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Meandering Pastures
of Memories
Shovana Narayan’s memoirs engage and succeed at several levels, once you get past the purple prose of the preface and a needlessly apologetic beginning. The book is replete with those little incidents and anecdotes that reveal the artist’s slow evolution, the mistakes, the searching, the delights, the insights and the sheer desire, earnestness, and determination that lays the foundation for eventual success. It is structured around four parts, titled ‘Early Years,’ ‘Parents’ ‘Marriage and Family’ and ‘Personal Musings’, and consequently the memoirs have a back-and forth quality that prevent a coherent picture of an artist’s life and career. And it occasionally suffers from poor writing and editing, with such horrors like "Even on stage, I danced with intensity but devoid of smile." But the passages that work well linger in the mind. Like when she details how her early teacher, Guru Kundanlal "would try and make my feet ‘speak out’ every ‘bol’ with clarity and conviction," and her efforts to learn how to raise her eyebrows one at a time, something that has "proved elusive till date." "No amount of practice holding the nerve between the eyes...worked. Ma, in fact, went to the extent of trying to get ‘peacock oil’ for me to massage the nerves between the eyebrows, for some kind should had suggested to her that as the peacock is a very graceful bird`85(this) may do the trick." Her mother’s crucial role in early encouragement and subsequent development is evident through-out the book. Many of the intricacies of the Kathak form are also brought out and there are insights into the artist’s several concerns, including the key vibes between stage and audience, and the conflicting pressures of being either a "traditionalist " or a " "path-breaker." Narayan’s scholarly interest in classical dance in general and Kathak in particular, its roots and development, is evident. Narayan is a civil servant and her telling of how her "involvement in two careers" has had "its negative sides" is brought out, and how "it took a long time for both the worlds to take me seriously." Humour is never far away as she relates an anecdote of how are driver was once accosted by a policeman, who challenged his madam’s dual identity with "has a senior officer ever danced?" Also of interest are her philosophical ruminations, her forays into the meanings of Indian mythology and religion, and into fusion and Western dance. She did not ignore social concerns either, and on female foeticide, she staged mujhe bhi to jeene do, something that continues to carry resonance. Her accounts of her marriage and life with Austrian ambassador Herbert Traxyl are also told with an easy, pleasant, simplicity.
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A successful artiste who
sets out to detail his or her personal odyssey, her travails and
triumphs on the road to artistic victory, starts out with an advantage.
The subject has an inherent appeal, and an honest telling can well
negate stylistic and structural defects.