It was at the turn of the century, 26th of Jan, that I first met the children of the NGO I visited, just as a matter of coincidence. It had recently shifted from its initial workspace from a temple courtyard into a dingy shop in the Joshi colony, with no natural light. So if there was no electricity, the visibility decreased directly to the heat. Anyway, the NGO had to be grateful to the owner to give them this space gratis till the shopping area actually came up as an economically viable proposition! At that time, I did not even know the name of this NGO.
I went along just for the heck of it. I didn’t even know what I would be doing there, or if I was needed there!! Most of my work experience has been in the field of teaching History to undergraduates at DU, writing reviews on music and dance, and working as a researcher. I had worked in a small school in a Delhi village as a part of an educational experiment. From there onwards, there was a big time lag. Typically there was little life outside managing a baby and household chores. Beyond this, not much seems to be happening on my front.
Time and tide wait for no man, and especially not women!
But it did seem to stand still. But this whole experience of interaction with these children made me step out of the ordinary and humdrum existence. It added more meaning to life itself. Having learnt dance since childhood, I naturally thought of teaching dance.
Aside from the salutary impact on my life, I have noticed positive personality changes in these children, especially the girls. As an art form, dance too is a medium of expression. It helps in expressing oneself better through facial expressions and body movements, and hand gestures. Growing children often become less self-conscious about themselves if they dabble in any of sports or performing arts. Experience on stage makes them more confident in themselves and in their dealings with the world around them. Their encounter with dance provided an aesthetic outlet to express themselves and to hop, skip, dance and prance about as young girls their age feel like doing. It had the potential of providing a “space” all its own. They enjoyed the space so much that they seemed to yearn for more.
There were a handful of girls who in the beginning took more than a passing interest in learning dance. By the end of their first exposure to the stage, there were many more girls of all age groups who were now more keenly interested in dance. But alas, due to paucity of space, a lot of the younger girls just have to wait in the wings till there is more space to teach them.
The initial phase of teaching these children was tedious and laborious. They were stiff, wooden, ungainly, and with tensed-up bodies. The manner of their grasping any movement was in bits. If they got their footwork right, it was often not in conjunction with the hand and body movements. It took a long to coordinate all aspects in totality.
If it was a tough task to teach, it was equally tough for the children to mentally and physically coordinate all their movements (of face, hands, body and feet). The importance of eye movements was beyond the pale of their awareness in the beginning, except that their faces should not be covered and that they must have constant eye contact with the audience. Gradually, they began to enjoy their dance movements.
It is then that the spectators too enjoy their performance. Such is the spirit of dance; like the joie de vivre, it touches all who come in touch with it.
From dance exercises to simple movements on simple poems and prerecorded music, we gradually evolved into teaching the basics of Kathak in the hope that they would also have the choice to choose beyond film music, which was most readily available at hand, be it via the radio or the television. Our first opportunity of performing came on Independence Day when the girls danced on Vande Mataram. All the dresses and makeup came from the homes of volunteers. It was a hilarious, colourful mishmash of the dresses, the accessories, the make-up.
In our country, teenage girls from lower-income families hardly ever fully experience the joys of childhood. For most of them, their childhood gets atrophied due to other responsibilities at home, which fall on them. This gets reflected in the way they sit while doing the dance namaskars. They sit like they are getting ready to do chores like washing clothes or utensils.
Just the idea of going on the stage and dancing in front of an audience is an exotic idea, which has a dreamlike quality for them. It has connotations of dressing up, the lights, the claps, the photographs, appreciation etc. There is also this new image of themselves as being more than ‘mere’ ordinary, constrained lower middle-class girls, who otherwise would not have had an opportunity to learn something not necessary or essential for their basic education.
In an atmosphere where their education is not of prime importance to their families, they experience such exposure to stage performances, a brush with performing arts, adulation and respect, which does not come their way easily or in the normal course of their daily routines.
One of my best rewards has been to see the joy and eagerness reflected in their eyes and visages. The love and respect they bestow on me are equally overwhelming and humbling. What these children learnt at that time was so simple, and yet they cherished it. The whole exercise of learning dance and enjoying it probably stems from the fact that it is unconnected with the structure and fabric of the educational and examination system.
This has enriched, embellished, stimulated our lives, and helped in the resurgence of our creative sensibilities. All volunteers gained a larger family beyond the ones we were born into and those we got married into. For me, it was a gentle reminder of a wider world beyond our narrow confines and concerns, which one often forgets.
This began my journey of working in the voluntary sector at the grassroots level .