AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Learning to dance
KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH
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The book goes along very well, no bumps, no long pauses, no cynicism, and lots of fun, wacky people, and a great deal of inspiration.
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Mridula's life is interestingly told because she's open to and looking at everything around her — people, places, things, attitudes, colours — with joy and it's so contagious!
There Is A Dance For Every Song; Mridula Martis, Unisun Publications , Rs. 195 (Special Indian price).
"NOT that the journalist seemed suitably impressed with my story. She took the write up ... with a blank expression and she made no promises. For her, it is just another story of a bored professional following one's passion. She must have come across so many in her profession."
This is Mridula Martis, who tells her own life's story in There's a Dance for Every Song; she's right in thinking that it is but one of many such stories of "bored professionals" following their passions.
Easy read
It doesn't seem enough of a story to keep a reader engaged through 200-odd pages, this story of how a successful, well-paid accounts person chucks her job to go and learn dancing in London so that she can start a dance school. But, surprisingly, it does.
What makes it such an easy, entertaining read is Mridula Martis' ingenuity, which doesn't lapse into sugary-syrupy-giggly inanity, in both her attitude to life and writing. It is very refreshing to read a straightforward, single layered narrative that goes one day at a time through a life lived to the full with very ordinary little pleasures and pains.
Mridula's life is interesting, and interestingly told — one doesn't know if she has a naturally clear writing style or there's a good editor at work here — because she's open to and looking at everything around her — people, places, things, attitudes, colours — with joy and it's so contagious!
There's lots of fun and thrills, the thrills of learning to dance, but there are also small serious observations about life that punctuate the fun and prevent it from being all froth.
Several other characters also inhabit There's a Dance ... : Mridula's dance instructors, Peter and Markie, and her friends in London, KK, Mo and Cindy, are the ones that stay in mind. One wonders if the book would have read half so well had they been less colourful.
Now the bad part: the book is too long. It ought to have gone from her return to India to the starting of the dance school, instead of which it meanders off to a wedding and the visit of her London friends to India. That simply doesn't work, I must confess I couldn't read much of it and just skipped to the end and that's close to 50 or more pages! It's too much like a diary of daily encounters, which are more or less the same.
Thrill of dancing
However, A Dance for Every Song is worth the read, for apart from this one little flaw, which may not even bother all readers, it goes along very well, no bumps, no long pauses, no cynicism, and lots of fun, wacky people, and a great deal of inspiration. If you have a timid dancer hiding inside you, this book will surely have you looking for Mridula's dance school. As I am going to do.
And that's the best thing about it, it works perfectly in communicating the thrill of dancing, and of living a dance-centred life. Perhaps it's just the sort of person that Mridula seems to be, uncomplicated, determined, fun and simple, but the whole idea of working at learning something seems to become lightened. It makes you want to dance!
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