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Queens in conversation
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Yamini Krishnamurti and Uma Vasudev, two women who live life by their own rules
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One has to be talented and very intelligent to succeed! Yamini
GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS: Yamini Krishnamurti and Uma Vasudev hatched similar schemes to escape boarding school PHOTO: R.V. MOORTHY
Yamini Krishnamurti is the veritable matrix through which all that is dance must pass and the yardstick by which Bharatanatyam performers will be judged for at least half a century. The hands still have the power to mesmerise. So does the razor sharp intellect, despite the absent-minded artiste haze she seems to have wrapped herself in. It is a cocoon of her own making, an address she prefers to live in.
Alka Raghuvanshi brings together this quintessential dancer and Uma Vasudev, writer-biographer-journalist, who has been the intellectual icon of many a woman journalist and style diva of a generation that had never seen woman in tennis shorts! Her concern and candid comments on the art world come through in her writing in no uncertain terms. Over tumblers of decoction coffee, they discover a shared horror of boarding schools and the very special role their fathers played in their lives.
Uma: I think practicing artistes shouldn't be allowed to take up positions of power in art institutions.
Yamini: You are simplifying things. The problem begins when the same source is used. For instance, an art institution sanctions a grant for a cultural society and the money is siphoned back to the giver of the grant in the garb of performance fees. Such unethical practices ruin the name of other artistes as well. And then how many artistes have the ability to administrate? A good or even a great artiste may not be an able administrator.
Uma: Exactly! Administering art is a skill that needs to be taught, while art itself is an inherent phenomenon. None can teach you how to write, they can teach you the correct alphabet, but not what you do with the language.
Yamini: I feel the artistic process is a magnificent and mysterious journey where talent is honed by technique. The spiritual direction then becomes a guru. My love affair with dance began in Chidambaram, where the 108 karanas of Bharatanatyam on the temple walls held me in their grasp. Music too was a constant, including a horror of a music master who used to rap me on the knuckles if I got anything wrong!
Uma: Singing was a part of my life as well. My mother used to play the sitar. And my father was constantly pushing me to achieve, for he used to feel that creative expression was a must.
Yamini: When my father was getting frequent postings, he tried to put me in the residential school Rishi Valley so as to not interrupt my artistic training. But I hated it. I managed to get very high fever and he had no option but to cart me along! Eventually he decided my talent was something so special, he sacrificed not only his own career, but also my sister's talent was poured into this yagna. He used to say I had a special spark. It was he who had the insight that the Kalakshetra style was too regimented and made me go through training under two gurus.
Uma: But then all girls love their fathers! I too was put in a boarding school in Lahore, but I created so much ruckus, howling endlessly, my parents had no option but to pull me out! I went wherever he got posted and don't remember him trying to regiment anything. It was a wonderful state where we had complete freedom to make our own choices and live by them.
Yamini: One has to be talented and very intelligent to succeed!
Uma: And manipulative too! The mind is always cunning, for there is an innate violence in everyone.
Yamini: I don't like manipulation. I think is demeaning and too murky! I've had to pay a very dear price for not playing by these rules. I could have used my brains to play politics, but I feel that power and money are mere tools to help others.
Uma: Absolutely right! If you want to play politics, join politics. Don't play it out of context. And certainly not in art. Just as the lack of impresarios in art is creating problems for artistes in India, unethical publishers are hitting writers. It takes me seven years to complete a book and then the publisher makes money!
Yamini: Like art promoters! But then paradise is such a beautiful and elusive concept! Don't you think human beings are the very pinnacle of perfection of the universe? And look what they are doing by becoming totally preoccupied with the external! You writers have words which are permanent and give you immortality. We are like flowers who blossom and whither away!
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