‘I need more practice . . .’ she’d murmur, voice trailing, eyes glazing.
‘Yes you do,’ Azim Khan would say, chest swelling with conviction, ‘Forget about all those awards you won as a young girl. They mean nothing. You have a long way to go.’
His words not only stunted her growth and clouded her hopes but also crushed the pride and glory of her former years. To my astonishment, Mother never protested. All the spunk with which she fought her husband and disciplined her children vanished when Azim Khan spoke. I watched them, facing each other across the body of the harmonium, mirthlessly practising ragas. He almost gave her a real opportunity once. Or did he only pretend to? He asked her to prepare a song he had composed for the soundtrack of a Bengali feature film. This was to be her big break, a debut into the higher echelons of the music world. This act of uncharacteristic kindness came without warning, which perhaps in itself should have been a sign, but not for Mother. I had never seen such unbridled joy in her. Night after night, she stayed awake and practised the song. She even gave us the rare privilege of listening to her and offering our critiques. Then came the day she was to present the product of her untiring toil to Azim Khan.
‘You’re not ready,’ he said, the familiar words flying out of his mouth as soon as she had finished her song. It was as if he knew all along what he was going to say, except this time those words were meant to squash her one last time, stamp the life out of her like a cockroach under his foot. Just that once, Mother came back from Azim Khan’s home, closed the door to her room and howled like a wild animal. Naveen, Tilat and I stood outside the door. We took turns pressing our ears to the cold wooden door and peeking through the keyhole.
To yank the scab off of her wound, my mother’s guru often boasted to her about the commercial success of the song, which he had assigned to another student. I like to think it was my mother’s perseverance that tied her to him for so long. She had a habit of wanting to match her strength against adversity, as if adversity was a person she needed to impress rather than leave.
As single-minded as her, I too was determined to start music lessons, despite all the angst I naturally associated with music and all the disdain that Mother wanted me to associate with it. I finally announced my decision when I was sixteen years old. Without a shred of enthusiasm, and with something bordering on exasperation, Mother suggested that I should, of course, start under the expert tutelage of Azim Khan. I dreaded the prospect but I was so grateful for her permission that I dared not say anything that might change her mind. Besides, I was older now and less impressionable. I’d also had years to acquaint myself with the man who was to be my new guru. I knew his flaws only too well. Perhaps, now, I could understand what Mother had always seen in him that allowed her to be so tolerant of him.
The first few lessons were uneventful. After a month, I had almost stopped bracing myself for the punishing words when Azim Khan scrunched up his pointy nose – as if there was a bad odour in the room – and asked me what I hoped to gain from music.
‘It makes me happy,’ I said without thinking.
‘Oh, really?’ he said, the question, lingering not so much in the words as in the deadening look in his eyes.
I held my ground and stared back at him.
‘Look,’ he said, suddenly relaxing, ‘I’ve always told your mother the truth, so I’m going to do the same with you.’
It was shocking how quickly he changed his tactic, how quickly he went from openly condescending to cold and calculative. He needed me to believe him.
‘Do you know what kids like you remind me of?’ he was saying.
I shook my head, surprised by how the sharp pitch of his voice betrayed his tranquil features. There were tiny beads of sweat above his thin upper lip. He was trying hard not to let the bitterness spill out of him and into his face and on to the harmonium and down to the very ground beneath our feet.
‘You remind me of young green grass, crushed under a rock. You have no hope of sunlight and no place to grow. Your attempts are in vain,’ said Azim Khan.
I didn’t refute his sweeping verdict. I couldn’t. There was a hypnotic quality to his malice, a certain flair and flow to it. This was a man who spent so much time thinking vindictive thoughts that there was eloquence and ceremony in his words. To argue with him would be to try and fight a wild beast with one’s bare hands. Not unlike the lion or the tiger, he was always poised to pounce on his opponent, dig his fangs into their powerless flesh and tear them to bits. Eventually, I learned to anticipate the first gleam of attack in his beady eyes, just before he was about to make a vicious remark. I memorised how he swayed his balding head from side to side when he disapproved of something, which was often. I came to imitate, perfectly, the shape of his small, cunning mouth right after something vile had come out of it. Listening to his unkind words was like watching a puppet show where, despite knowing that someone else manipulates the lifeless figures, you watch, spellbound by the puppet’s tricks. In later years, when the immediacy of our interactions receded from my memory, a different aspect of his face emerged, penetrating through the mask of harshness I had come to know so well. Deeply embedded in his small features was a vast fear, one that he sought to transfer to others.
I no longer remember how exactly the lessons stopped. There was no finality or grand conclusion to it. The whole enterprise fizzled out like a fire that never quite reached its potential. I can only assume my mother had expected it because she did not say a word about it nor offered to find me a new guru. Our silence on the matter was mutual, impenetrable and absolute. I continued to sing in the bathroom but there was a hush in my voice and a dullness in my movements. It was hard to believe that just the year before the bathroom had been the sanctuary of my dreams, the mirror a glittering reflection of my unfaltering hope and joy.
Two years later, in my college course catalogue, I came across a picture of Shiva Nataraj, the God of Dance. I ran my forefinger along Shiva’s raised limbs as I eyed the caption for the class: Indian Classical Dance I. Old yearnings stirred inside. What if I could find a different passion? A passion to replace music in my life, or more correctly, to erase it from my dreams. Was it even possible? Was it worth the trouble? I ended up signing for the class.
It didn’t take long to discover that my joints, unlike my voice, were stiff, awkward and resistant. Symmetry and balance were completely missing in my limbs. I could easily carry a rhythm on my lips but had none in my feet. I was drawn to the beauty of the dance but I was running a fool’s errand in trying to be a dancer.
The following semester I signed up for Indian Classical Dance II. I couldn’t help it. It was the only place where I could hear the ragas again, listen to the high notes of the harmonium, the pulsating beat of the tabla. In dance class, I could be near those sweet, beloved sounds and try to let my feet do what my voice had always wanted to do.
In the beginning, my senses were mollified. The dynamic between a guru and disciple, combined with the familiarity of the music we danced to, comforted me enough to think that I might have found a new interest, one that would take away the hankering to sing. Every morning I stared at the small dancing figure of Shiva I had picked up from an Indian store and reminded myself that the very God of Dance would help me. My recalcitrant limbs were not as easily convinced but I believed they would ultimately catch up. They had to.
Slowly, I let the idea of dancing seep into me. Because it was supposed to save me from singing, I sought a new, more solid identity in it. I stayed after class and commanded my sore, overworked feet to master the moves. I was too old, my body too inflexible to learn how to do a split or spin on one leg but I tried so hard that by the end of dance class I had no energy left to finish assignments for other classes. Rain or shine, I turned up for dance class, clutching my ankle bells, my body aching with hope. Every day I hoped to find the kind of bliss I’d found in front of the bathroom mirror, holding my pretend pencil microphone. Every day I was disappointed.
B
y the end of the year, I no longer went to dance class for the love of the ragas or in search of a new passion or even the longing to be delivered from music in the same way that one prays to be delivered from evil. I went because I had let loose a hunger in me, a blind and brutish hunger which proliferated in the perpetual absence of satisfaction. I had felt the first pang of this unrelenting hunger when, on that sweltering afternoon years ago, my friend Raqib and I had kissed and violated our fasts. I waited, ravenously, for the end of each dance practice, when my muscles were too tired to hold me upright, for only then, I was too numbed to feel the roar of that vicious hunger. Dance allowed me to survive by pulverising my body and anesthetising my spirit. Dance had become my saviour, my nemesis.
I was not a talented dancer but my tenacity alone made my teacher offer me a position in the small dance company she ran locally. The hours of dance practice tripled. Now that my teacher had a vested interest in me, she was no longer tolerant of my half splits and slow spins. ‘Oye! What’s wrong with you? You look like a Shiva with a broken leg. Lift your leg higher, higher, higher . . .’ she’d holler at me constantly. On the company T-shirt I wore was, once again, the picture of the same dancing Shiva, balanced on one leg, furiously dancing the universe into creation. Every muscle in my body felt the tautness of his incredible split, every cell of my being felt the tumult of his tandava, that thunderous dance, its explosive thrust, but I could not dance it. No matter how hard I prayed to Shiva Nataraj for a dancing boon, he was as silent and unreadable as the god of my childhood.
My mother’s reaction to my newfound occupation further unglued me. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said emphatically. ‘You must continue to dance. I’m so happy to hear it.’
‘I’m not very good at it,’ I admitted to her.
‘So? You’ll get better. Just stick with it.’
What I would have given to hear her say that when I gave up my music lessons.
‘I wish I could resume my music,’ I ventured, emboldened by her enthusiasm.
‘Hmmm . . .’ she said. This time her voice was barely audible.
One afternoon after dance practice my teacher invited me to join her for a cup of tea. I was almost certain that she would fire me from the company. We drove down the narrow streets of Amherst in her black Toyota Camry until we arrived at a small Asian teahouse. We ordered Chinese tea in a round white teapot with blue and red dragon motifs and tiny matching cups. I sipped the pale tea, trying to identify the scent of the flower in it. A student at the next table was reading a book that caught my eye. It was called The Wisdom of No Escape. I wanted to lean over and ask her the name of the author but my teacher spoke first.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, her brow creased with concern.
‘Yes. Why?’ She had caught me off guard.
‘Well I’ve noticed how low you’ve been lately and I wanted to talk about it.’
I was annoyed. Why not just tell me that dance wasn’t for me? I knew it, she knew it. There was no need for Chinese tea or looks of concern. She pulled something out of her handbag and shoved it into my hands. It was a pair of red fleece mittens.
‘I’ve seen that you never wear gloves even when it’s freezing cold. I thought these might help,’ she smiled, kindly, the way she often did when I was able to only half-perform a difficult move. But she had gone to an awful lot of trouble to simply release me from my own shortcomings. Through the open window of the teahouse, I could see some students lying on a patch of grass, soaking up the late fall sun. Maybe I ought to lie on the grass sometime. Maybe I ought to read a romance novel with the sun on my back, instead of chasing after dancing deities. Maybe I could ask my teacher for help.
‘I never wanted to dance,’ I said, almost under my breath.
My teacher popped a round red bean cake into her mouth and nodded slowly.
‘I wanted to sing,’ I said a little louder.
‘So why don’t you?’ she asked.
‘I need a teacher.’
‘That’ll be hard here but I know a lot of people in this town. Do you have some training?’
‘Only a little.’
‘I’ll look around,’ she said. ‘Let’s go, I’ll drop you off at school.’
I picked up my backpack and slipped on my warm new mittens. My fists looked cartoonish and I grinned looking at them, realising at the same time that I wasn’t going to get fired.
My teacher was resourceful. She gave me the name and number of a Bengali graduate student at UMass who lived in a remote part of the town of Amherst. To get to his house, it would take me an hour and a half from Mount Holyoke and I’d have to change buses three times. The lessons began in the dead of winter. I read my textbooks on the bus and took notes for papers and quizzes. Some days I almost forgot why I was travelling on those lonely New England roads, the snow piled high on either side, giving the impression of rolling through a white tunnel. Beyond the roads, gnarled shapes rose in the silent darkness.
The music teacher was polite and mild-mannered but not exactly a gifted vocalist or even a spirited coach. He was a student himself and was as tired as me when we met on those wintry evenings so that he always seemed to be in a rush to get the lesson over with. In the next room, separated by a thin wall, I could hear his wife and baby girl, shifting, pacing, listening, waiting for him to finish. Often I felt the same lack of mirth I had seen in my mother years ago. Where was the joy, the giddy heights of pleasure I experienced in front of the bathroom mirror? On those icy nights I could not get back to college before 11 p.m. For dinner, I’d raid the vending machine and fall asleep with my coat on, a half-eaten bag of Cheetos next to me.
I would’ve kept doing everything I was doing to keep my fantasies alive – my fantasies of a singing career, fantasies that scurried under the bed in the presence of my mother and father. My new teacher, however, put an unmanageable price on his lessons. I could not afford an extra $400 every month from my campus job alone, which was my only source of income. My father gave me money for books each semester but I was responsible for the rest of my bills. Asking my father for the additional expense of music lessons was out of the question. His feelings on the subject of music were less ambivalent than my mother’s. He had made it clear that music was not an acceptable goal. To make matters worse, the small harmonium I’d brought from home broke down. Without warning it withdrew its music from me. I pressed the keys but no sound came out. ‘It froze,’ said my teacher. ‘These delicate instruments don’t do well in this cold weather, you know. I guess we have to wait until next semester before you can go home and get a new one.’ He looked relieved.
I was relieved too. For more than two years, I had lived on the fringes of a normal college life. My off-campus dance and music practice, the increased work hours to pay for the music lessons and the hours I spent travelling on buses barely left me enough time to attend classes and do schoolwork. I was always dog-tired. I never went to parties or dinners or dates. I missed important guest speakers and concerts and sports events. I had no time to participate in any of the social or political activism on campus. I was lucky if I could catch a meal at the cafeteria with the few friends I had. So relief it was, but it was the kind of relief that might come from amputating a bad limb.
The day I went for my last lesson was breezy and cool. I saw the first crocuses as I walked from my teacher’s house to the bus stop and their feeble heads reminded me of a comment made long ago: Young green grass, crushed under a rock. I laughed, the words sounding more ludicrous than cruel after all these years. A homeless man sleeping on a bench looked up at the sound of my laughter. I gave him a quarter.
And I kept on dancing. I twirled and swirled, feeling the world spin off balance, an unsung song on my lips. What drove this feckless compulsion? Was it because my mother approved of dance or was it because she wouldn’t approve of music? It was no less wretched than my childish need to polish the world into perfection.
After I graduated from college and moved to New York I had ma
ny more options to take music classes. But the number I dialled was of the Indian dance company not the music school I had found. Once again, oddly enough, I was accepted, despite a rather average audition.
‘You’ve got great eyes and perfect hips. Your muscles, um, need more training and time,’ said the woman who ran the company. An audition passed on the merit of my eyes and hips. Fate was persistent on giving me a second chance with dance when it had done nothing to help with my music.
My life fell into the old cycle of work, practice and exhausted sleep. The demands of this dance company were much more rigorous than the previous one. My weeknights and weekends were spent rehearsing in a small Manhattan studio on the west side of the city. I hardly had time to explore New York or make new friends. Sometimes, after practice, I went to a bleary diner called Moonlight with my fellow dancers. It was the only social activity I looked forward to. Besides, I was constantly in pain. From overworking my inflamed, intractable joints, I developed an excruciating and chronic back pain. My swollen knees buckled when I climbed up and down stairs. I refused to seek medical help in fear that I might be instructed to stop whatever was aggravating the pain. I spent my entire first year in the city at either my office desk or a dance studio.
At the end of my first New York year, my mother came to visit me. That summer, I was to have my first public recital with the dance company. We were going to perform at the Lincoln Center, three nights in a row. My mother insisted on coming to the show, even though I did my best to convince her that it wouldn’t be worth her time. She waved me away. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ she said, adamantly.
On the afternoon of my opening performance, she brushed and tied my hair the way she used to when I was little. It always hurt when she ran the comb through my long, tangled masses and as a little girl I’d always cried and complained through the ordeal. When I was a bit older and I learned to braid my own hair, I missed those few minutes when I had her to myself, the way her fingers felt on my scalp, smooth and supple, just before the sharpness of the comb scratched my skin. Now, after a decade, she had offered to braid my hair again. After she finished, she surveyed her work. ‘Your curls are softer, straighter,’ she said, ‘not heavy and tangled like they used to be. I liked the way they were before.’
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