The Water Sutra

The Water Sutra

Chandralekha phoned to invite me to a talk she was giving that evening, not so many evenings ago.

‘On what?’ I asked.

‘Oh, some gibberish’ she said. And then the laughter, more a self-deprecating, musical giggle, tinkled. It was a melody I’d heard many times, on the phone and sitting face to face, on the floor, at her home and ours, chatting. Chatting about gardens, traditional Indian board games, graphics and posters, common friends, the state of the beach in Chennai…about everything except dance. For I know nothing of dance.

So what am I doing writing about her?

In a week from now, she gets the Kalidas Samman in Bhopal, one of the most venerated peer-awarded honours in this country. In a career spanning 5 decades and more, Chandra has not exactly been inundated with accolades and, as she tells the gathering that evening, the Kalidas Samman means ‘a hell of a lot’ to her. Not perhaps the most demure choice of words, but then, that’s Chandra.

Her work is not really about dance. That’s why I can try writing about her. It is about…well…water. Water. Something that I love. Something that none of us can do without. Something that, sadly, is becoming scarcer and more polluted.

That evening, she talked about her work as being an exploration of the body, and the space in which the body lives. About the rigours of that exploration, the energy that goes into it and, at the same time, radiates from it. She talked about how, after a performance, the body welcomes water – how delicious it is to drink, how refreshing it is to bathe in. On an earlier occasion, some of us had got together to listen to her recite an Elegy to Water, a long dirge that bemoaned the confiscation of water and, with it, the loss of nature and of rights: the right to livelihood, civil, gender and political rights. Most of us in that gathering were performers of one kind or another (there were no politicians, though) and she had wondered whether the Elegy could become a performance. Some day, Chandra, some day, when the time is right.

Water as primal element, as life force, water as metaphor. I know Chandra by a laughter that tinkles gently like the clear waters of the Alakananda gliding over smooth stone; and by a shock of white hair that gushes gracefully forth like the surge of the Bhagirathi. I think of a confluence, of Devaprayag. Could that be the title of her next piece? Sharira, Shloka, Raga. And 6 pieces before that in the last 18 years. All taking place at the confluence where raging body meets serene space. Engaging it, extending into it, shaping it, sculpting it over time. Becoming part of it.

If this is the quest, it goes much beyond the classical tradition of dance as we know it, dance as devotion, as narrative and as virtuosity of performance. It becomes philosophical investigation and political action. By fusing body and space, it reclaims the advaita principle. By contextualising the ever-changing uses and abuses of the body, it proclaims resistance to the status quo.

I think of another wise, white haired woman who is ever so contemporary, yet ever so classical. Accepting the Friedenspreis Peace Prize at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair (on which occasion the US Ambassador was not present, for how could he be seen in the company of a humanist when his Government was engaged in a war against humanity?), Susan Sontag said: “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not being corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding. One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness.” Replace writer and literature with performer and performance, and you have Chandra and her work.

I wish I could be present at Bharat Bhavan next Saturday to see who’s present and who’s not and to hear Chandra’s acceptance speech. I wonder what inspired gibberish I’ll be missing.

(Chandralekha is a wondrous dancer based in Chennai, India)