Sripriya, Sridhar and Anitha Rathnam

Another shocking topic? Another marketing gimmick? Yes, for sure. For I want to get this across to as many ILites as possible and have to resort to some promotional measures for a good cause.

Beautiful Moderators, you wont have a chance to even move the mouse by a millimeter to issue infractions to your dear Varalotti. For this thread is going to be as clean as clean can be.

(Another clarification: when I mean beautiful moderators I do mean all of you Mobs. One Moderator sent a pm to me telling that as I keep on addressing Beautiful Moderators, she feels kind of left out. Why don’t you drop the adjective, Sridhar, she asked. I replied that she IS beautiful as all moderators are. As all ILites are. So I am going to stick to my guns, sorry, my way of addressing)

My niece’s dance arangetram was on 14<SUP>th</SUP> July. I came to Chennai for that and as an added bonanza had the chance to meet the two great ILites on that day. C1 and C2. Enough has been written about that wonderful meeting.

I wanted to announce the details of Arangetram of my niece Ms.Amrita Varshini and invite all the ILites to the programme. I was not sure about the propriety of using the forum for such a purpose; I was not sure whether it might be construed as a kind of self-promotion. Hence I had to deny myself that pleasure.

First I did not want to write about the function either. But after seeing the performance and after having some wonderful experience which transformed me for the better and after seeing some incontrovertible evidence in support of my heroine Shalini of SHE, I could not help posting a short account of what happened on that day.

If I promote my niece because she is my niece, that is nepotism. But if I do not report about her talents only because she is my niece, then that is reverse nepotism, which is at least as bad as nepotism, if not worse.

I was assigned to head the Reception Committee and promptly occupied the strategic seat in the main entrance to Naradha Gana Sabha main hall where the performance was held.

The auditorium had a capacity of 768 seats (I did the counting physically because another person “guesstimated” that there are 2000 seats. Only to counter him I did the row and column counting and arrive at the exact figure. (Moral of the story for the other man: Never challenge an accountant on anything connected with ‘figures’)

When the performance started at 6:45 pm there were not even 150 people in the hall. It was raining outside. My sister-in-law, the artist’s mother was in tears. I told her not to worry, things would take care of by themselves. Slowly people started to walk in – in singles, in groups, in gangs, in formations. By half past seven the auditorium was almost full. I was happy, thanked God and went in to see the dance.

Varsha, as my niece is known to us, was dancing with an effortless grace. Even while performing the most difficult movements the smile never left her face. And when she started showing the bhavas, she made us laugh, cry, shake in fear and freeze in shock. A lady came and sat near me. I was a little shy.

The lady told me in the gap between two numbers: “They have lied. This is not this girl’s debut. She looks like a seasoned artist.” That was about the best compliment I have heard about the girl’s performance.

My brother (he is also a CA working for a software company) and his wife did not take the short cut route to arangetram. The girl was trained by her present Guru Ms.Urmila for 5 years continuously for this debut show. No wonder she did well.

A dance show is much more of a team work than a cricket match. The person who sang and who did the choreography had done his homework perfectly well. In fact at one point his beautiful voice and his soulful rendering of the song proved to be a distraction.

 

But three things did hit me and left me spellbound, transforming me for ever and ever.

First was the performance of the Flautist Sashidhar. He was a visually challenged man. But he challenged the limits of flute music. In between two items, when the artist was getting ready, he was playing the raga for the next number in his instrument.

In that darkness, in that silence, in that blind man’s fingers, in the sound waves they produced, I could see the blue-eyed Lord dancing to his sweet tunes. Lord Krishna, who himself is an artist par excellence, whom all the Vedas could not reach, whom years of penance could not melt was out there listening to the rendering with rapt attention.

The Lord left his thousands of Gopikas behind to be there with us to hear the flautist. I would rather do a hundred years of penance to be born in my next birth as the bamboo tree from which flutes are made so that I have a fair chance of being made into a flute which the likes of Sashidar may use.

The other two things concern the Chief Guests of the function and provide justification to the title I have given to this thread. The actress of erstwhile years, Ms.Sripriya and the noted dancer, Ms.Anitha Rathnam were the Chief Guests.

When Sripriya was invited to the dais to speak, I was not very hopeful. I just pretended to be respectful and attentive. But she stole my heart with her profound thoughts. She told us that for a woman her marriage is something like the famous Kargil Border.

And once she crosses the border she goes into the alien territory and leaves everything behind – not only her parents, her home and relatives but also the arts she has learnt till then, at times even her career so far. She insisted that the dancer, my niece, has to pay a Gurudakshina to her dedicated Guru. It was not money. It has to be a promise to continue to dance even after marriage. To sustain the dancer in her even she dons the roles of a housewife or a mother.

Next to floor me was Anitha Rathnam. She spoke on the criteria for career selection. She told us in simple words that we now judge ourselves and our lives by what we own – our cars, houses, money et al. That is the reason many dancers soon after their Arangetram go back to their studies, to their physics, maths, biology, plus two, IT, software, secure jobs, monthly salaries and the rest.

She emphasized that we should shift the focus from what we own to what we can give to the society. Our culture was at is peak when we think of what we can give; when we think of what we can own, that is the decline of culture and reversing an evolutionary growth which nature took several thousands of years to attain.

I saluted the two great women. I went to them and congratulated them for their speech which made us all think and look deeper into ourselves.
And now comes the crucial point, Ladies.

These two ladies have lost much in their lives. Their marriages were not happy; they were in and out of several relationships. One is going through a messy divorce. Happy is not the word which you would use in the same sentence when you describe the lives of these women. These women did not go behind “happily lived thereafter” lives.

They rather went in search of their identities and from their matured, balanced, profound speech I have a strong suspicion that they have found them. That gives them the authority to advise others and that makes their advice so wonderful.

My heroine Shalini (of SHE)is at present involved in a similar search. In about four weeks time you can invite her to preside over Arangetrams and marriages and she is sure to give words of real, practical wisdom. But I am not sure about happiness in her life – if you give happiness its conventional meaning.

 

My God, AGR, you mean to say that you are my brother's colleague? Did you see me there in Arangetram? Why didn't you say hello to me?
regards,