As Mira and Parsu entered the large hall, buzzing with people, the space looked familiar yet different.
Different, because instead of the customary stage at one end, there was a space in the centre of the round hall, most probably set aside for the dance. She could see musical instruments, mikes, speakers etc. arranged in a semi circle, facing inwards. As she got closer she saw the bare floor had a border of paisley painted, outlining the performance area. She instinctively looked up for the floodlights and tracks and saw instead a high domed ceiling. The twist here was the circular mirror suspended from it. The juhi & genda flowers hung on the glass, swayed gently in the air from the air conditioning vents.
She did get a view of the dance floor below, but it made her head spin, as she squinted to see in the dim light.
The volunteers running around with little torches were trying to help everyone to their place through the maze of mattresses and plump gabbas, on the floor. There were a few squeals and giggles as an overeager attendee stepped on a toe or the hem of a dress in front.
Parsu, her host and escort to this surreal space, spotted a place in the front row and pulled her towards it. Mira collapsed onto the mattress and looked around in amazement at the dramatic setting.
‘I haven’t seen anything like this’ she whispered to Parsu’s delight. It gave him the opening to describe the ‘gopuram’, as the hall was called, in detail. He narrated with pride stuff that barely interested her at this moment. Apparently the 10 year old structure in the heart of Pune was the highest, most circular, eco friendly auditorium for miles… (Made of brick from local waste material and clay, a renowned French architect, had ensured perfect acoustic and vibrations. )On and on he babbled.
Mira heard him drone on as she gazed at the devotees trickling in from a galaxy of cultures’, primarily from the west but with some Africans and easterners visible. Many wore everyday western wear but most were dressed in some version of festive Indian clothing. The dhoti, almost extinct in urban India was popular with the men and the women wore saris. The drape was casual, worn more as a wrap than a traditional sari, with the blouse a mere scrap over fashionable décolletage.
She noticed most of them wore extravagant tilaks on their forehead, in a dewdrop shape…’.ah yes she thought….Boond, Ma’s symbol’.
Everyone seemed aglow, even slightly tipsy, and very animated.
‘What a strange audience’ she thought.
Soon the few bulbs on, near the two entrances were switched off and the large hall, now filled to bursting, grew darker and more fragrant. The musicians had in the meanwhile made their way to the arena and as the tabla player beat the ek taali taal, starry lights twined around pillars, lit up. The plaintive baansuri sounded and the pakhawaj took up the drumming with the tabla…Soon a dozen or so dancers, women in flimsy chanderi silk ghagras, men in diaphanous dhotis, bare chested, rustled on to the dance arena.
They were dancing the classic raas of the Gita Govind, though with a twist.
The Krishna…where could he be? A few minutes of exquisitely sensual tableau followed. Pairs of dancers, some men and men, other women with women and some mixed couples pushed the boundaries of this ancient dance, now gently touching the beloved’s breast or hip now the hair, parting and meeting, and then parting to group and regroup.
Now it was completely dark, the fairy lights off.
She was conscious of Parsu swooning with delight by her side. She found his hand gently stroking her wrist… which aroused her…before she she forgot him….in on a wave of dozen of chakradhars, Tig da dig dig thai/ Tig da dig dig thai /Tig da dig dig thai…. came Aman…slightly older, even more deft. The same highly refined movements he had displayed to a palpitating schoolgirl years ago were evident….strong footwork ta thai thai tat/ Aa thai thai tat/ ta thai thai tat / Aa thai thai tat, feet stamping the marble as the ustads on the tablas alternately hit the leather or stroked it and then caressed it and then tapped once again, each hand with a life of its own,….
Radha by this time was hidden behind Krishna and the two were moving to the beat…soon Krishna turned Radha around and sank his tongue into her expectant mouth as the other gopis and gopas who had reappeared, stroked and twirled each other to perfect rhythm and exquisite tabla, pakhawaj and flute accompaniment.
By this time Ma, the guru the ashram worshipped and belonged to, had materialized and was sitting florid and sensual at the centre of a seated floor arrangement. Ma was surrounded by a bevy of Indian and western devotees, with flushed features, squirming in their seats,impossibly titillated, as the tempo of the taal increased and the dancers explored each other with rather graphic longing. Mira quite singularly, sat stunned, unmoving.
At the end of the crescendo of sound, Aman sang.
Of the beauty of Radha’s body in the aftermath of their love,
Of her disheveled hair,….
The radiance of her lower lip like a bimba fruit,
Of the string of pearls on her pitcher breasts that were lost,
Of the bejeweled girdle around her waist that had broken up and
How her artless charms at trying to cover up her exposed nakedness made him,
Kanha, want to resume kissing the deer eyed Radha!
Of how he found her sweet lips, the most irresistible…
And how tender was her surrender and how high was his delight.
Through this Radha stood still, her lips quivering, her restless ghungharoos shimmering and beating a taal…Until Aman turned from Radha and walked up to Mira seated in the front row. Bizzarely, he was singing to her…to Mira… as the audience gasped and Radha looked on a faint smile on her lips.
Now Radha sang looking bewildered,
Counting the multitude of his virtues,
Pardoning him for his transgressions,
Allowing him his fickleness,
His dalliance with other girls,
In spite of which ‘my perverse mind loves him’,
Ending with a haunting question repeated,
‘What am I to do?’
Aman held out his hands to Mira, and she rose in a daze, and found herself at the centre of the gopis. Releasing her hands Krishna put his own on her navel, gleaming with a jewel, before turning her round and round and round…
With a last twirl, she stopped at the sam to wah wahs! from the tabla and pakhavaj players as Krishna stood behind her his body engulfing hers, her loins throbbing, burning, pulse racing to bursting.
‘This is what Radha feels?’ her heated brain dimly asked, ‘is this feeling of being possessed, of wanting to be swallowed, the secret that is being kept from me?’
Around her riotous scenes had broken out which she barely registered.
Ma looked on, blessing the dancers reciting some shlokas, from the Kama Sutra, Parsu later told her, a truly bizarre scene anywhere else but natural in this world within a world!
The devotees of what she thought? clapped thunderously and the dancers bowed and laughed and drank of each other with an insatiable thirst.
Krishna gently gyrated against her as the crowd roared its approval and she shuddered and burnt as his strong hands hovered around her navel, giving promise.
As he pressed against her he uttered…a deep guttural sound low from his stomach that grew as he moved rhythmically, while the audience swooned, and made love, filled with joy, till with a lovely high sound he seemed to explode, as she thought she would as well. Ma said, ‘encore encore!…this is the best “nautanki” ever and you Aman are as good as your reputation, a veritable Natraj come to life…..you dear boy must visit us often and stay with me anytime for all time.’
At this the just exploded Aman, turned his flaming gaze to Ma, and with Mira’s body firmly in his grasp, touched Ma’s feet taking her blessings.
As Aman bent, so did Mira, held in front like a human shield. As he rapturously ran his tongue over Ma’s foot she felt him stiffen once more behind her, and this time she knew she would have to turn and face him.
‘Get away, said her befuddled mind. Now.’
Parsu ran up to her, and stood gazing in delight as Aman, indifferent to the crowd, all but engulfed her in public. Parsu grabbed Aman’s hand and rubbed it over his own bare nipples, asking him if he could join Mira and Aman for the evening, hurriedly backing off when Aman yelled ‘No’.
Mira, keeper of her family’s morals and virgin supreme at 20, turned in Aman’s arms and asked him, ‘Why did you go away?’
Aman stroking her underarm whispered, ‘Go? Where? I have always been inside you and there, will eternally stay. Come I have something to show you.’ As he led her away, the moaning crowd reached forward, to tenderly caress a part of their anatomy, to plant kisses anywhere they could reach, so that by the time, they reached the exit a dozen hands and tongues had stroked them.
The fresh air outside felt like a slap and she drew away from Aman’s grasp, covering her naked shoulders with her Odhni.
He just held her closer, reaching into her blouse, teasing her, holding her tight. Saying, ‘I won’t let you go.’
‘Come, baby, we have not much time and lots to do’ he moaned.
Confused she whispered, ‘What do we have to do?’
‘You are the earth and I will farm you. You are the sky and I will pierce you. Within you, within me we have to find the joy of the song of life. As you flow, I shall melt and as I melt, you will receive’, he sang. ‘Silly baby what do you think I have in mind?’
It is perhaps a testimony to time being multi dimensional or love and passion being delusional, for in those seconds before she spoke, she saw the story of a love that was meant to be, a lifetime filled with the joy of dance and the love of dance.
But for now she would be the love torn Mira and he had to stay the Guru.
‘I, I have to go home’, said she in complete panic. ‘I promised Madhuri I would be back by 12 or she will call mom-dad.’ This even as her insides wanted to be the earth, which he would plough and the sky he would pierce and the…
‘Can we meet tomorrow at …at my home…no …a restaurant where we can talk’, said Mira trying for normalcy.
‘No silly, Kanha wants you today now not tomorrow… to eat and devour and then to talk. Come dance with me’, replied the Ustad, a denizen of a world far removed from hers, with an urgency only partly explained by the opiates flooding his body.
Again, that frightful state of arousal, the desire to melt in his arms tugged at her. A straggling memory of Madhuri’s worried face, and a decade of cautious living pulled her back.
‘Aman, she dared say the precious name, ‘Ustad I must go. Can we meet for lunch at, say the Holiday Inn Coffee shop’, naming the first restaurant that came to mind, ‘at around one ‘O clock tomorrow?’
As his hands cradled her hips, his tongue feasting on her mouth, he almost succeeded in melting her diminished defense. She pulled away, she can’t imagine how, running to the safety of the waiting car, to take her home. Parsu was somehow at the car, looking as lovelorn as he could…he had mastered the tragic hero look a long time back.
Love, Mira thought, for this could only be love, was strange.
Though, stranger was that she could barely remember, what had happened, leave alone judge it.
Strange, this thing called Love.
sisterindia 