blessed
with able bodies
can’t meet the demands
of a professional dancer’s life.
Maybe for you
it’s time
for a new dream.”
My body hurts from my falls
but Uday anna’s words
hurt more.
UNEQUAL
Kamini follows me out of the classroom,
tears gushing down her cheeks
like a tap turned on full force.
I don’t need anyone’s pity.
“Don’t feel so sorry for me, Kamini.
I’m still your equal.
Even with one leg less.”
“No.” Her lip trembles. “We aren’t equal.
You’re a better person.”
“I’ll be a better dancer again, too,” I say.
She doesn’t seem to hear me.
She’s sobbing too loudly.
I hate how she’s making a scene
out of my misery.
I’m the one who should be crying.
Still, it feels cruel to do nothing but watch
tears wrack her body.
I reach out and pat her back
until she stops shuddering.
Looking at me, she twiddles the free end of her dance sari.
After all these years of ignoring me
she seems to want to start a conversation
though she doesn’t know how.
The skin under my leg hurts so much
I’m scared I’ll start crying.
I wait for her to say something.
Until I’m too tired to control my tears any longer.
Hoping she can’t see them rolling down my cheeks,
I hobble away
as fast as my pain lets me.
NOT BEST
I haul myself up the stairs of our apartment building,
nearly blind to Shobana’s waving hand
nearly deaf to Mrs. Subramaniam’s greetings.
Paati is asleep in her wicker chair, prayer book open on her lap.
Feeling older than Paati,
I walk into our room, take off my leg, towel my limb dry.
My smiley-mouth scar looks bright red
as though it’s got lipstick on.
Chafed by my falls, the skin of my limb is raw.
I’ll need to use crutches again until it’s better.
Paati wakes up when I hobble back into the sitting room.
My voice hollow, I tell her,
“Uday anna doesn’t want to teach me anymore.”
Paati doesn’t say I told you so,
you should have waited for the new leg.
Not that I’d expect her to.
She says something I expect even less.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Veda, that dance teacher of yours didn’t visit your hospital once.
He’s not the only Bharatanatyam teacher.
Not even the best.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard Paati say something insulting
about another person.
I don’t argue.
SACRED
Art
DEFILED
Paati lays a hand on my curls.
“Maybe you should see if Dr. Dhanam has a school.”
“Dr. Dhanam?” Her name sounds vaguely familiar.
Paati has a faraway look in her eyes.
“Dr. Dhanam is a different kind of dancer.
Your thatha and I went to watch her once.
She focused on pure abhinaya—emotional expression.
A very unusual performance.
When she was done, the audience didn’t clap.
Everyone was weeping. With joy.
It felt as though she’d given us a glimpse of heaven.
She danced only to devotional songs
expressing Bhakthi rasa, the love of God.
Onstage she became—invisible—”
“Invisible?” I’m not too sure what Paati means,
but maybe Dr. Dhanam
could teach me to improve my dance
in ways I’ve ignored.
If she doesn’t turn me away.
“I’m not explaining well.” Paati sighs. “How can I?
I never was a dancer.”
The wistfulness in Paati’s tone surprises me.
“Did you want to be a dancer, Paati?”
She never hinted at such a desire before.
Or maybe I wasn’t listening.
“Dance was too much
for me to want.
It was forbidden to Brahmin girls like me.
Those days,
dance was practiced only by devadasis:
women who were supposed to dedicate their dances to God.
Bharatanatyam was meant to be a sacred art,
through which dancers could reach
a higher plane, carrying the audience with them.
They had a measure of freedom,
those women of the dancer caste.
Even wealth of their own.
But they paid a price, a terrible price.
They weren’t allowed to marry.
And somehow, somewhere along the way,
society retracted
its promise to respect these women.
They were treated as prostitutes
and their sacred art degraded
into entertainment to please vile men.”
NAILS
and
SPEARS
Thrust out of a nightmare
I wake to
pain.
Feel
nails and spears.
Jabbing.
Flesh throbbing beneath my knee
where nothingness should be.
My bladder is full.
I feel for my crutches.
Not by my bed
where they should be.
Clenching my teeth to keep from crying out,
I fumble for the light switch.
Paati’s bed creaks as she shifts.
Her breathing sounds harsher than normal.
I mustn’t wake her.
My frantic fingers
grope through the blackness
searching
for my crutches—or my leg.
At last I find
my leg under my bed.
A sputter of relief.
Tacking it on,
bladder almost bursting,
I hurl myself toward the bathroom.
Yank at the door.
My leg isn’t
on properly.
I slip
on the cold tiles
of the bathroom floor.
Between my legs
a shameful trickle
I can’t
control.
Lying in a yellow pool,
wetness seeping through my nightclothes,
I yank off the thing pretending to be my limb.
Shove it away
into the darkness.
I strip, clean myself, crawl,
find bleach and a sponge,
swab my mess off the tiles.
Naked. Wretched.
I notice Ma hovering—
holding my leg aloft
like a banner begging for truce.
How much of my degrading drama has she seen?
I fling words at her like shards of glass,
aiming to slash her apart.
“My accident was the answer to your prayers, wasn’t it?
Happy I can’t dance anymore?”
Ma lays the le
g down beside me.
Cups my chin so I can’t turn away.
Crouching,
she brushes the top of my forehead
with a kiss.
I don’t remember the last time
Ma kissed me.
Long ago
maybe.
When I was a baby.
I’m too startled to pull away.
THE BEHOLDER
Jim’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise
as I enter his office on crutches
and crumple into a chair.
“My dance teacher threw me out of his dance school.”
“No way,” Jim says.
His jaw clenches.
Then he bursts out, “What a fool.
What a poor excuse for a teacher.
You’ll be an amazing dancer one day
and he’ll regret his stupidity.
His loss, not yours, kiddo.”
Hearing Jim’s voice shake with anger
on my behalf,
I feel almost happy. I show him the red skin of my residual limb.
Jim whistles but he doesn’t tell me how stupid I was.
I apologize. “I know I should’ve waited longer
but I tried dancing.
My knee wouldn’t give enough.
It was so inflexible.
I fell when I tried full-mandi.”
“You mean the pose in which
you lower your body all the way down
until you’re sitting on your heels
with your legs folded under you
balancing on your toes with your knees to the sides?”
I nod, impressed at Jim’s knowledge.
Hoping I don’t sound whiny, I tell him,
“I can’t dance without assuming that posture.”
“Don’t panic, kiddo. You know I’ve been reading up
on what your art demands of the body.”
He waves at his bookshelf.
“You’re giving me
just the kind of feedback I need
to adjust this trial limb.
And I’m going to make you a final prosthesis
that lets you sit cross-legged on the floor.
That’s my challenge.
Your challenge is to
grind that fool’s memory into the dust
under your dancing heels
and find a new dance teacher
who sees how special you are.”
VISIONS
Jim saying I’m special
makes me feel brave enough to, with Chandra’s help,
look up the dancer Paati admired—Dr. Dhanam.
“Great!” Chandra cries triumphantly.
She reads off the computer screen
a long list of Dr. Dhanam’s accomplishments.
“Doctorate in classical dance, performed all over the world,
on the advisory board of practically every
Indian college dance program,
even some American universities.
Gave up performing years back.
Says she’ll spend the rest of her life teaching.
Runs a dance school on her gorgeous home estate.
Perfect.”
“Chandra, what if—if—she says no?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Chandra says.
I look at the photograph of Dr. Dhanam.
Pointed chin, sharp nose,
arms triangulating over her head, elbows angled,
palms together.
All angles, corners, straight edges.
Except her eyes—
soft as velvety moss on a rock face.
Her face glows—ecstatic, blissful—
the way saints’ faces must look
when granted
divine visions.
For the first time since the accident,
I hear the faint echo of a dancing rhythm.
Thaiya thai. Thaiya thai.
TO DANCE
AGAIN
Dr. Dhanam agrees to interview me
although I explain
I’m one-legged.
Hope coils inside me like a wound spring
as I walk up the shady drive that leads from the gate
past an open-air stage beneath a banyan tree
to a three-story mansion on her estate.
A maid shows me into a hall.
I sit waiting on the edge of an antique chair,
my foot tracing circles on the cold, hard floor.
Dr. Dhanam enters.
Her eyes take me in
without comment or pity.
Thank you, I think. “Namaskaram,” I say,
pressing my palms together,
bowing my head low
in greeting, gratitude, and relief.
“Namaskaram, Veda. You may call me Dhanam akka.
You want to join my dance school? Why?”
“Ma’am—Dhanam akka—
I am—I mean I was—I mean I want to be
a dancer,” I stammer.
“I started twelve years ago.
Performed onstage for a while.
Until I had an accident—
after I won a Bharatanatyam competition—”
“Bharatanatyam is not
about winning or losing,” she interrupts.
“Competition distracts dancers
into thinking
this art is about them.
Art should be about something larger and deeper than self.”
“But—didn’t Shiva Himself compete at dance?
With His wife?”
Akka’s thin eyebrows arch up.
She seems surprised I’m contradicting her. But also pleased.
She says, “Good to have a young one
stand up to me every now and then.
But you have forgotten, or perhaps not been taught,
the inner meaning of this parable.
The competition—between Shiva and His wife—
represents the longing
our limited human souls have
to understand and unite
with the divine soul.”
Her tone is kind enough
but I feel foolish that I missed
knowing the deeper meaning of a story I performed.
“So, you want to relearn dance. But why come here, Veda?
Why not return to your old teacher?”
“He didn’t want me back.” I hope
I don’t sound too angry at him.
“I see.” She waits for me to say more.
Her silver toe-rings tap impatiently on the floor.
Thai thai. Thai thai.
The sound is a snatch of music, a dance rhythm,
carrying me back in time.
I see a little girl on her father’s shoulders,
yearning to touch the feet of divine dancers
carved into temple walls.
I see her on a stepladder placing her hand on her chest,
feeling Shiva’s dancing feet
in the beat of her heart.
“When I was little I felt my heart was beating
to the sound
of God’s dancing feet.
Everywhere, in everything,
I could hear music to dance to.
When I grew up that music grew fainter
and I started to love applause.
I want someone who can help me feel dance
the way I used to.
I miss feeling dance inside me.
I miss hearing music in everything.”
Akka gives me a sharp nod.
Encouraged,
I continue. “My grandma said she saw
you dancing long ago.
That you treated dance as a sacred art,
an offering of devotion to God.
And I think I felt that way a little when I was young.
I want a teacher who can help me learn about that.”
Akka’s gaze pierces me. “Veda, if you want to relearn dance,
You’ll need to begin at the beginning.”
“Along with the little ones?”
Part of me cringes at the thought.
But I straighten up,
look her in the eye, and say, “Yes.”
“As for fees, Veda, I do things the old way here.
Each student gives me whatever they can.
Some students pay nothing.
I leave it up to them
and their parents to decide what they can afford.”
I’m her student already?
Without having to prove what I can or can’t do physically?
And she doesn’t care whether I pay?
It feels too good to be true. I stutter my thanks,
explain about the new limb I’ll be getting soon.
Akka sets a date for my first lesson and says,
“Govinda, the student who teaches the beginners,
is about your age.
You’ll learn from him until
you’re ready to learn from me.
Come, I’ll take you to him.”
GREETING
GRACE
Dhanam akka leads me toward an airy classroom.
Pausing outside the door, I hear a sound I’ve missed:
the sound of feet raining a dance rhythm on the ground,
a sound that fills me with a desperate longing for dance
the way a wilting plant must long for water.
“Govinda!” akka calls.
A boy walks out of the classroom.
His body
long and muscular. Back perfectly straight.
A dancer’s body.
His hair
a sheet of midnight. Sleek, shiny, shoulder length.
His eyes
pools of honey. Deep brown, flecked with gold.
“Govinda, this is Veda,” akka says. “She was a dancer
A Time to Dance Page 7