Remembering Maami.

The Pizzeria smelt delightfully sweet against the traffic chaos outside. It was drizzling and I was in excellent spirits. Grey weather. My friend was rather preoccupied. I am usually a listener with the strong and silent types. Honestly, I felt I should be in a pub at this time, with some thudding music blaring in my ears. Last time we danced, when was it? That was almost a month ago. Yeah. Sadly, this friend of mine is a teeto’taller. “I LOVE dancing, you know.” I said. He was amused. “You look too homely for dancing!” he observed. I protested. All these stereotypes. You look homely, you shouldn’t be dancing. Oh the womanist that I am. Some argument followed and we decided to order.

I learnt Bharathanatyam since I was four. I remember the dance teacher. She was a skinny lady with incredibly large, kohl-lined eyes. I guess she was a wanderer. She stayed in a place where she could teach the art for a while and moved on after training a batch of girls. I was lucky to be one of her disciples. We just called her ‘Maami’. She was very strict when it came to dancing. Tucking her ‘pallu’ into the waistline of her saree, she would go around the room demonstrating how the particular step should be performed. We missed and swoosh, a rap on our legs with a lean stick would follow. At times I detested her for punishing us but no one dared question her. She was not the ‘Maami’ we knew during our leisure time. This one was a different woman. She was Raadha, She was Meera, she was Gopika, She was a Shilaabaalika, She was Durga, She was Shiva, She was Parvathi. She transformed when she was dancing. Her large eyes would widen, be happy, sad, angry, in love, hurt..anything. We would watch her, mesmerized.

Maami had a daughter. She was a dusky girl about my age. We called her ‘Amba’. I used to envy her long, dark hair. She had good features but did not look like her mother. Maami had trained her well. Amba outsmarted us in any performance but we admired her for her grace and agility. We were amateurs and never could stand upto Amba who had been trained since she learned to walk! The mother-daughter duo lived in a rented house in the outskirts and no one saw Maami’s husband around. He never visited them and she always refrained from talking about her marital life.

After teaching us basic Bharathanatyam and some dance numbers, Maami decided to move.  It was her second year in the village and she wanted to go away before people got too familiar. Many of her disciples were heartbroken. In a village like ours, it was the only creative thing that had kept their spirits alive. I remember them crying during her departure. I stood there, too young to understand. I was confused whether I should cry or not. The tears refused to show. Amba took my hands into hers and said something. I looked at her and smiled.

After Maami, there were many other teachers but not one of them was a female. We failed to connect as we were too shy to be expressive with them. Besides, none of them had Maami’s depth and rapture. Gradually, I moved out of my place for college. Western dance, in it’s more un-inhibited, free form seemed more attractive to me. I loved bollywood dancing too, with all it’s Jhatkas and Matkas. Whenever we heard good music, our bodies automatically swayed. Whenever I danced with my heart, I remembered Maami. Maybe the form was different, maybe there was lack of structure in my dance, but we both connected. At times I have experienced a joy which I never felt in doing anything else, while dancing. Maami must have felt the same thing…

…For a change, I was chattering away. My friend was listening and appeared to be glad. I told him about my daughter’s tribal-style dancing and he was in splits. The mouthwatering pizza arrived and we got busy with our knives and forks.

 

Pic courtesy: www.absolutearts.com