Recovering lost saints

Culture is fundamental.

A decade or so ago, I wanted nothing more than to be a dancer when I grew up. I was three when I started learning it, was on stage since maybe five, had grown my hair out, learn a varnam or two. I dreamt of dance then. I haven’t danced in almost 8 years now. I am simply mildly amused when someone says they cannot imagine me dancing.

So it was, when I sat to watch Ray’s short documentary on the legendary Balasaraswathi, when after reading Desiraju’s biography on MS, I realised I had never watched her. In the last fifteen minutes, she dances to a padam and a varnam. She is dancing at a sea-shore, the poor picture quality barely capturing her abhinaya but at least transmitting the sharpness of her steps from over forty years ago. Slowly, it came. My teacher’s instructions to always, always finish my thirmaana-adavus, my mother correcting my leaning arms held outstretched at the sides, constantly making sure that my feet aren’t wide apart in ‘two different cities.’ I don’t even know where my sallangai is, but I could feel them upon my ankles — the weight of the leather, the ancient ring of new bells, my anxiety that the sallangais would get caught with each other on stage.

Perhaps all old loves are like this, showing up in unanticipated ways at your doorstep. Maybe its while listening to Lalgudi, or when there is a sudden urge to extend the eyeliner wing longer than usual. You are overwhelmed by it, not by the intensity of it, but by the fact that, that this love that you thought had all sapped out of you, exists at all. You first had convulsions at its loss, but then, in the dust of your everyday, you thought it had shrunk, forgotten and unnourished, replaced by newer, shinier objects of affection. But it finds a way, to haunt you, to assure you that the things you love will always make your life worth living.