Late but welcome
The other artistes of my age have even got the Padma Bhushan
garnering glory Guru Padma Sampathkumaran (in red sari) was recently awarded Kalaimamani by the Government of Tamil Nadu.
For one who got married in the early 1960s, Guru Padma Sampathkumaran has managed to move with the times with surprising aplomb. When even the middle aged struggle with the technology and terminology of the cyber age, she grabs a pen and notes down e
mail ids with the ease of a professional. Perhaps adjusting to the environment has always been her strong point.
Having just received the title of Kalaimamani, the Tamil Nadu Government’s recognition for artists, she looks back at a life that flowed between two banks, as it were, of conservatism and liberalism. “Those my age have even got the Padma Bhushan,” she laughs, hinting at the iniquities in award distribution. “But I had begun to think even this would be posthumous!”
A young Padma Sampathkumaran.
Not that she is ungrateful. She remembers with pride her gurus, especially the legendary Kodanayaki Ammal, at whose Gandhi Seva Sangham she learnt Bharatanatyam, vocal music and veena.
It was Kodanayaki who encouraged the young Padma to participate in all her stage presentations, helping her keep her performances a secret from her arch conservative grandmother.
Strict upbringing
“I was brought in a very strict Brahmin family in Triplicane, Chennai. It was not considered good for girls to learn Bharatanatyam. But my father’s cousin was a forward thinking person.
He took me to Guru Chokkalingam Pillai to learn Bharatanatyam. After some years, though, my grandmother said I was too grown up to learn from a male guru.
That was when I joined Kodanayaki Ammal. Besides participating in all her productions, I used to write short poems for Tamil journals. Even now sometimes I write and use the poems as a base to choreograph for my students. Kodanayaki Ammal supported me in everything. I am eternally grateful to her.”
She married into a family that was close to the great reformer and writer Subramania Bharati. “My mother-in-law Yadugiri Ammal has written a book on Bharatiyar. I gave it to President Kalam too when I presented my students at Rashtrapati Bhawan,” she relates.
The family gave her just the fillip she needed to expand her creativity. With her civil engineer husband, however, she spent decades touring the most far flung places in India.
“The first time I performed, in a Madhya Pradesh village, everyone said, ‘Bade Sahib ki biwi to naachne waali hai. That was in 1964.”
Gradually, she stopped performing but was immersed in teaching. From Kashmir to Andhra Pradesh, she has taught Bharatanatyam everywhere her husband’s job took the family.
With plenty of Russian engineers working with their Indian counterparts, she forged a special link between Russian and mudras. So much so that she finally did a language course and can now manage reasonably well in Russian.
After settling in Delhi she taught for eight years in the Russian embassy. She also taught at the American Embassy School’s adult education programme.
Her school, Nrityam Dance and Cultural Society, is a registered body and has produced a number of students who are now performing and also teaching in reputed schools of the Capital, besides at Moscow University.
ANJANA RAJAN
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