Dance Like a Man

Monday, November 30, 2009

Accoding to Linda Goodman, every Libran woman has a man in her and every Libran man has a woman in him. Normally I prefer not to take her too seriously because she makes some unflattering remarks about us. I have always had this theory that a Libran probably stole some boyfriend of hers! I also have a theory that the boyfriend was probably Aquarian! Well...in any case...I hope she is right in this case. I am currently in the process of bringing out the male side of me.

No... it is NOT what you think (I have no idea what you are thinking....but considering the current times, it is definitely something scandalous!)

I have a dance performance on December 19th wherein I am performing in a dance drama as a male character.

Even though I have perfomed several historical and mytholoical parts in my life, I have not had a chance to play a male character before this. Considering the fact that I need shoes with at least half inch heels to call myself a five footer, you cannot blame anyone for not giving me such roles. Unless you are playing 'Snow White and Seven Dwarfs', that is!

So now I am getting a chance and I am playing a king - the father of Kaikeyi. The dance drama we are doing tries to portray Kaikayi of Ramayana in a different light. It tries to bring out the reasons behind Kaikeyi's actions and portrays her as a good person in spite of her actions. So I play the part of her father who is quite unique considering the fact that during the times when girls were brought up with the sole intention of catching a good husband, he brought up his daughter in such a way that she does not need a man in her life and can take care of herself. He had incurred a curse that his daughter will lose her husband and that too due to her own actions. Fearful of her future, he teaches her weaponry and charioteering instead of music and dance to make her a bold woman.

It is interesting and challenging to do the role as there is a chance to portray different feelings - affection for the daughter, fear for her future, guilt that his actions will cause pain for his daughter, pride in her achievements, shrewdness to ensure he gets a good deal for his daughter when Dasharatha asks for her hand in marriage etc. The music and choreography is quite lovely too.

But the toughest part is to get the male body language...stop being graceful and become aggressive, proud and majestic. Stop being the mother and start becoming the father.

But I am having fun!

On bells and diyas....

Monday, October 26, 2009

'Amma...you know... M has a Gujarati family staying next door who are always disturbing everyone' said my daughter one day last week. I settled down to listen to her story. M is her classmate, busmate and close friend. She explained that the smoke from the diya they lit for Diwali caused the fire alarm to ring. I laughed and said such things happen. Then she says that according to M, even during Ramadan, they will do their morning prayers with bells ringing and disturb others.

I stopped laughing. I realised where this was coming from. Some stray comments M's parents have let fall about their neighbours and their religious practices have been picked up by the kid and is being passed around. It upset me.

Now, I am one of those people who lights the lamp in my makeshift puja corner only twice or thrice a year...for onam, vishu and navarathri. And the apple I kept for Puja for Navrathri is still there because I have not gone back there since. But I did not like this! I felt uncomfortable that there is so much intolerance in people and what upset me was that the children are repeating it and discussing it.

So whether it was warranted or not, I gave my daughter a long lecture about freedom of religion, secularism and tolerance. I told her that praying to God is good in whatever way it is done. Each person has a different way of praying to God. Some sing hymns, some do puja ringing bells, some go to temple/mosque/church and pray. I said that no one has the right to stop another person from having their own beliefs and their own way of prayer. I said if the ringing of bell can be called troublesome, so can the church bells and the prayer calls from the mosques. But in actual fact, they are just different ways of praying to the same God. If everyone just lets everyone else be, the world will be a much better place.

I hoped she would go and repeat what I said to her friend.

Probably I overreacted to a small incident but what bugged me was the fact that thoughts like this are being planted in the minds of small children. Parents do not realise that stray comments or opinions they pass can create a lasting impact in the mind of small children.

It just brought back to me all over again the tremendous responsibility of being a parent!

Much ado about nothing!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

This blog entry is being written at gun point. Nancy has
threatened to take me off her blogroll if I do not update.
She seems to have taken unkindly to cobwebs on her blogroll.
Now being terrified of being taken off one of the most popular blogs around,
I am forced to write this entry.

I am not stupid. I don't want to be deprived of a chance
of getting new readers every day without writing
anything!!!

Well...that said, I must really apologise to the
few nice people who read and seem to like what
I write.

I haven't written not because nothing interesting
has happened to me. It has been a combination of
work, travel and most of all lack of topics to
write about.

See...I still haven't got a clue what I want to write
about!

Well, I made a beginning and got out of the inertia. Now will put up
that long pending post along with colours about my visit to her place.
Or maybe I'll write about my new blackberry! :D

Overhauled...at the workshop!

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Usually, I have my laptop connected, switched on and logged in throughout the weekend. There are several reasons for this. For one, my offshore counterparts
in Chennai are working on Fridays and might send me mails or need me for some clarifications over Gtalk. For another, I can chat with friends, read blogs and
I have something to do when the TV is conquered by the hubby watching cricket.

This weekend, I did not even take the laptop out of the bag. I did not have time!

I was attending a dance workshop on Friday and Saturday and I literally feel overhauled! I felt all my spare parts coming off but the whole experience has
left me energized and maybe I have some extra years added to my life.

For the uninitiated, the students of dance often have workshops and lecdems (lecture demonstrations). A lecdem is where a senior artiste (along with his/her students) gives a lecture with demonstrations on some topic related to dance. The participants just listen. A workshop is where each person attending also participates. Usually, a complete new 'item' is taught during the workshop and the Audio CD, Video CD and written material is shared with the participants.

This workshop was conducted by the UAE chapter of ABHAI(Association of Bharatanatyam artists of India). While ABHAI has been active for more than a year now in Dubai, this was their debut workshop. And as a participant, I must say that it was a great success.

It was a small scale one as the organizers did not know how good the response would be. We had 15 participants which they felt was pretty good for a debut workshop. It was a good mix of teachers and senior students. The workshop was from 3 to 5 pm on Friday and Saturday.

The workshop was conducted by Ms. Anjana Ganesh, one of the popular Bharatnatyam teachers in Dubai who is herself the student of Sri. Narasimhachari and Smt.Vasanthalakshmi. She taught us a 'padam' composed by Sri. Madurai R Muralidharan for which she herself had done the choreography.

A padam is a short and lyrical item in bharatnatyam. The essence of a padam is usually sringara (romance) or bhakti (devotion). This one was a devotional peice about Lord Ganesha - Omkara Vadivam. It is a beautiful composition. The choreography was neither too complicated nor too simple. It was easy to learn but really fast with complex rhythm patterns and footwork which meant that you can perfect it only with practice.

It was a complete item starting with a virutham (a slow verse sung in praise of the Lord),followed by pallavi, anupallavi and charanam.Both anupallavi and charanam ended with a swaram. We had to learn the whole thing in the 4 hours.

It was fun to learn in such a group - new people with different backgrounds, styles and teachers.It was challenging to learn quickly. It was enriching to add a new beautiful item to our repository.

At the end of the second day, we were given the audio CD. At the end of the second day, we were given written material and also a certificate of participation.

Regarding the video CD which we were to be given to enable us to refer later, the organizers had this bright idea. They decided that they will make the participants perform and record. So they took the video in 3 parts with 3 sets of people. They will be sending us the video for our future reference.

Performing for the video was the most challenging part. Though none of us had it perfect and all of us made mistakes, we still managed.

It also made me realize that I had lot of parts on my body that I never knew existed before. Thank God for my very own personal masseur at home ;-D

The Making Of......

Friday, May 8, 2009

It has been some time since I did any proper blogging.

It hasn't been for the lack of interesting things happening with me. Except for a slight lull on the work front as a natural result of the recession, things have been good.

Weekdays are a mix of busy and boring days depending on the work. The financial year that ended in March was good as our team over achieved the target and we received lot of appreciation for the work from the head office. My name has been mentioned in all the right places. So even though I don't expect any personal benefit to happen out of it, it is still good to see results for your work.

Weekends have been full of creative pursuits. Dance classes are on full swing and I can't explain how much I'm enjoying those. Apart from that, I have been lucky to play a part, albeit small, in the creation of something beautiful.

My husband and his brother are talented musicians. Though both of them haven't really had formal training in music, my husband is a good singer and his brother plays the harmonium and the key board. They have lived and breathed bhajans all their life. So recently, my BIL decided to give form to his lifelong dream - of composing his own music and bringing out a CD.

So it all started with him composing a few bhajans of his own.

He has a small recording studio in his house in Abu dhabi and he would compose songs and then call up my husband, play it over the phone and discuss it with him. We were quite impressed by the music he churned out and so we also got quite excited about the CD idea.

Though most of bhajans were composed with lyrics, I did get a chance to help out in a few of them with the lyrics. It was really interesting, to say the least.

Soon, he had a set of nice new bhajans to which he added a few rare, traditional ones and made up a list for the CD. The plan was for my husband and some of their friends in the bhajan group here in Dubai to lend their voices.

The B was of the opinion that if it is done, it has to be done the right way. So the next step was to get someone to do the orchestration, sound programming and recording. He thought of a cousin back home in India who is a professional in the field. Soon we were recording tracks of all the songs and sending it to him to work on. There is no way I can explain the amount of communication that used to happen every day. I'll just say that Du got a lot of good business.

So the cousin would do the orchestration (using the keyboard) and send us songs which would go back and forth till the B was completely satisfied. He knew exactly what he wanted in each song of his and there was so much creativity around that I was just watching in amazement. I had never imagined the amount of work that goes into the making of one single song...

Once the music was finalized, the cousin was getting the original instrumental music tracks recorded in India for all the songs.Tabla, Violin, Guitar, Sitar, Keyboard, flute, Veena, Saxophone...

We had one problem that we did not have any good female voices in the group here. So we decided to get those done from India. By this time, the B had decided to go all out and do it perfectly since we were anyway spending lot of time, effort and money on it. So the result was that along with the H and bhajan group friends, we now had 3professional playback singers of the Malayalam music industry to sing in the CD.

We were lucky to get an excellent studio to do the recording here through some well wishers. So one weekend, the cousin came down with the entire instruments track ready. We spent a whole weekend in the studio recording the voices for all the songs. I was right there doing the job of providing hot water to the singers. :-) The cousin then went back and got the voice recording done from the singers in India.

Meanwhile, we broke our heads to come up with the right name for the CD. After lot of searching and discussions, we arrived at a name that we all agreed on.

The incessant communication between India and UAE continued - for doing the final corrections, adding the effects and a whole lot of things that they do after the entire recording is over.

Today, we are at the final stages of completion. The plan is to first bring out a set of 100 CDs and introduce it. Later, further marketing and distribution is planned. So yesterday, we were selecting designs for the cover and finalizing the caption to be displayed on the cover.So hopefully in another week's time we should have the first set of CDs out!

It has been a great journey so far and now we are eagerly waiting to see the response of the listeners.

Musically Tagged!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Thank you Nancy..Love you for this tag!

Since you wanted me to post something to make you feel less terrible...this is the one! I dedicate each song in this list to you...Nancy!!!

I am an old hindi songs freak! I literally grew up on them. My father had a huge collection of lovely rare songs. On his frequent trips to Delhi and Bombay, he used to bring back such gems! So there is absolutely no way I can restrict myself to just 10 favourite songs. But I will try. But only after officially placing on record that I love all the masterpieces by Roshan, Naushad, S D Burman, Madan Mohan... and any song that Mukesh has lent his soulful voice to..

To reduce the number I shall not list the ones that are global favourites..that are definitely acknowledged masterpieces..like Duniya ke rakhwale...mere mahboob... etc. I shall list the one that affect me personally....

So here goes.. in no particular order...and with aplogies to the ones I have failed to list here.....

Old Hindi songs
---------------

1. Lag ja Gale: I just love this song and can hear it any number of times...Could be the despair and the 'no tomorrow' feel in it....

2. Baharon ne mera chaman lootkar: I don't know why I love this song..but I do... It is saaaad and Mukesh is great...

3. Abhi na jao chodkar: Just lovely...It was kind of our hostel anthem!

4. sawan aaye ya na aaye: This is a lovely duet...from dil diya dard liya

5. Yeh shaam ki tanhaiyan: Pathetic...beautiful...I heard the song long before I got to watch the movie..and I must say the picturisation in my imagination was better...

6. Unko yeh shikayat hai... I love the ghazals in movies..and this one is a classic..(I have to mention two more here...I really do!!! ...yun hasraton ki daagh...and hai isi mein pyar ki aabroo from anpadh though a friend says the latter one is too 'doormat'ish for the girl to sing!

7. beeti na bitayi raina... I cannot resist anything semi classical...Hindustani classical music is so lovely...(and also raina beeti jaye)

8. Then the soft melodious ones by Talat Mahmood...Jalte hain jiske liye... and also humse aaya na gaya... How romantic can one get!!!!

9. Then the dancer in me...and the songs that make my heart and feet dance....Madhuban mein Radhika... Also the lovely Garjat Barsat saawan...And Manna Dey's 'hato..kahe ko jhooti..banao batiyaan'

10. Ankhiyon ke jharokon se.. Though I had heard it before, it became a favourite only recently....


I must also just mention my husband's masterpieces 'Jab deep jale aana'..'jeevan se bhari teri aankhen'...

And there is this song which I heard my husband sing first before listening to the original...and just loved it...'chehre se apni'...from the movie Palki...

Other languages, namely Tamil and malayalam. I again have several favourites... just listing a few...very very few....

Tamil
1. Kalyana Then nilaaa - I can listen just any number of times to this one...
2. Nee Katru Naan maram - Amazing lyrics and the inimitable Hariharan!
3. Malare mounamaa... needs no explanation
4. Konjam neram Konjam neram
5. Raa .. Raa
The last two might be better heard than watched!

Malayalam

1. pinneyum pinneyum aaro kinavinte music, lyrics, picturization...just lovely
2. aaro viralmeetti manassil
3. varamanjalaadiya...
4. Chentharmizhi...Poonthenmozhi - It could be the fact that Vineeth acts in it that makes this my favourite! ;)
5. arikil nee undaayirunnengil - Oh! What a song!!!

All these songs are available on Music India Online as well.. I put you tube links just because it is easier... My advice is not to let the visuals distract you and listen to JUST the music!!! What bliss!!!

oops! Forgot that I need to tag people....

I tag

Colours... I know you are busy..still you'll love doing it..come on!
Tys? .. You said something about downloading and listening to songs...didn't you? Wanna try?
Bins.... Interested?
RustyNeurons... How about you?
Onlooker... Come on.. people from Trichy have to be music lovers!!!

A follow up post.....

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Couple of comments to my previous post make me feel that I should probably put up a follow up post for it.

I probably did not come across very well in the last post. I did not mean in anyway to glorify working mothers by writing that. I did not even mean to discuss working mothers vs non-working mothers. As Agnes and Bins rightly said, it is just the circumstances. If one has the support systems required to manage both easily, one is lucky. If not, no mother will think twice about putting her children before her career..I am sure. No one admires women who give up a great career to take care of the family more than I do. More so, because it is a very difficult choice to make...but I am sure I would not find it impossible to do should the circumstances arrise. I did do it also to some extent...but talking of that would be digressing.

I meant the post only to convey what I admire in my mother as a woman irrespective of the fact that she is my mother. Because there is no way you can compare two mothers! For every one of us, our own mother is the best!

I admire my mother not just for being a career woman but for being so good at what she does.

My mother was brought up in a small village in kerala. She was married at 20 before her degree results were out. She was married to an extremely bright engineer with a great future. She had her baby at 21. No one expected her to work,least of all my father. She herself I'm sure did not plan on being a career woman. The reasons that pushed her into going to work are different and not in the least because she had great career aspirations. I shall not go into those reasons here.

When she started working, I think my father was just an amused onlooker. He did not expect her to continue for long and expected she will tire of it soon and come back home.

But within 5 years of her starting to work, she was given the responsibility of the entire KG Section of the school which was run separate from the rest of the school. Soon she was heading the section which had two branches, 25 teachers and more than 600 students. This continued to grow and she also started a teacher's training course in the same institution and headed that as well. After this, she has helped start and set up 2-3 other schools which have all grown to be some of the most popular ones in the city.

I used to experience pride every year on the annual day when she used to read out the annual report on stage. Within a couple of years of her starting her job, my father became a staunch supporter of her continuing to work and he stood behind her whenever any of our relatives spoke against it. I have seen pride in his eyes too.

Even today, at 55, after more than 3 decades of working, she still does research on the internet and reads up about modern methods of teaching and tries to put them into practice at her school. I doubt if I have that kind of energy and motivation even now!

So you see, when I said 'I used to be proud of the fact that my mother had a successful career', the emphasis was more on the 'successful' than on the 'career'!

And probably it is this feeling that helped me overlook things like having to eat idlis every day because they were easy to cook, not having my mother at home with hot snacks when I got back from school, having her come running, late to dress me up for my dance programmes after all the other mothers arrived.