January 24, 2022 10:30:11 am
The guru with his shishyas. (Courtesy: Aditi Mangaldas) Kathak came to me from Kumiben (Kathak exponent Kumudini Lakhia) when I was growing up in Ahmedabad. She was also close friends with Pandit Birju Maharaj ji. I must have been seven or eight years old when he visited us and transformed an evening with his baithak in our house. An entire night passed in the blink of an eye. He performed till six in the morning, and would often say, if you performed till morning, it was a successful evening.
Later, I’d meet him whenever I accompanied Kumiben to Delhi. She was teaching at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra then. I’d sit in Maharaj ji’s class, just to observe. At 22, with my guru’s blessings, and on my Delhi-based aunt activist-writer Pupul Jayakar’s goading, I moved to the national capital. My aunt said, “he (Maharaj ji) is the mouth of the river from which Kathak is flowing.” It was magical as I was to find out.
Six years at Kathak Kendra, I observed him. He’d dance, play the tabla, sing, compose poetry, paint, observe nature, sound and rhythm, regale us with jokes, baithaks, travel stories from world festivals. I’d study his emotion, expression, the complete immersion — every minute observation assimilated into his being — from which a profound piece would emerge. He was an ocean whose depth one could not fathom. With him, learning wasn’t restricted to the classroom, it was a way of life.
As for me, I was the black sheep, who always questioned things. Here too, I questioned — an attempt to find my own contemporary vocabulary, of course with Kathak as the foundation. I moved out and decided to do my own work. He understood my compulsion. On Guru Purnima, some years ago, he warmly said to me, “Arre tum Kathak hi naacho na (Why don’t you just dance Kathak?)”. I laughed.
Pandit Birju Maharaj with Aditi Mangaldas. (Courtesy: Aditi Mangaldas) Watching Maharaj ji perform has been transformative. While his art was handed down to him by his family, he transformed what he received. His honesty would reflect in his art and his lessons. Once he told me: while dancing, you make your mouth move like the backside of a constipated horse. I was 22 or 23, and was really upset. But years later, I’d realise how astutely he’d noticed it. It’s still my drawback. A few years ago, when I performed for his birthday, he came backstage and said, “Pura hungama thha. Par woh halka hawa ka jhonka kahan thha? (It brought the house down, but where was the lightness of the being?),” It’s these little instances where transformations happen. For movement you need stillness, and he was asking me for it.
In 2019, he was quite unwell and I went to see him in the hospital. Even with all those tubes in place, he was sitting upright and regaling the nurse with his tihais. Right then I knew, the world of dance was his oxygen, it gave him the strength to breathe. And, that is what he always asked from us.
Kathak exponent Aditi Mangaldas heads the Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation, Delhi
As told to Suanshu Khurana
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