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A performance in honour of Guru Mayadhar Raut today
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Gurudakshina Students of Kiran Segal
I can but thank Him with my eyes, and when I see Him, my eyes overflow.” Roughly translated, this is a line from a song by the Carnatic music composer Papanasam Sivan. He was addressing Lord Shiva, but grateful students lost for words to thank their guru know the feeling. What is gurudakshina? How do you thank someone who’s taken you from crayons to perfumes, asked the students in the all-time hit “To Sir With Love”, in a 20th Century equivalent to the age-old quandary. The answer too cuts across geographical and epochal boundaries: By doing well what the guru taught you.
This Monday evening as Kiran Segal and her disciples take the stage at the India International Centre, the age-old solution will replay itself. Honouring Guru Mayadhar Raut, considered by some as one of the four pillars of the revival of Odissi dance, Kiran Segal will present some of his signature compositions.
Of late little seen in public, the guru will be present at the performance. “He is our guest of honour. I’m nervous and excited too,” laughs Segal, his disciple since the mid-1970s and a Sangeet Natak Akadmi awardee. “I want his work to be presented in the proper manner, the way he taught it to us.”
Loath to change his choreography even to set solo works for a group, she says “For example, we learnt ‘Jago Maheshwara’ as a solo piece. My four students who have learnt it wanted to perform it, but just positioning them here and there, I got a little worried, what if Guruji doesn’t like it.” Finally she asked him, and was pleased to get his ready approval. “He’s so excited and thrilled. I feel very happy if he’s happy.” That’s faith.
ANJANA RAJAN
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