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KALARI wears cosmo look
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An ancient martial art has been effortlessly appropriated by Bangaloreans. And you haven't yet arrived if you don't `do' Kalaripayattu
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RIGHT HERE in Bangalore, you can learn a martial art hailed as one of the worlds' oldest, believed to date as far back as 3000 years.
The Indian Buddhist acknowledged as the father of modern martial arts, teaching Kung-fu to the monks of the Shaolin monastery, was first trained in this art. In fact, he apparently drew on one of its principles, the practice of self-defence without the use of weapons, to teach his students.
Kalaripayattu. The name evokes images of weapons dexterously exchanged between the quickly moving hands of the practitioner, half-jumps and 360 degree turns in perfect synchronization between the people performing it.
This requires complete mastery over mind and body, deadly precision and power, stemming from a rigorous training, which was once inherently part of a youngster's life in the Kerala of the early millennium.
Kalaripayattu is a martial arts form incorporating an intimate knowledge of the human body's pressure points and muscle formations, with the belief that mastery of the mind over body can defy the principles of gravity. And you can now learn it in Bangalore.
But there are no traditional costumes, no worship of the goddess, guru and earth, no traditional kalari (training ground), no intensive massages.
Instead late on Saturday evenings, it's Kalaripayattu, Bangalooru style. Track pants, sports bras, and closely fitting Tee-shirts replace the winding cloths of the traditional attire as students troop in for a pre-Saturday night clubbing-Kalari class. They leave their quietly beeping cell phones and designer watches by the windows, before they arrange themselves on the wooden flooring, surrounded by full-length mirrors on all sides.
"Will Kalari stop me smoking?" one girl wants to know. This is her first class. One of the organisers laughingly tells her Kalari will do everything for her. She trustingly moves to the front of the class, as the instructor, a National Champion of Kalaripayattu, begins the stretching and bending which seem deceptively like yoga.
But as the class progresses, the side stretches and coordinated breathing movements require increasing amounts of both concentration and effort, till novice students begin to feel the heat, literally. Faces go red, limbs seem like they are being stretched to tearing point, and the seemingly easy hand movements (right hand goes forward, left goes backward... whoops... sorry that was both hands going backward, no, sorry, now the right one just followed the left... that's not right ... now they're both going together... see? It's harder than it looks) prove near impossible.
But Kalari has become fashionable, and Bangalore's youngsters diligently struggle to perform the half jumps and face-high kicks. Possibly even more wondrous than Kalari's lessons in complete command over the body, is this — its ability to adapt and be adopted, centuries after its birth, into the exclusive lifestyles of Bangalore's elite, sharing space with golf mornings and party nights.
HEMANGINI GUPTA
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