungle, nod our assent as we synchronise our movements to her hypnotic chants. Mumbaiites of all ages, sizes, shapes, not to mention religious and linguistic persuasions, are losing their inhibitions and swaying their hips to the beat of Latin American music. Visit any of the many buzzing-with-activity dance studios in the city... be it the Salsa India Dance Company (SIDC), the Sandip Soparrkar Ballroom Studio or the Terence Lewis Dance Academy, and you could witness the unlikeliest of 'couples' scorching the floor. "I have a young student who comes along with her 70-year-old grandfather," discloses Soparrkar, delighted that salsa is bridging the generation gap.

When Terence Lewis held a summer camp this year, his classes were flooded with starry-eyed enthusiasts...like my teenaged daughter and me... yearning to bone up on some hip dance moves. In fact, parents and children coming together to learn salsa is becoming more the norm than the exception, while husband-wife/boyfriend-girlfriend duos and singles ready to mingle make up the rest. We looked forward with anticipation to our thrice-a-week tryst and got progressively more addicted to what started out as a pleasant pastime. Besides warming up with enthusiasm, we practised exhilarating moves with verve, perfected steps we already knew with passion, improved our vocabulary of bodily expression with style...and swaggered out of class with a newfound confidence.

That some of us also lost weight was an added bonus! While Soparrkar agrees that the dance form works different muscles in the body, he maintains, "Salsa is a wonderful way to alleviate stress and build on your relationship at the same time. People learn salsa because they like being with each other...and fitness comes as a welcome by-product. In the case of a couple that learns dance jointly, it's a great way to burn off the tension and do something you both enjoy. I know people who have fallen in love all over again after taking salsa classes together."

Salsa, I learnt, encourages a man to be a gentleman and a woman to be a lady. The teachers show the men how to handle a woman on the dance floor, lessons that could be adapted to their dealings with the females they encounter in their daily lives...the way she likes to be held: not too close for comfort so she loses her freedom of movement, but firmly enough to indicate the direction you are steering her towards. "Of course, the man leads the woman - the only time he can", laughs Soparrkar, insisting that otherwise it is the woman who leads the man a merry dance! But finally, the cynosure of all eyes...both male and female...is the woman. "Watching salsa is like gazing at a flower blossoming before your eyes. The man is the stem that supports her," he describes rather evocatively.

Bollywood actresses like Kajol and Sonali Bendre, even choreographer, Farah Khan, are captivated by the enticing charms of salsa...and are having the time of their life under Soparrkar's tutelage. With celebrity chefs and socialites magically transformed into dance sensations overnight on TV reality shows, Nach Baliye and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, people with two left feet are now finding it easier to take that first tentative step, but Kaytee Namgyal (director of SIDC) is diffident about these reality shows as "they are making a mockery of salsa."