A light is out: Birju Maharaj’s first student on the dancer, legend, friend

There was a way Birju Maharaj performed this dance that was unforgettable; I last saw him perform it about two decades ago.

I first saw Birju Maharaj dance as a child. I was not yet 10. My mother Sumitra Charat Ram was working to set up the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra (SBKK), an institute for training in the classical arts, in the early 1950s.

She was very keen that my sister and I study classical dance. Birju Maharaj was one of the exponents of the Lucknow gharana of Kathak. He was barely 15 when he began teaching. Soon, he would begin to make a name for himself on the Delhi stage. But before all that, my mother enrolled his help. I was his first student.

Kindness mingled with an unflinching eye for detail, in his lessons. He believed in repetition, repetition, repetition, and it worked. A move I failed to master would become muscle memory, perfected. I can do it without a flaw even today. I know this even without trying. That was Birju Maharaj as a teacher, even in his teens, when we his young students knew him as Brij Mohan Nath Mishra, or Guru.

He conducted his lessons at the Sangeet Bharati institute (and later at the SBKK, once it opened in 1952). Kathak didn’t have many students then. There would be three of us, sometimes two, sometimes just me. We enjoyed his classes because he was barely older than we were. Between our taleem or training sessions, we would chat. In the early years it was the simple conversation of children; in later years, I remember him talking openheartedly about his nervousness ahead of the birth of his first child.

I have not seen anyone perform the Rangmanch ka Tukra for so long, for instance — that iconic stage in a young dancer’s evolution when they pay tribute through dance movement to the stage and the people that have brought them this far, and which demonstrates elements of what they have learnt, from movements to expressions, in tribute to her guru. Everything is in the Rangmanch ka Tukra. It acknowledges the community that makes dance possible. It is among the things I learnt in my years as Birju Maharaj’s first student.

That was Birju Maharaj the teacher. But he was also a person of kindness. I was 19 when I accompanied a Kathak dance troupe to Russia for a performance that was exceedingly well-received. He was the lead dancer. One afternoon, he was sitting, chatting with the female lead, when I fainted and knocked my head against a window in a room nearby. It was probably the suffocation of closed rooms and too much indoor heating. I hit my head, lay down, and a few moments later he appeared with a small bottle of balm. I can’t imagine where he found it but that’s who he was as a person.

I remember watching in amazement the dance sequences that he choreographed for the 1977 Satyajit Ray film Shatranj Ke Khilari. He had always been passionate about choreography. Amid his immense respect for form and tradition, burned the heart of a creator and an artist.

Later, films such as Devdas (2002), which I must confess I have not seen, would give him fresh avenues within which to create.

He was a multi-faceted person who loved to share his time and his talents. He played the tabla. Few people know, or perhaps remember, that he lent his voice to numerous puppet shows at the Bharatiya Kala Kendra, once memorably speaking for the puppet of the Rani of Jhansi.

But the dancer I remember is the one who saw beyond the obvious. Who could take a simple phrase such as “Kaun gali gayo Shyam? (What lane has Krishna taken?)” and make it unforgettable. Now, this is a thumri meant to be accompanied by a movement of the hands. It’s simple enough. I’m sure you can see it in your mind.

You wave your hand in the air, as if it is a fish in water, and you ask: “Kaun gali gayo Shyam?” He turned even this simple step into performance art. He traced the lines on his own palm with an expression on his face of mystical wonder: “Kaun gali gayo Shyam?” He traced the waves of hair on a head and wondered: “Kaun gali gayo Shyam?”

He could work similar wonders with the ghunghat, where no ghunghat existed. He took metaphor and willed it into life. It looked effortless, but those of us who had the privilege of watching him rehearse had seen him try, try again, perfect. As he would put it: get better and better and better.

He was always destined for greatness. Now he is gone, my one regret is I that don’t remember more of what he talked about in those breaks between taleem. We were too young to know we were riffing with a legend. We were too young to appreciate what he was saying.

(Shobha Deepak Singh is director of the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra, New Delhi)

(As told to Zara Murao)

AN UNPARALLELED LEGACY

* When Kathak legend Pandit Birju Maharaj died on January 17, aged 84, he left behind an unparalleled legacy. He had perfect rhythm and gestures so expressive that they brought forth entire stories. But he is also credited with taking Kathak mainstream and helping popularise dance dramas in India and around the world.

* Born into a well-known family of Kathak dancers, Brij Mohan Nath Mishra began to perform alongside his father, as a child. By his teens, he was teaching. By 28, his mastery of Kathak had won him a Sangeet Natak Akademi award. He developed his own unique style, and a reputation as a brilliant choreographer.

* Shobha Deepak Singh, director of the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra in New Delhi, was Birju Maharaj’s first student, back in the early 1950s. He was always destined for greatness, she says. He was passionate about technique and tradition as well as creativity and choreography. He was driven by a quest for perfection. “He is currently unparalleled,” Singh says.