Recollections

Srimati Roshan Ghosh and her husband Dr. Hiranmay Ghosh

In the field of art, science, literature, there are periods when the history gets studded with star performers. Be it literature, painting, music or dance. In India twentieth century was one such.

In all the above mentioned fields there were super personalities and this continued till the seventies of the last century.

When we were young the world of classical dance was full of great artists. Rukmini Devi, Uday Shankar and their contemporaries pulled out the Indian dance from its obscene status and gave to it its due respectability by showing how great this particular performing art was.

The young generation consisted of guru Gopinath, Ram Gopal, Travancore sisters, Wazifdar sisters, Sitara Devi and many more.

I have had the opportunity to learn dance from one of the Wazifder sisters, Smt. Roshan Ghosh who lived for a year or so in the Ashram. It was then that she taught us Bharatnatyam.

I believe it was her husband Dr. Hiranmay Ghosh who came in contact with the Ashram in late forties or in 1950 for he had the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo.

There is a story narrated even today that when Dr. Hiranmay Ghosh stood in front of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, on the occasion of a Darshan, Sri Aurobindo looked at the man and later commented, “Master mind”. Many of the older generation knew him as Master mind and never bothered to know his real name.

Roshanben was to perform “Geeta Govinda” on the school court yard. There was a powerful bulb at the corner of “Nouvelle Verandah” which used to light the whole of courtyard. Dr. Ghosh saw the light and wanted to know how we used that light during the programme.  I replied, “We can’t use it. It is put off during the programme”.

He, at once, called his driver and asked him to buy some blue cellophane paper. When the paper arrived he asked one of the younger men who were helping with the preparation of light and screen to cover the light on the verandah with that paper. When the task was done, he looked at the light with satisfaction and commented, “Now Radha shall dance in a moonlit night. Let the light be on the through out the performance”.

This reminds me also of an incident he had once narrated to me. For it gives a glimpse of what that individual was.

During the Second World War he was in France working as a physiotherapist for the army fighting the Nazi force. This is what he narrated.

One day a young soldier arrived with grievous wounds. There wasn’t any hope of his survival. When I went to visit the wounded soldier to see what I could do to give some relief, he caught my hand and pleaded, “Doctor, please save me; I want to live.”

I promised saying I would try my best. But I knew the task was impossible, yet there is no harm in trying. So I took up, so to say the challenge and with the permission of the authorities sat by the side of the young man. My intension was that he should have some physical contact with some one. On turn we held his hand, then I sat by him most of the time but after a period I became extremely tired and needed refreshing myself. I called one of the helpers and requested him to sit in my place and be sure that there is physical contact. I went leaving the patient and after half an hour when returned found the soldier dead, the helper fast asleep and there was no contact between the two. We all were exhausted; so naturally as the helper sat his body began to relax and fell asleep. I believe as long as we consciously willed the man to live and held his hand he couldn’t die. But once the contact was gone he just left his body. But with our effort we kept him alive for two whole days.

Roshan Wazifdar married Dr. Ghosh and settled at Kodaikanal. They had a very big farm in a near by village. Dr.Ghosh not only busied himself with the farm but used to work also as a physiotherapist for a very selected number of patients. He did social work in the village for which he was very much loved and respected by the villagers.

In the early sixties Roshanben began to visit the Ashram. Anuben was then invited by friends to visit the States. When Anuben’s visit was confirmed she requested Roshan Ghosh to teach the students of the ashram. According to my knowledge of this particular school, Roshanben was a Bharatnatyam dancer par excellence. The Wazifdar sisters were as famous as the Travancore sisters of the south.

On an auspicious day we began to learn from Roshanben. And true to her learning she began with Adavus, movements of eyes, gestures of hands, neck movements. It was just exhilarating to be able to learn the very fundamentals of the art in detail, as such we had been learning items from different teachers coming from different schools. But it was with Roshanben that we began to learn Bharatnatyam in systematic manner. The younger students loved her way of teaching so much that before group activities they would gather in small groups and make, say Hastas and repeat-pataka, tripataka etc.

Roshanben was a perfectionist. She wasn’t someone to be satisfied with anything halfway done. She narrated to us how their teacher made them repeat a single gesture or a foot work till it was done to their satisfaction.

We learnt substantial amount of techniques and quite a few items, we learnt how to conduct a class, how to distinguish the talas, specially the south Indian verities. We learnt to say the bols beating on two wooden pieces and above all we realized what work a classical dancer puts in to be a true dancer.

For Roshanben dance wasn’t a simple form of art, for her it was the fifth “Veda” as the Natyashastra claims it to be. And her dance was her life and her Sadhana.

When she danced, nothing could disturb her. She entered in a different world, this complete dedication to her art gave her performance a special quality. As I said she was a perfectionist. What I am going to say may prove that.

She chose “Geeta Govinda” for one of her dance recitals. After the songs were recorded, relevant verses from the great poem recited by different renowned artists she went to Pune’s Bharat Khand Institute. There she sat with half a dozen Sanskrit scholars, who listened to the songs and recitations. Whenever they indicated an error in pronunciation, she noted down. Later she got all those rerecorded. While she gave me an audio cassette of “Geeta Govinda”, to use for our school programmes, she then mentioned that only for correction she had paid by thousands.

Roshanben not only gave us the traditional aspect of a classical dance but also made us aware of why the Mother wanted us to create something new. The Mother wanted us to break away from the old traditional schools and create something new (Anuben tried with us exactly that). The Mother always said that dance should be the expression of the entire body and not specialized gestures or movements of a particular part or parts of the body.

She certainly was for something new in the field of dance. We understood that very clearly when a dancer, Rolf, from South America visited the Ashram. He had the privilege to present something to the Mother in Her room in the Ashram. Seeing him it seems, She commented “This is what dance should be”.

   For us the lessons we had from Roshanben helped us a great deal to innovate and create our style. The fact remains that whatever we may attempt to create some fundamental knowledge is essential and that we learnt from Roshanben.