What a guru/teacher knows.

When she says "you will have this by day after tomorrow", I nod but just don't see how I could get into a posture that has me falling on my face. To give some context, about a year ago I began rehearsing a character for a play that required dance and movement. This is the area where I need the most training and help anyway. Dance and movement, hmmm. My director Isheeta Ganguly introduced me to Sohini Roy Chowdhury who saw the movement I was doing and helped with bringing meaning to each stance. This she did by introducing specific mudras and postures from her discipline as a Bharatnatyam dancer and teacher. 

as Chitrangadha , a warrior princess from Manipur in 'Sundays with Chitra & Chaitali' written and directed by Isheeta Ganguly. Performing in my first stage show in Kolkata since I was a seven year old.  A posture at the end of Rudauno melodious rendition by Isheeta Ganguly.  

My own relationship with Bharatnatyam started and ended when I was around six years old in Kolkata. I remember my maternal grandmother made bags for ghunghroos with my and my sister's names stitched on them so we could carry our ghunghroos to the class. This journey ended within a year because, simply put, we just didn't take to the dance. We just wanted to play in the park... really, that's all I can remember. I remember leaving the class one day and hurling my bag of ghunghroos into the sky and plopping myself onto the green grass of the park where I would play and more importantly swing on the swings and forget the world.  What never left me was how the teacher took us through all the mudras before every class. Over the years I have remembered ... pataka, tri pataka, alapadma, singha/simha ... The memory seemed to have kept all this. 

Now I find myself playing with light and shadow backstage during some performance, practicing a mudra I have been taught.  

Sohini di worked with me with such patience, since we are in different cities, she got on Skype and went over each detail of each mudra. She educated me with stories and references about the movement and I got to perform with all this preparation for my first show of this play in Kolkata. In fact, that was the first time I was performing in Kolkata since I was six or seven years old. The preparation and Sohini di's faith in my abilities is what made that particular show truly special for me and now I look forward to the dance and movement in the play each time we perform it. She did not stop there, with great generosity she has continued to teach me more. She recently taught me the movement for "Ya devi sarvabhuteshu" Durga strotam.  I never thought I would get a chance to learn anything of this manner, never thought I would get to experience Bharatnatyam again. I feel as though I have evolved as an artist. I have always looked up to dancers as pure creators. With movement one can tell any story.  Now to have the opportunity to learn, that too from a teacher, a guru who has great knowledge about her subject, who teaches me more than just dance and movement.  

And now to share what happened a few days ago. Sohini has been working with me on Dashavatara (ten incarnations of Vishnu), we are on the first avatar itself, meen sarira. Vishnu's first avatar to save the world, when the Vedas were tossed into the ocean, he took the form of a fish and saved the Vedas and the world. She gave me a movement that I simply could not do, it was the very part of coming into the fish form, the crux of the phrase.  

pralaya-payodhi-jale dhṛtavān asi vedaḿ
vihita-vahitra-caritram akhedam
keśava dhṛta-mīna-śarīra jaya jagadīśa hare

Well from kesava to meen, my knee kept sliding, and how in the world would I ever lift the leg in the back and point it to top it all ??? There was no way for me to keep balanced. This was the chatter in my mind.  She was watching as I tried again and again. I told her that I would need some time to practice ... she said ok, we will talk the day after, I nodded but just didn't think it would be possible for me to make the movement possible. Finally, I said, do you really think I will have this in one day? With no pause, she said, yes. You will have it the next time. I was baffled, I think I showed this confusion as well but she had not hesitated. We were going to talk the day after, how would I be able to get this right knowing I am not even able to sit in the posture? 

The next morning I began practicing, I avoided the posture for the first half hour, praciticing first the Durga strotam which has now become known to the body, so I have started feeling comfortable with it. Finally, I moved into the posture before the one that my mind said would be impossible. But something clicked in terms of center of balance. I felt that center change and to the right place, where the stretch would be possible, more than possible, it could now possibly extend? I was surprised but very happy. I practiced it again and again and sent a video to di.  She encouraged me as usual with more direction as usual and I was once again reminded that a teacher knows a student's capability beyond what a student can decipher. That light beyond the chatter and doubt which comes from the guru/teacher to me is profound. I am thankful for such a teacher in my life.  

I know it still needs a lot of work but the best thing about being able to make this transition is that now I know in my body what it should feel like for it to happy properly.  

via GIPHY