One from the memory bank
ANJANA RAJAN
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Guru Katherine Kunhiraman on her dance journey
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Photo: K.V. Srinivasan
PRECISION Katherine and K.P. Kunhiraman.
"When I describe that time, I feel I'm describing someone else," says Katherine Kunhiraman, recalling how shy she was as a young girl. Observe the veteran Bharatanatyam guru today — majestic in her cotton saris, authoritatively discussing topics related to classical dance, contributing incisive comments at seminars and delighting interlocutors with delicious asides — and, yes, it certainly sounds like someone else!
But the story of her life in dance starts in Kolkata (then Calcutta), when Katherine was 18 and newly arrived in India. Not that her life till then had been that of a typical American teenager. While she "hadn't done the things that 18-year-olds usually had," she had done the unusual ones. She had seen two performances of African dance. And she was interested in theatre — "Restoration drama and Shakespeare and things like that" — and history. Besides, she had just seen the film "Lawrence of Arabia" and "wanted to be a female version of T.E. Lawrence," she smiles.
First glimpse
When she came to Calcutta she saw Indian dance for the first time. It was a performance by Ritha Devi. The celebrated dancer performed several styles in one evening, as was the trend those days. The recital included Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Mohiniattam and Kathakali.
Katherine says everything about the performance is engraved in her memory. "The most amazing thing was how she changed her costume so fast, and came back and explained the dance," she says.
"I felt, I could do that!" It was no empty claim. She began with Kathak training, then went to Rabindra Bharati University, where she learnt Bharatanatyam, Mohiniattam and Kathakali. "I really loved Kathakali. The teacher was Govindan Kutty. He's the main reason I continued with dance," she says.
When her parents moved to Delhi, she left home to enrol at Rukmini Devi Arundale's Kalakshetra. It was 1966. Athai, as Rukmini Devi was addressed, was at the height of her creativity and power, at once feared and loved. Says Katherine, "I loved her aesthetic sense, her imperiousness. She had such a sense of majesty."
Athai was convinced that in one lifetime, a dancer could attempt to master one art form. So Katherine was expected to choose between Bharatanatyam and Kathakali. She refused to drop either. The stalemate went on for hours till Katherine sent a message to her guru-to-be: "Tell her she's asking me to choose between my father and my mother." The issue was clinched, and the young American was admitted amid expectations that exhaustion would soon choose for her. She however, retained them both.
"I felt good at Kalakshetra," says Katherine. "People say you get crushed. I didn't feel crushed.
I devoured Kalakshetra. I absorbed everything that was going on there." This despite the rule that foreigners could not be given roles in Rukmini Devi's dance dramas. It had racist undercurrents, since girls from Sri Lanka and Indonesia were given roles. But with her skills in drawing and designing, she became Athai's consultant. And after leaving Kalakshetra, she danced the lead in numerous productions of the Dhananjayans. She is sure that if she had been given the role of even a fan bearer in Kalakshetra's Ramayana series, she would have had all the music by heart.
The precision shows in her teaching today, in Berkely, California, where with her husband, the celebrated Kathakali exponent K.P. Kunhiraman, she has been running the Kalanjali dance institute for three decades.
No rancour
There is no rancour at Rukmini Devi's decisions. "If she had asked me to work with her I would have been her slave," says Katherine feelingly, but happy that by the end of Athai's life, she had "come to a comfortable place with her."
Katherine came into contact with the greatest musicians at Kalakshetra. "I felt I had seen Tyagaraja when I saw Budalur (Krishnamurti) Sir," she says. As for Tyagaraja, one day she decided to visit Thiruvaiyaru, the birthplace of the saint composer of Carnatic music.
Kunhiraman, a fellow student, attempted to dissuade her, saying there was "nothing" to see there. "But I said, I love Tyagaraja, I'm going."
Escorted by Budalur Krishnamurti and the legendary vocalist M.D. Ramanathan, she set off.
They met Tyagaraja's descendents and were shown the idol he had worshipped. Descendents of Shyama Shastri still had the tanpura knobs he had used, she recounts.
Katherine found their host in Thiruvaiyaru "torn between showing us off and being contaminated." The humour does not dilute her sense of reverence. Of the gurus, she says, "They knew nothing but music and God. The idea of darshan is not there in America, but just to be in the presence of these people... ."
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