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Meeting Chandralekha by Tishani Doshi From 2001-2006 I had the great fortune to work with one of India’s most iconic women, Chandralekha. Chandra was a dancer, choreographer, painter, poet and feminist. How I came to become a dancer in her troupe at the age of 26 still seems like a mysterious force of the universe at play to me, because at the time, I certainly had no aspirations to become a dancer. I had only wanted to write: poems, short stories, perhaps, even a novel.  Chandralekha, pathbreaker...After I met her the shape of my days changed. I began cycling to her home every morning to work with her in the theatre. She, along with one of her dancers, Shaji K. John, an expert in the Kerala martial art of kalaripayattu, stretched and coaxed my limbs into positions I had never thought possible. In the evenings, I would return to her house on Elliot’s Beach Road, which was always filled with people – artists, intellectuals, activists, filmmakers, and I’d listen to their conversations, which were usually political and always passionate. For a few years I rarely contributed to these conversations. I just observed, taking it all in. In retrospect, those evenings were as valuable as my daily practise. They gave me the kind of exposure that every young artist needs. The production I worked on with Chandra would be her last choreographic work. It was titled, Sharira, which in Sanskrit means, the unending body, and it is generally considered to be her masterpiece; a distillation of a lifetime’s work. We performed Sharira in many countries, travelling with our small, tight-knit group: Chandra, Shaji, Sadanand Menon (her long time collaborator and light designer), and the supremely talented Gundecha Brothers – exponents of Dhrupad, who provide musical accompaniment for every one of our shows. In the many years it took to become a published writer, dance was the thing that kept me going, it legitimized my decision to become an artist. If all else fails, I thought, at least I have this. And this was something miraculous. Something I could never have imagined for myself. My first collection of poems, Countries of the Body, was published six months before Chandralekha died. The book was dedicated to her, and the poems in it were explorations of the many themes I had explored as a dancer – the body as an area of politics, sexuality, betrayal and discovery. Chandra once said, “Dance just happens.” In my case, this has certainly been true. Dance continues to be the thing that just happens regardless of everything else. |
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