Mumbai

Mumbai, like an ocean, has enveloped me. There’s something about its trains, its rains, its blasphemous crowds that bear this uncanny knack of yanking the survivor/ the rogue out of you. And I, ahem, have survived! I have survived flurried train-station-mini-stampedes, despicable office creeps, back breaking ‘no-maid’ days, laundry avalanches, crash and burn accidents with people while taking a de-tour whilst scurrying down the Dadar bridge en-route to office. Yes, Mumbai has drawn me in, without admonitions, wrapped me in a bubble, all while nudging me to try a little harder each time, every time.

The city is a far cry from all trite adjectives used to describe it - hurried it is, fast-moving it is - but Mumbai is also warm and delicious, enticing and scandalous. It is what you make of it, its misgivings, its idiosyncrasies, its irreverence and all.  

Its vagaries are manifold. Its annoyances several, but there is something inexplicable about the city that ties you to it with a long, invisible chord, and makes love for it grow roots rampant in your heart.

Sweet, aching are the million bindings that bind me to it, moulding me, breaking me, and re-shaping me in a manner that each life chapter bereft of its underpinnings; each story 'un-punctuated' by its vicissitudes seem insipid, unexciting.

My life here (as blah as it sounds) is a cocktail of long sojourns, aching heartbreaks, jocund friendships, and breathless detours and I, intend to gulp it with fervour while it lasts!

Critique of Sharira

This is an old college submission. I found it rotting in my mail-box. I am putting it on the blog... It could do with a well deserved outing, I thought.

Critique of Sharira.

Subverting the need to remind of and reconnect to religious iconography, Sharira enunciates that spirituality is as much about the body, as it is about the divine.

The choreography represents the dynamics of a man-woman relationship. It portrays birth, the role of man as a protector and provider, the unison of two sexes and the final integration of the male and the female forms.

The movements are terse and effortlessly amalgamate into each other, making the choreography a soothing syncretism of tradition and modernity. To an audience used to dance being velocious, the slowness plays with the ambit of concentration.

The economy of movement and attires devoid of ornamentation, are refreshing. The innovative synergy of yoga and Kallaripayattu with Bharatnatyam, dispel all timeworn, institutionalized notions of the classical form of dance. The choreography uses non-linear geometric forms to deconstruct the grammar of Bharatnatyam and lend it a new form.

Mythologising themes has enslaved dance in tradition, nostalgia, and sacredness, Sharira questions the set themes. It asserts that dance is the celebration of the body.

The interaction of the “male” and “female” forms, however, falls short of lending emotion or intellect to the relentless drift of the dance. It focuses too much on the form, making a Sharira a plastic treat for the eyes.

Tishani and Shaji are absolutely expressionless and detached from the audience. Even when they finally face each other in the 30 minute duration of the choreography, they remain impassive.

Although Chandralekha was widely known to be a feminist, the composition of the dance is extremely inconsistent in representing the female form. Sharira begins with depicting the female principle as the source of life; in the final integration of the female and the male forms, however, the “female” is depicted as upside down - an act that completely deconstructs the female principle.

Although the economy of movement is distinctive, there is not much variety in it, especially for Tishani.

Sharira uses the human body to represent the notions of sexuality and spirituality.

The use of the human form, however, demands spark, emotionality, and spirit.

Sharira fails to deliver all three.