I remember as a young kid in class II, when I first joined my dance classes, I was among the ones in the last row. I remember my favourite position was behind a pillar safely tucked away from the 'gaze' of my dance teacher. The teacher never objected, thankfully, perhaps because I was among the tallest students. My parents were very enthusiastic about my dance lessons (far more than me I would think, since it was one of the many essential things that defines an aspirational middle-class culture-friendly upper caste bong). They would occasionally inquire about my progress at the dance class to which for almost 5 years my teacher invariably answered: "She's very weak". When questioned I smartly answered every time that she actually meant that I was not very strong physically, though deep inside I knew that I was nowhere being a good dancer. I would have lost hope by then, one would think, but I loved dancing. Beyond the realm of the dance classes I excelled in all local functions, coming up with innovative choreography from a very tender age. I hated performing "Varnam", I remember, although I devoured the knowledge of how each emotion, each word had a corresponding physical gesture. I took them out of class, used them abundantly while choreographing to Tagore songs or songs by Nazrul Islam, which are but a "cultured" bhadralok's mainstay. To think of it now, I hated it because it required mechanical memorization of which gesture came after what, since the words were mostly Tamil, a language I had no clue of. The system of teaching was rather convoluted. So we would be asked to copy down the lyrics of the song and a rough translation of each line in English. Then the dance would be taught to us and we were expected to connect the movements to the words. So I knew that "Nee" meant "you" and I was to point a finger in front of me as if addressing someone there. But somehow not all the words in the song were as simple to remember as "Nee" and after a point of time I only remembered the steps in a sequential order (or looked around to see what the person next to me was doing and copy blindly). What I however excelled in was "expression" or "Abhinaya". When I didn't remember the exact mudra, I distracted my audience with my facial expression.
It was only in my 6th year at the dance class that I was discovered by a neighbor, who had been a Bharatanatyam dancer, then married with a kid, but still pursuing her love for dance through teaching neighbourhood kids dances for local annual function. She inspired me, encouraged me, showed me the right way to hold the hands straight, with elbows up by the two sides of my head. It was a turning point in my life. She corrected my postures which mind you, for five years, I had all wrong. Most importantly she did not have the wooden stick which my dance teacher used interchangeably as an instrument to beat against her chair to keep the beat and as a tool to be thrown directly at the ankles of erring students if they had their 'Ayata' (half-sitting posture with knees bent to the sides) wrong. She also did not have her long nails, which with all sincerity of a teacher, she dug into the forearm of the students who dared to stand in the first row or were unfortunately not tall enough to escape it when they failed to perform up to the mark (a practice which she might have inherited from her teacher). In a month, my position from behind the pillar, had shifted to the first row. I was suddenly noticed by my dance teacher, awarded the central position in the front, and closely watched for any wrong moves. For the next two years I was beaten and verbally abused regularly (all out of love and sincerity of a good teacher towards her student of course) and was left with a perennial knee problem from stamping my feet too hard so as to make a sound every time the feet tapped the floor beneath it. But I didn't mind for what also came with it was a confidence that I could one day become a good dancer.
Soon enough came the turn for the annual function for my dance school, the only time in the year, we would face the real 'guru', who was responsible for the brand name I carry till date (since I was part of an ancillary branch of the reputed institution). Till my 7th year in the dance class, I had always managed to escape this ordeal, making up excuses about studies to vacations to sprained ankles. And of course there always was the question of money, for these annual functions were money making rackets where students not only had to bear a participation fee but also hire/buy costumes and jewelry. I despised the very idea of burdening my father who had to feed seven mouths in a joint family doing night shifts for weeks (although for him the excuse of 'studies' mattered more than anything else!) But this was the first time I was to make an exception and meet my guru. I had seen her hardly five times in the entire course of 7 years of training but my only memory of her was that she was sweet and beautiful. And yes, she would not beat us in those rarely-spaced meetings. So I faced her. She noticed me. She called my mother, gave a long lecture on the value of regular dance practice and said, "She can do it, she has it in her.". My mother was glowing that day. The mother of my friend who had kindly given us a lift till the main branch (located at the other end of the city) refused to talk to us and left with her daughter. I was elated. My teacher was happy. The next day at the programme she did my hair and make up. A senior drew my eyes. I stood at the front row facing the audience. Dewy eyed, I did my best. I had become a Bharatanatyam dancer. It was a new beginning. I blocked out all the hushed up talks in the green room about how it was my looks and not my dance which got me this attention. I brushed them aside as words of envy.
My mother, following my guru's advice, started crossing hurdles (of family, of monetary restrictions, of her fear of city roads and buses) and taking me to the other end of the city for dance classes. I started representing my guru's institution in small functions. I took extra lessons from my teacher at her home. I slogged, I toiled, I sacrificed friends and little joys of adolescence. I got my first costume made. White with a maroon border. My first set of Bharatanatyam jewelry came. I no longer needed to borrow them from rich classmates. I was in Class X. Boards were approaching when my Guru first uttered that magic dream word: Arangetram. But it was not possible. I took a break for two months. The last day of my boards when the world went out for movies, dates, sleepovers, restaurants and amusement parks, I went straight to dance class, only to hear how I had put on weight. I was sad, depressed but determined to shed those extra kilos. So it began again. Hours of practice, at home, at the dance class. In two months I was back in shape. I got my second costume. My mother's wedding saree, an aqua blue Benarasi. The best costume designer in town, also a guru in his own right, turned it into a dress like nothing I had seen before. It was a wrap around saree costume which accentuated my petite body perfectly, the fan at the side caressing my thighs lovingly. I performed at the Geeta Jayanti Utsav with two others. 'Dashavataram'. My guru's youngest son told my mother how it was inappropriate to wear an unique costume like that in a group dance. Lesson in group ethics learnt. With a small gap for the Class XII boards, I was back in the loop. This time, as a prestigious member of the famed dance troupe which represented my institution across the world, My role was tiny, I was to stand around the nayika with a veena in my hand. A blink and miss appearance within a dance drama that lasted over an hour. But it was the most prestigious hall in the city and I was a member of the most prestigious troupe. I was on the top of the world. The hushed tones came back talking about my beauty and my guru's partial attitude towards pretty students. But I was too confident of my talent which by then had found recognition in all school fests. I brushed them aside, once again, as petty jealousy.
Soon I found myself travelling with the troupe, my role increasing by bits in every show. The magic word was spoken again: Arangetram. This time, my parents, now out of the binds of the joint family and relatively well off financially didn't shy away. It was to be the biggest event of their life until then--a three-hour long solo performance by their daughter in a hall where people will only come to watch her dance. Again new costumes made-- a red one and a pink for the two halves of the show. My guru was training me personally for a year, even composing an item exclusively for me--Navarasam, choreographed to events from Ramayana. I forgot there could be a life beyond dance. I rehearsed for 12-14 hours a day. On the day of the photo shoot, my guru brought out all her jewelry and personally attended to my process of getting ready. Her best disciple, also known for her skills as a make up artist, did my make up. Temple jewelry came from Chennai, so did a band of musicians who charged quarter of a lakh. The cards were printed and my parents visited all friends and relatives, as if it was my wedding, they said. The newspapers printed the event notifications a week in advance. My father managed to get a sponsorship of a billboard right in a bustling junction. Just then, my guru's husband died. No one had seen this coming. All hell broke loose. The programme was doomed. All the money was to go down the drain (It had costed about a lakh, probably a sum total of my parents' savings then). Let us not even talk about the loss of face. Just then an angel arrived. My guru's best friend from abroad, she said: "The show must go on." Facing criticisms from all corners, my guru gave a green signal. The South Indian community in Calcutta boycotted the event. But it happened. It was magical. For the next one year, raving reviews of the show appeared in the print media. My guru, addressing the press, called me one of her most favourite disciples. People compared me to some of the best alumni of the institution. Some said, I didn't dance well, it was all because I was beautiful. Once again, I laughed at their green faces and moved on. There was no looking back. I traveled with the troupe for the next one year, the last year I was to spend in Calcutta. I performed in the most prestigious dance festivals, sometimes behind my guru's back, to avoid 'buying' songs from her, to allow myself the pleasure of choreographing to the new musical pieces the internet had just started offering. For I was getting bored. Bored of performing the same items over and over again. Bored of a set choreography. Bored of talks surrounding my weight-gain post Arangetram (although I distinctly remember weighing around 45 kgs then!), the round shape of my face, my inability to draw the eyes in the same way every time. And I was getting restless, to break the mold, to break the set conceptions of beauty, to break the system of having to pay 50-70 thousand rupee from one's own pocket in order to perform the same old items abroad.
Then EFLU happened. I left in an evening's notice. I didn't get time to inform my guru before I left. I called soon enough. She referred me to a great Kuchipudi guru here. I went, saw her break the coconut, offer puja to the Nataraja, and take me under her tutelage. I started learning a new dance form. Everyone was happy. I was slim, I was beautiful and I was sick. I was depressed. I was learning to adjust myself to a new-found freedom. My lifestyle was changing. My food habits were changing. My thought processes were changing. In class, I was reading Virginia Woolf, Simone De Beauvoir, critiques of Manusmriti. Outside class, I was discovering Ambedkar, Foucault, Butler. The myths were breaking. My beliefs were falling apart. On the roads I was struggling to grapple with questions of caste and class, of Dalit activism and the Left movements. Tearful nights and fiery days were spent defending my position on dance--that I dance for myself and not for others. All in vein. The last shelf on the left corner of the library spoke otherwise. I discovered that my classical dance was not so classical after all. I read about the anti-nautch movement, the establishment of Kalakshetra, the politics of creation of a national dance form. I realized the violence I have unknowingly inflicted every time, when playing the Vamana Avatara to perfection, I raised my feet high and pushed a Mahabali down. I understood the privileges of the Kasavu sari which I draped every year, while performing Thiruvathira. After all this, was I to go back to my Kuchipudi classes? In the time that I lost in the meanwhile, I had put on some weight. The initial effects of bad metabolism, undisciplined lifestyle and sudden stopping of the regular physical exercise my body was accustomed to. I thought of going back to my guru in December, but I was scared.
I was confident that in the next semester I will loose the extra kilos and decided to go back to her in summer. But destiny had it otherwise. I feel terribly ill, spent days at the hospital, and by the time I was hail and hearty again after various protein supplements, I was already 15 kilos heavier than what I used to be. There was absolutely no way I could go back to her. For somewhere deep down there I knew that the hushed voices that I have ignored throughout my life were correct somehow. My existence as a dancer in my institution was defined by the size and shape of my body, of how I looked, of whether I fitted the bill of the list of gunas enlisted in the Natyashastra, which by then I had already read. I tried one last time, out of guilt, out of nostalgia to get back to Bharatanatyam. At the end of my Masters programme I decided to do a MPA (Master of Performing Arts) at HCU. I got in touch with my guru's son for a reference letter and it promptly arrived. I was spared the embarrassment of speaking to her, of answering why I didn't meet her for two years. I was by then already selected for a position in Thomson Reuters. And I saw the list of awardees of the degree in the past years. They were names of upper-caste Hindu women and men, all of them. I knew my caste-position had the sanction into that pure haven, but ideologically I was too far removed. Then there was the lure of money, of a 'room of one's own'. I never managed to dispatch the application. But corporate life saw me more on stage, organizing events than EFLU ever did. I moved to experimental dance theatres, thanks to a colleague, who had just the right amount of enthusiasm and madness that I once had about "creating something new". But no amount of freedom of dancing around or no amount of money could retain me in the corporate world for I had been bitten by the bug of journalism. I wanted to do something "meaningful" but the next one year at TOI took me as far away from dance as possible.
Now I am back, as an academic researching into the relation of dance with cinema. For my project I am closely critiquing all that I had considered a Gospel Truth all my life as a dancer. And as far as I am concerned, with all my fat and with all my heart, I am still a dancer and forever will remain so. Even though my guru insulted me in the worst way possible. Even though she turned down an invitation to my wedding and all my apologies. Even though she thinks "anyone can do a PhD, but very few can dance".With utmost respect with all that I have learnt from her, I shall stand firmly on my belief, echoing the Pravu Deva cliche: Any 'Body' Can Dance, for all you need for that is the will to dance. It is all in our mind. But what she has made me realize is the deep-rooted problem in the very pedagogy of dance whereby a power structure is imposed from above, a disciplinary regime to which your body has but no choice to submit. I refuse to be a part of such a formulaic pedagogic project for myself as well as for my future generations. Unless the disciplined dancing body is made free of the burden of this power structure (which manifests itself in various things, one among which is the unquestionable authority of the guru), no dance can emerge from within. One needs to dance within, before one dances with-out. One has to take ownership of one's body and not submit it to the existing power structures, within the dance classes and outside it. Only then shall one's dance cease to be a "copy" and emerge as an expression of one's own feeling.
It was only in my 6th year at the dance class that I was discovered by a neighbor, who had been a Bharatanatyam dancer, then married with a kid, but still pursuing her love for dance through teaching neighbourhood kids dances for local annual function. She inspired me, encouraged me, showed me the right way to hold the hands straight, with elbows up by the two sides of my head. It was a turning point in my life. She corrected my postures which mind you, for five years, I had all wrong. Most importantly she did not have the wooden stick which my dance teacher used interchangeably as an instrument to beat against her chair to keep the beat and as a tool to be thrown directly at the ankles of erring students if they had their 'Ayata' (half-sitting posture with knees bent to the sides) wrong. She also did not have her long nails, which with all sincerity of a teacher, she dug into the forearm of the students who dared to stand in the first row or were unfortunately not tall enough to escape it when they failed to perform up to the mark (a practice which she might have inherited from her teacher). In a month, my position from behind the pillar, had shifted to the first row. I was suddenly noticed by my dance teacher, awarded the central position in the front, and closely watched for any wrong moves. For the next two years I was beaten and verbally abused regularly (all out of love and sincerity of a good teacher towards her student of course) and was left with a perennial knee problem from stamping my feet too hard so as to make a sound every time the feet tapped the floor beneath it. But I didn't mind for what also came with it was a confidence that I could one day become a good dancer.
Soon enough came the turn for the annual function for my dance school, the only time in the year, we would face the real 'guru', who was responsible for the brand name I carry till date (since I was part of an ancillary branch of the reputed institution). Till my 7th year in the dance class, I had always managed to escape this ordeal, making up excuses about studies to vacations to sprained ankles. And of course there always was the question of money, for these annual functions were money making rackets where students not only had to bear a participation fee but also hire/buy costumes and jewelry. I despised the very idea of burdening my father who had to feed seven mouths in a joint family doing night shifts for weeks (although for him the excuse of 'studies' mattered more than anything else!) But this was the first time I was to make an exception and meet my guru. I had seen her hardly five times in the entire course of 7 years of training but my only memory of her was that she was sweet and beautiful. And yes, she would not beat us in those rarely-spaced meetings. So I faced her. She noticed me. She called my mother, gave a long lecture on the value of regular dance practice and said, "She can do it, she has it in her.". My mother was glowing that day. The mother of my friend who had kindly given us a lift till the main branch (located at the other end of the city) refused to talk to us and left with her daughter. I was elated. My teacher was happy. The next day at the programme she did my hair and make up. A senior drew my eyes. I stood at the front row facing the audience. Dewy eyed, I did my best. I had become a Bharatanatyam dancer. It was a new beginning. I blocked out all the hushed up talks in the green room about how it was my looks and not my dance which got me this attention. I brushed them aside as words of envy.
My mother, following my guru's advice, started crossing hurdles (of family, of monetary restrictions, of her fear of city roads and buses) and taking me to the other end of the city for dance classes. I started representing my guru's institution in small functions. I took extra lessons from my teacher at her home. I slogged, I toiled, I sacrificed friends and little joys of adolescence. I got my first costume made. White with a maroon border. My first set of Bharatanatyam jewelry came. I no longer needed to borrow them from rich classmates. I was in Class X. Boards were approaching when my Guru first uttered that magic dream word: Arangetram. But it was not possible. I took a break for two months. The last day of my boards when the world went out for movies, dates, sleepovers, restaurants and amusement parks, I went straight to dance class, only to hear how I had put on weight. I was sad, depressed but determined to shed those extra kilos. So it began again. Hours of practice, at home, at the dance class. In two months I was back in shape. I got my second costume. My mother's wedding saree, an aqua blue Benarasi. The best costume designer in town, also a guru in his own right, turned it into a dress like nothing I had seen before. It was a wrap around saree costume which accentuated my petite body perfectly, the fan at the side caressing my thighs lovingly. I performed at the Geeta Jayanti Utsav with two others. 'Dashavataram'. My guru's youngest son told my mother how it was inappropriate to wear an unique costume like that in a group dance. Lesson in group ethics learnt. With a small gap for the Class XII boards, I was back in the loop. This time, as a prestigious member of the famed dance troupe which represented my institution across the world, My role was tiny, I was to stand around the nayika with a veena in my hand. A blink and miss appearance within a dance drama that lasted over an hour. But it was the most prestigious hall in the city and I was a member of the most prestigious troupe. I was on the top of the world. The hushed tones came back talking about my beauty and my guru's partial attitude towards pretty students. But I was too confident of my talent which by then had found recognition in all school fests. I brushed them aside, once again, as petty jealousy.
Soon I found myself travelling with the troupe, my role increasing by bits in every show. The magic word was spoken again: Arangetram. This time, my parents, now out of the binds of the joint family and relatively well off financially didn't shy away. It was to be the biggest event of their life until then--a three-hour long solo performance by their daughter in a hall where people will only come to watch her dance. Again new costumes made-- a red one and a pink for the two halves of the show. My guru was training me personally for a year, even composing an item exclusively for me--Navarasam, choreographed to events from Ramayana. I forgot there could be a life beyond dance. I rehearsed for 12-14 hours a day. On the day of the photo shoot, my guru brought out all her jewelry and personally attended to my process of getting ready. Her best disciple, also known for her skills as a make up artist, did my make up. Temple jewelry came from Chennai, so did a band of musicians who charged quarter of a lakh. The cards were printed and my parents visited all friends and relatives, as if it was my wedding, they said. The newspapers printed the event notifications a week in advance. My father managed to get a sponsorship of a billboard right in a bustling junction. Just then, my guru's husband died. No one had seen this coming. All hell broke loose. The programme was doomed. All the money was to go down the drain (It had costed about a lakh, probably a sum total of my parents' savings then). Let us not even talk about the loss of face. Just then an angel arrived. My guru's best friend from abroad, she said: "The show must go on." Facing criticisms from all corners, my guru gave a green signal. The South Indian community in Calcutta boycotted the event. But it happened. It was magical. For the next one year, raving reviews of the show appeared in the print media. My guru, addressing the press, called me one of her most favourite disciples. People compared me to some of the best alumni of the institution. Some said, I didn't dance well, it was all because I was beautiful. Once again, I laughed at their green faces and moved on. There was no looking back. I traveled with the troupe for the next one year, the last year I was to spend in Calcutta. I performed in the most prestigious dance festivals, sometimes behind my guru's back, to avoid 'buying' songs from her, to allow myself the pleasure of choreographing to the new musical pieces the internet had just started offering. For I was getting bored. Bored of performing the same items over and over again. Bored of a set choreography. Bored of talks surrounding my weight-gain post Arangetram (although I distinctly remember weighing around 45 kgs then!), the round shape of my face, my inability to draw the eyes in the same way every time. And I was getting restless, to break the mold, to break the set conceptions of beauty, to break the system of having to pay 50-70 thousand rupee from one's own pocket in order to perform the same old items abroad.
Then EFLU happened. I left in an evening's notice. I didn't get time to inform my guru before I left. I called soon enough. She referred me to a great Kuchipudi guru here. I went, saw her break the coconut, offer puja to the Nataraja, and take me under her tutelage. I started learning a new dance form. Everyone was happy. I was slim, I was beautiful and I was sick. I was depressed. I was learning to adjust myself to a new-found freedom. My lifestyle was changing. My food habits were changing. My thought processes were changing. In class, I was reading Virginia Woolf, Simone De Beauvoir, critiques of Manusmriti. Outside class, I was discovering Ambedkar, Foucault, Butler. The myths were breaking. My beliefs were falling apart. On the roads I was struggling to grapple with questions of caste and class, of Dalit activism and the Left movements. Tearful nights and fiery days were spent defending my position on dance--that I dance for myself and not for others. All in vein. The last shelf on the left corner of the library spoke otherwise. I discovered that my classical dance was not so classical after all. I read about the anti-nautch movement, the establishment of Kalakshetra, the politics of creation of a national dance form. I realized the violence I have unknowingly inflicted every time, when playing the Vamana Avatara to perfection, I raised my feet high and pushed a Mahabali down. I understood the privileges of the Kasavu sari which I draped every year, while performing Thiruvathira. After all this, was I to go back to my Kuchipudi classes? In the time that I lost in the meanwhile, I had put on some weight. The initial effects of bad metabolism, undisciplined lifestyle and sudden stopping of the regular physical exercise my body was accustomed to. I thought of going back to my guru in December, but I was scared.
I was confident that in the next semester I will loose the extra kilos and decided to go back to her in summer. But destiny had it otherwise. I feel terribly ill, spent days at the hospital, and by the time I was hail and hearty again after various protein supplements, I was already 15 kilos heavier than what I used to be. There was absolutely no way I could go back to her. For somewhere deep down there I knew that the hushed voices that I have ignored throughout my life were correct somehow. My existence as a dancer in my institution was defined by the size and shape of my body, of how I looked, of whether I fitted the bill of the list of gunas enlisted in the Natyashastra, which by then I had already read. I tried one last time, out of guilt, out of nostalgia to get back to Bharatanatyam. At the end of my Masters programme I decided to do a MPA (Master of Performing Arts) at HCU. I got in touch with my guru's son for a reference letter and it promptly arrived. I was spared the embarrassment of speaking to her, of answering why I didn't meet her for two years. I was by then already selected for a position in Thomson Reuters. And I saw the list of awardees of the degree in the past years. They were names of upper-caste Hindu women and men, all of them. I knew my caste-position had the sanction into that pure haven, but ideologically I was too far removed. Then there was the lure of money, of a 'room of one's own'. I never managed to dispatch the application. But corporate life saw me more on stage, organizing events than EFLU ever did. I moved to experimental dance theatres, thanks to a colleague, who had just the right amount of enthusiasm and madness that I once had about "creating something new". But no amount of freedom of dancing around or no amount of money could retain me in the corporate world for I had been bitten by the bug of journalism. I wanted to do something "meaningful" but the next one year at TOI took me as far away from dance as possible.
Now I am back, as an academic researching into the relation of dance with cinema. For my project I am closely critiquing all that I had considered a Gospel Truth all my life as a dancer. And as far as I am concerned, with all my fat and with all my heart, I am still a dancer and forever will remain so. Even though my guru insulted me in the worst way possible. Even though she turned down an invitation to my wedding and all my apologies. Even though she thinks "anyone can do a PhD, but very few can dance".With utmost respect with all that I have learnt from her, I shall stand firmly on my belief, echoing the Pravu Deva cliche: Any 'Body' Can Dance, for all you need for that is the will to dance. It is all in our mind. But what she has made me realize is the deep-rooted problem in the very pedagogy of dance whereby a power structure is imposed from above, a disciplinary regime to which your body has but no choice to submit. I refuse to be a part of such a formulaic pedagogic project for myself as well as for my future generations. Unless the disciplined dancing body is made free of the burden of this power structure (which manifests itself in various things, one among which is the unquestionable authority of the guru), no dance can emerge from within. One needs to dance within, before one dances with-out. One has to take ownership of one's body and not submit it to the existing power structures, within the dance classes and outside it. Only then shall one's dance cease to be a "copy" and emerge as an expression of one's own feeling.
