An Archive of Seasons
I am reclusive. I am gregarious. I am in
solitude but with a window open. When
I dance the audience becomes one single
point of light. When I speak, my words
dance. I watch birds flying in to nest and
rest for the night. That tree of silk-cotton
now totally bald was green with shiny
leaves. Now not one leaf to swear by.
That summer when I moved here I saw
huge orange-red flowers and not a single
leaf. Then flowers left puffs of silk-cotton
balls floating in air, giving asthmatic
spasms to many. In this seventh year of
my stay in this flat I see my life, years gone by as alternating
as flowers and leaves and bare branches on which hundreds
of birds rest, perch, play. I am that tree.
‘Think Sonal, how would you recount your journey of
75 years in 2 hours?’ a friend asked. They were making a
video presentation. The process of selection of photos and
video-clips was as daunting as enriching. Awesome, fantastic,
unbelievable, inspiring, inimitable were some of the initial
reactions from the selection committee. But they fell silent
on the fifth day as frame after frame, photo after photo
emerged from dark corners of cupboards and shelves.
I stopped them after a week. They protested, we haven’t
even touched one-tenth of it. Tough task to weed out, gloat-
ing over those images from early days of dancing through
mid-life and later. I zeroed in on DD’s black & white video
clips of Bharatanatyam and Odissi. Short 2-minute clips
from my own creations and choreographies and the rest was
me on stage, alone with myself, talking, singing, dancing,
laughing. I have just begun.Gandhiji’s Man
My paternal grandfather Mangaldas Pakvasa, dadaji, was
from Surat in Gujarat but had come to Bombay when his
teacher-father relocated. The young man studied law to
become a successful solicitor practicing with Mohammed
Ali Jinnah and Bhulabhai Desai. Dadaji was a rich respected
lawyer until his meeting with M.K. Gandhi and visit
to Dandi with him in 1930. He picked up fistful of
salt on that fateful day which changed his life
forever. Dadaji was jailed. He went to jail
frequently while donating his real-estate
bungalows and properties to the
nation. Thereafter he never went back
to practice law. He resigned from
the general membership of Indian
National Congress in 1944, the year
of my birth. He had differences with
Nehru, so when the time came to sel-
ect names for governorship of the five
presidencies, Nehru opposed dadaji’s
name. It was Gandhiji who pushed saying
he is my man! Thus dadaji had the honourof being appointed Governor of Central
Provinces and Berar on August 15, 1947.My Intangible Patronage
My father being his only child, we were
brought up under his wise, humorous
and enlightened supervision. Nagpur
was the capital where we still have
friends and strong memories of that
beautiful land from which Madhya-
Pradesh was created and Vidarbha ceded
to Maharashtra. I learnt my chaste
Hindi sitting in the lap of Dr D.P. Mishra,
then home minister, and indulged my
Gujarati sweet tooth in the voluminous lap of chief minister
Pt Ravi Shankar Shukla who enjoyed feeding ladoos. Shukla
ji and Pt G.B. Pant shared their generous moustache.
Dadaji was also Governor of Mysore (later Karnataka),
undivided Bombay and then Maharashtra. Happy childhood
and memories of adolescence are replete with faces of
Sardar Patel, Dr Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Dr
Raghuvira (Prof. Lokesh Chandra’s father), religious leaders
and saints, musicians and many scholars. Many associations
continued in years to come when unaware of my early years,
Lutyens’ Delhi gossiped about my ‘friendships’ with political
leaders! The joke has been on them as I continue living in
rented accommodation, fighting devious and greedy land-
lords in Tees Hazari, without a trace of political patronage.
Even now I await my first government accommodation after
nearly one year of being a Rajya Sabha MP!Kaka Told Sonal...
Cut to Morarji Desai, the prime minister of India in 1978. He
had been unhappy and overtly critical of my profession as
dancer. As finance minister in 1964, he had scolded me in his
Delhi residence for dancing ‘in public.’ I had retorted, “Why
do you give speeches in public?” He was livid and complained
to my bemused dadaji over telephone. Then he complained
to my father for not meeting him to pay respects as the PM
of India. I rushed to his simple bungalow next evening with
my friends Veena Shroff and Narendra Singh Bhati
mumbling about my dance programmes and
tours. He was still nursing that grudge when
he said “you haven’t stopped dancing yet?”
and my smile evaporated as the words
burst out “you are still Aurangzeb.”
In my mother tongue Gujarati
it sounds more curt. I sobbed in
frustration. His heart melted. He
apologised, offered dry fruits and
accepted to attend my 3-day festival
‘Krishna’ at Hotel Ashoka. He had
that old-world grace to address the
elite audience saying, “I am here
as ‘Sonal’s Morarji Kaka, not as prime
minister of India!”DANCE diary
SONAL MANSINGH
(The author is a classical dancer and
a Rajya Sabha MP)SAAHIL66 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019