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Photo: V.V. Krishnan

Carving her own niche Rani Khanam enjoying her lunch at Paatra restaurant in Jaypee Siddharth hotel

With a straight gait, Khanam, flaunting a Robin-blue salwar-kameez, with her hair dancing to her swift steps, reaches Paatra restaurant in New Delhi’s Jaypee Siddharth hotel a little late, and is profusely apologetic.

“I am so sorry about this. Some students came over in the morning and I got busy with them,” she says. Khanam, a well-known name in Kathak today, runs her dance school AAMAD Academy with branches at four venues across NCR. Often she presents shows featuring her students once she feels they are “ready for stage”.

“It is a continuous process,” she states with a smile. Just recently, Khanam had put up “a show of half-drama, half-choreography” with her students at the LTG auditorium. “I have to teach them how to use space on stage, how to elaborate a vision, etc. But what impresses me most is that they are so honest in their effort,” she says.

With a friendly waiter flapping open a sizeable menu, Khanam is all set to order starters. She is now joined by the restaurant chef, and with his help she settles for matarwali tikki (one of Paatra’s specialities) and murg malai tikka. To wash down the tikkas, there is moti panna on the table already.

Taking sips of panna, Khanam flips to her salad days. She trained under Pandit Birju Maharaj and Reba Vidyarthi for 15 years. Learning to get over her fascination for her gurus and create her own space in the dance form was not easy, she admits. “I still remember my first stage shows. Once in the early 1990s in Indore, I was giving a performance. That set me thinking particularly. All that I did on stage was taught to me by my guru. So what is my contribution, I asked myself.” This soul-searching question, she adds, led her to chart her own path.

Rani, who graduated in the Lucknow style of Kathak, got selected for the ACC Fellowship from New York for World Dance and Islamic Culture. As part of the fellowship, she tried out choreography based on Islamic verses and became the first Muslim dancer to do so. “This was to underline how Hindu art forms fused with the Islamic during the Moghul era in India,” she explains. Flashing a half smile, she adds meaningfully, “I was doing sufi before the word came into fashion”.

The fellowship taught her new techniques for stage shows, particularly how to use lights. Always ready to take up challenges, she says from research to writing scripts to finalising costumes for her shows, she does it all on her own.

“I feel there is no shortcut to hard work. The finer details of everything matter.” In context, she mentions the ill effects of TV reality shows on music. “It is easy to get attracted to these formats. But I always tell my students, Yeh to pani ke bulbule hain, only hard work can bring real success.”

With the starters over, the waiter lays the table for the main course, with kunna ghosht, zafrani jhinga, mah ki dal and some greens, paired with an assortment of paranthas. Khanam particularly likes the mah ki dal and the mirchi paranthas. “These paranthas are really good,” she comments.

Talking about food, she says she makes very good zafrani biryani. “I cook it mostly on holidays.” Like any busy woman with a 24-hour to-do list squeezed into a 12-hour schedule, Khanam doesn’t get time to enter the kitchen too often. “I cook whenever I get time. I have a little daughter and sometimes I have to give in to her demands for a particular dish,” she adds.

Skipping the offer for dessert, Khanam opts for a cup of coffee, and till the last sip, talks about the endless reservoir of mysticism in the country, how she feels proud of “our 2000 years of heritage”, particularly when she travels internationally for her performances. And all through it, what comes to the fore is her absorbing style of conversation, particularly when you know no Kathak.

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