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It was a real blast
From across the ballroom, I watched Lakshmi Viswanathan tapping her feet, raring to get out there on the floor midst the action. But being a judge, she couldn't, she told me as she came across to also say, "You're the last person I expected to see here!" Classical is where you won't see me, but Folk is right up my street, I replied, not taking my eyes off the swaying dancers at the `Dandiya Durbar', organised recently by the Rotary Club of Ambattur in aid of the charities supported by it.
There were a couple of slim young dandies dressed to kill in folk costumes jazzed up for party night who caught the eye as much with their dancing and twirling sticks as with their colourful jackets and kediya (never seen such fancy dhotis, unless they were saris doing duty!). There was a bevy of young misses in twirling ghagras and swishing lehngas whom everyone watched.
But what kept me looking was a long-haired young matron in an all-white everyday salwar-kameez and a slightly more ample, slightly older matron in a slightly more dressy grey outfit. For sheer grace of movement, rhythm and variety, the two had beat the younger ones hollow as they twirled, got on their knees and swayed up, bent down, arched back, or danced slowly forward and then away, never missing a tap of the sticks up there or down by the floor, in front of them or at the back.
A pity I could not stay longer and watch. I was literally blasted out of the ballroom by a band that played nothing traditional but had Indipop booming out of a battery of speakers and mikes that certainly left me shaken. What's the fun of dandiya if you can't even hear the sticks click or your wife natter about the tots on the floor or yourself irk her with asides about the girls!
And so I sadly sought not even the verandah but the garden outside — missing both the fun and finding out whether Lakshmi gave the white-and-grey any prizes.
With Sathyan Bhatt, the head of the Ambattur club, and his wife Parul, heading the organising team, the garden that evening was bound to host a Gujarati spread to suit a `Durbar'.
And with their persuasive public relations, the Bhatts had got the Connemara's chefs to follow strictly-from-home recipes that Parul and home-caterer Gita Mehta provided, ensuring a Gujarati buffet as authentic and sumptuous as any Dandiya Durbar would wish.
S.MUTTIAH
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