With no pun intended, it is all a bit of a whirl in my disordered brain, and I remember, above all, his presence, which was so strong. He came on stage, without any fanfare or announcement, very quietly, like a young child joining in with older friends, and sitting with the musicians, contributed some bols to Saswati's dance.
Even my wife's ordered brain is confused about what happened, even though it was not a long presentation. We remember that Saswati Sen presented rhythmic pieces, as one would expect, and that Birju Maharaj did too. We remember that he said that he wanted to dance more but had some current problem with his right knee. We remember that he danced and sang three of his poems, one of which featured hari. a frog, hari a snake and hari a river (my wife can follow a bit if Hindi, but she is not a Hindi speaker, so this might be all wrong). We remember his birds, with the cuckoo. Some items we may have seen before --- and hope to see again, for all are like those favourite stories that a child always asks for at bedtime. Sadly, this child had no chance to say,
please, the one about the peacock please! but had to be happy with the cuckoo. Of course he spoke a little, and spoke about his life and the place of rhythm in it --- which is
everything.
If you ask me, any rhythm is god ---
The Hindu
I was hampered by my indistinct hearing actually made worse by over-amplification and proximity to the too-loud speakers, but, although I may have missed words, in every other way we had a couple of the best seats in the house. Amazingly, they seamed to become vacant just for us, as people shuffled around, otherwise we would have way off to the side.
Saswati closed the evening with more dance. She said that next February, Panditji celebrates his 75th birthday, and that they want to come to Chennai as part of the celebration. I did get to meet with them afterwards, and, of course, so did a hundred others, so it was necessarily brief, but she said that, maybe not February, but she certainly wanted to come here and dance in 2013.
and
Yes, S. Sushruti is Smt Vedavalli's daughter. 4.pm, 29 Dec, Raga Sudha Hall.
