Her Kathak was futuristic

Imperial India was in the additional throes of World War-II when a Maharashtrian family camping in Delhi sent their daughter to Lahore for better education. Pre-teen Kumudini, with Jayakar as her ancestral surname, thus joined the prestigious Queen Mary School in undivided Punjab’s capital, over 400 km away from her parents. An ensuing slice of the upper-middle class household’s history in the early 1940s turned out to be momentous for a classical dance of eventual global appeal.

For, Kathak got its seed sown in a city that acceded to Pakistan following the 1947 Partition. In fact, if the art form steeped in the medieval-era Bhakti movement and seasoned by the Mughal dynasty since the mid-16th century went on to earn a Lahore gharana, this little girl from Bombay did play an incidental role in its foundation.

Kumudini’s musician-mother Leela Dinkar approached the British management of the institution and convinced them of the need for music and dance in the curriculum.

This meant a job in Lahore for Kumudini’s Kathak guru of the Jaipur style. Young Radhelal Misra, who had been training Kumudini in Delhi, was called in to teach in Queen Mary. Radhelal was a nephew of maestro Sunder Prasad, who groomed Kumudini in Kathak during her childhood in Bombay. For that, cinema was a factor.

The western metropolis was sensing the early ripples of Hindi movies along the decade of Kumudini’s birth in 1930. Her parents took the six-year-old to watch ‘Achhut Kanya’, which featured actor Mumtaz Ali’s dance number that particularly fascinated the child. Back home, Kumudini would try to mimic the movements, catching her mom’s attention. Leela, at her classes under Hindustani vocalist Narayanrao Vyas, managed to arrange for Kumudini a Kathak master: Mohan Prasad.

From Bombay to Delhi to Lahore, where Kumudini matriculated at age 14, the precocious student returned to her father, now a widower and working in Allahabad. Amid learning under legends Shambhu Maharaj (Lucknow) and Ashiq Hussain (Benares), she graduated in agriculture (Naini College), but found no hope of a job in the male-centric domain. The uncertainty ended soon when a benefactor serendipitously led her to associate with an upstart dance company abroad.

The eclectic Ram Gopal had his ballet troupe flourishing in London, to where Kumudini flew months after her country won Independence. The team was busy presenting shows across Europe, and Kumudini’s capacity to grasp a bit of Kathakali and Manipuri as well came in handy. Among the company’s part-time violinists was Rajnikant Lakhia, a law student in England. In 1952, Kumudini was back in India. She married Rajnikant and ended up settling in the businessman’s city of Ahmedabad.

Into the 1960s, Kumudini Lakhia had decided to end her tryst with Bharatanatyam. “I found the south Indian abhinaya techniques not suiting my ways,” she’d recall, choosing Kathak as her sole focus since. However, as in Lahore, Kathak had no traditional presence in the Gujarat capital. With her spouse’s support, Kumudini set up a classroom with three students. In three years, the endeavour sprouted up the Kadamb Centre for Dance and Music. “I named it after the tree known for its intimacy with Krishna,” the founder used to trail off, hinting at its shade where the mythological Radha had her romance with the herds boy, a key figure in Kathak.

Notwithstanding the centrality of the blue god, the dance needn’t invariably tether down to storytelling around the Puranas, according to Kumudini. Thus began her experiments on enriching the form with abstract movements. Initially, most purists weren’t happy, but Kathak seamlessly absorbed those innovations into its vocabulary. The trademark twirls (chakkar) began moving out of a single spot; instead, circled all over the stage. The rhythmic tihai was no more a sequence of just three patterns; it got subdivisions. Most strikingly, Kathak increasingly manifested as group performances: not as dancers in identical movements, but doing complementary roles. Hori, Duvidha, Dhabkar and Yugal in the 1970s became milestones.

Such novelties won Kumudini invitations from Bollywood. The success of Rekha-starrer ‘Umrao Jaan’ (1981) flooded her with offers to choreograph, but Kumudini wasn’t keen about films anymore. She continued producing an array of Kathak disciples with modern sensibilities. “None of them copycats me,” she’d note. “My contributions are for tomorrow.”

— The writer is an art critic

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