M.K. Saroja - Guru's favourite

THE SRUTI Foundation will present the E. Krishna Iyer medal to dance guru M. K. Saroja this morning at the Krishna Gana Sabha. It is a part of the concluding function of the Natya Kala Conference.

``I cannot describe my happiness about the fact that I am receiving the E. Krishna Iyer medal,'' says M. K. Saroja. ``Krishna Iyer would visit my guru Kattumannar Koil Muthukumara Pillai and show me and my sister off to the world, constantly encouraging us in our dance. It was 1935 and I remember that as a six year old, my teacher carried me on his shoulder for a dance programme that E. Krishna Iyer had organised. Krishna Iyer would call up his friends and tell them about the dance form and tell them, look at these little babies how well they dance, '' she said.

Guru Kattumannar Muthukumara Pillai had made it his life's mission to popularise Bharathanatyam along with Krishna Iyer. Saroja had been spotted by her guru and groomed. ``My guru would pay young boys from the Isai Vellalar families to learn Nattuvangam. He would give them clothes and food in his house and teach them dance. Krishna Iyer helped me a lot in arranging programmes all over India. He was so humble and so wonderstruck by dance''. Though Muthukumara Pillai had taught Rukmini Devi, Ram Gopal, Mrinalini Sarabhai and Baby Kamala, Saroja was his favourite pupil. Saroja remembers the days when the dance group would travel in bullock carts.

The girls would sit in the cart and the teacher and the musicians would walk beside for miles together, arrive at the destination and would give a performance remembered by the audience all their life.

``The families of my guru and I maintain a cordial relationship even now. His great granddaughters visit me and I go there. They call me Athai affectionately,'' says Saroja.

Saroja has appeared regularly on concert platforms in India and abroad.

She has conducted workshops in France, Italy, Switzerland and West Germany and served as a visiting professor in the University of Baroda and at the Rabindra Bharathi University. Documentary films of her dance have been produced in France and Italy. She has collaborated with the dance scholar Mohan Khokar (whom she married) for a book on the technique of Bharathanatyam. Saroja conducts classes for advanced students including scholarship holders from abroad in Chennai.

``She has been chosen for the E. Krishna Iyer medal this year for the manner in which she continues to religiously maintain the dignity and the devotional intensity of Bharathanatyam of the style of Kattummannar Koil Muthukumara Pillai,'' says Dr. N. Pattabhiraman, of the Sruti Foundation.

V. R. DEVIKA

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