Odissi exponent Ranjana Gauhar steps off the stage and into the film studio to spread the word. An excited Murali greets me at danseuse Ranjana Gauhar's door. He is her six-month-old dachshund puppy, quite obviously the biggest stress-buster in the house. "He's learning the rhythm of Odissi, too," she tells me, only half-jokingly, as Murali seats himself between us, quite comfortably part of the conversation.
"Indian history, culture and traditions are so diverse, no one can claim to know it entirely," Gauhar tells me. For a Padma Shree awardee who has for the last several decades devoted herself completely to the art, the tradition comes alive effortlessly in her performances, on stage and on film.
Being a danseuse by profession, she realises the limitations of the performing arts. "When I dance, how big can the audience be? Will there
be 500, 5,000 or even 5 lakh people present?" she asks.
In the last decade, Gauhar has answered that question through films, taking tradition and history beyond the stage. "When you make a movie on your subject and are able to communicate through it and share the art, the effect is much more lasting," she says firmly.
Making a film is no easy task "" perhaps more challenging even than performance "" but once made a film can serve as a platform where everybody can find meaning in a dance culture that has suffered too long from audience neglect.
"I used to wish there were interesting documentaries being telecast on television. But there were too few of those," Gauhar says ruefully. This is how her journey began, a journey with Indian tradition, environment, women's issues, culture and mythology, in keeping with life in the modern world.
"When I make a film on Odissi dance or any other theme," she adds, "what makes me happy is the number of people I can reach out to. I have so much to say."
Film verses dance, Gauhar draws up a comparison. "On ordinary days, I start with yoga to fine-tune myself and then begin my classes and meetings. But when I'm shooting, the day is not mine. The whole schedule depends on the sun. We have to be on our toes from 4.00 am to get the right light," she explains.
As an independent film producer, researcher and scriptwriter, Gauhar has focused on several themes "" and there are many more she prefers to keep under wraps for the moment.
Even though it is not her main profession she respects the commitment that an intense alternate activity like filmmaking requires. "It's serious work. Making documentaries stemmed from dance too. Everything I do stems from my love for dance. And I wouldn't want it any other way," she says, smilingly.
When she started making films in 1996, the story of Navratri and Ramnavami came to mind. "The release of an animated Hanuman," she stops to emphasise, "made me so happy. We constantly need to try out new mediums to catch the attention of the youth." "I then made Manas Mandir," she continues her story, "a depiction through music and dance of the celebrations of Ramnavami across the country. The 30-minute-long documentary was telecast on various television channels."
But her most interesting experience proved to be Nectar in Stone, a film that explored the cultural and historical linkages between Vietnam, Cambodia and India, and their common bonding of spiritual and religious values over a period of 2,000 years.
"It was my hardest film to shoot," she says. "In a foreign country, language is a problem and there are other small issues. There is a solution for everything, though. For an aerial view of Angkor Wat [in Cambodia],
we mounted a hot air balloon early in the morning and it was such a beautiful experience." Another interesting shot is angled on an apsara dancer, as Gauhar tries to match the dancer's steps.
On a different tangent, Gauhar laments that the purity of words has been lost in today's time. "An apsara in [Cambodian] tradition is [referred to] with so much respect and admiration. But in our culture now they have been reduced to something so derogatory," she says.
And so, Gauhar brought to screen the story of temple dancers "" maharis, as they were called in Orissa "" in her film Celestial Dancers in the Temple of Jagannath-Puri. "The word mahari comes from mahan (great) and nari (woman)," she says, "therefore one would understand that they were held in such high esteem."
Over the years, making other films on Odissi like Odissi Chandrika (a six-episode serial commissioned by Doordarshan), along with one about a woman's struggle against social evils and another on Indian folk dances, Gauhar's effort has been to try and express her concepts as beautifully as possible.
"I have the script, I have the concept. I do wish I had a better platform to screen such documentaries," she says with dismay. "Earlier, the ministry of external affairs had openings but it's been more and more difficult to get commissioning of late."
Hoping to find more outlets for her films, she's optimistic that she'll be able to find the time to learn Sanskrit. Speaking of a documentary she made on the greatest lyrical poem in Sanskrit literature, Jaidev's Geet Govind, she says the language has the power to express an entire subject in one word. "Sanskrit is the language of the gods. Poems like Geet Govind held India together," she says.
Long live tradition.
