Agony and Ecstasy of a Dancer

Agony and Ecstasy of a Dancer

The illustrous lineage goes back to the remote past. To Meluskar, a sleepy village in Bikaner, where a young lad, Jankai Prasad, caught the eye of queen Rani Neruka with his playful dance movements on logs floating on the river. She took him under her tutelage, guiding him to compose 108 raas compositions. When he went on to study the Vedas at Benares, he selected a set of syllables from Samaveda and adapted them into his dance. They began to be called natwari bol. And to this day, these 12 compositions form the foundation of the Benares gharana. Jankai Prasad's work was carried foward by Pt Gopal, who was often scoffed at for consciously keeping away from the pale of society.

His disciple, Ashiq Hussain, went on to make a name for himself with his film roles and the choreography. When the maverick Pt Gopal refused to teach him till he "became Hindu," Hussain tattooed `Jyoti Prasad' on his arm and would throw away his footwear before the train he travelled on reached Mathura, the land of Lord Krishna and complete his onward journey barefoot. Pt Gopal had to relent. "Pt Gopal would make him practice, while he moved a thick cane on the floor," giggles Sunayana, "one slight mistake in timing, a slight touch of the foot to the cane and it would come swishing down on his feet." Ashiq Hussain's handsome countenance, sartorial elegance and deer-like grace made him a phenomenon in Kathak.

Sunayana painfully recounts that Hussain decided to migrate to Pakistan in 1947, virtually shattered by the riots. "He called his favourite disciple, Hazarilal, for a final farewell session to London Bar at Lamington Road and in course of a long, emotional session -- egged on by many bottles of beer -- gave him his final lesson," she narrates. Hussain never danced in Pakistan and died a miserable man in 1963.

Hazarilal carried on with this legacy and was to meet the 17-yr-old niece of former Prime Minister, Morarjee Desai, Sunyana, while choreographing an annual-day dance session for her school. "I had never seen anyone dance as gracefully, and immediately made up my mind to train under him," Sunayna recalls. "Despite family opposition, I continued learning and went on to fall in love with him." Against much odds, the couple decided to tie the knot. Due to the absence of anyone else, Balraj Sahni did the kanyadaan during the wedding.

Of the social opprobrium, coupled with emotional and financial hardship the couple endured, Sunayna says: "I think it is a curse to be a dancer. I never recommend it to anyone." From being the gems of the courts of Kapurthala, Nepal, Jammu, Indore, Bikaner, Patiala and Betiah, the exponents of the Benares gharana suddenly found themselves without any patron. "We did not even have enough tutions and would always worry where the next meal was coming from. Now I wonder how we survived," she recalls. Perhaps it was this trauma that led Sunayna to ensure that her son grew away from them. "Today, he is an engineer and I am glad he will never have to endure what we had to," she admits.

But her pride in the fact that she and her husband never resorted to gimmickry to promote their art, hasn't waned. "We preserved our unique heritage even when we went hungry," she reminds, somewhat sorely poiting out how it has largely remained unsung. "I don't care about awards and titles, but it hurts a lot when one does not receive the gratitude of the dance community."

The purity of the repertoire of the gharana set to compostions in Hindi, Punjabi and Brijbhasha, further enhanced by the addtion of tappas by Hussain, Maharaj Krishna Kumar bringing in the minimalist netrabhinaya, and Sunayana taking over from her guru, Pt Hazarilal -- all these transitions added an intellectualism seldom seen in Kathak. And which found potent expression when Sunayna moved from the Natwari segment to the Nayika segment during her performance. A rare storehouse of talent indeed.