My tryst with the Kartavyapath
“Remember who you're dancing for this time. It's not the audience, not the on lookers, not the people sitting in front of the flag; Tomorrow, you perform for the tiranga.”
A friend's father was kind enough to bring our attention to who we were performing for a day before the 26th of January as we were cribbing about the non-stop practices and applying ointments to our paining feet.
But now that I think about it, I realise that is what the whole journey from Pune to Kartavyapath has been about. Full of revelations, Eureka moments, and life lessons.
To understand this, I must backtrack to where it all began…
It was a random text on our Kathak WhatsApp group on a random lazy Sunday.
Nothing unique, just the usual “Hey, let's participate in this new competition on the circuit”, and the competition was titled ‘Vande Bharatam’.
The name stuck with me long after reading the text. Upon using my “research” skills, I came to a beautiful realisation: I realised what the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was.
A one-in-a-million, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform on the Kartavyapath for the Republic Day parade. My tryst with the Kartavyapath.
I have tried many times to write about what it feels like to set foot on the Kartavyapath. But no matter how much I try, my words don't do enough justice for the amount of pride and happiness one gets overwhelmed by, the good kind.
To take it one step further, to not only step foot on this path but to represent your art, your culture, your dance, your people, your city, your loved ones and your country, it's an opportunity that I'll always be grateful for.
If I were to capture the entire journey in a few words, it would be identical to the graph of a film: the ups, the downs, everything culminating to the climax. Let's get into the details of the three significant challenges we, as dancers, faced…
1. Delhi's temperatures and pollution were two of the most challenging things we had to combat. It's one thing to spend a few days in Delhi and a whole different thing to spend an entire month there.
Sore throats, runny noses and clogged heads were all welcome, unfortunately. We have a running joke in the team that our voices before Delhi have yet to return to us! At Least, that's what it seems like.
No one is well equipped for the amount of pollution and winter that Delhi has to offer, least of all a bunch of Punekars. The only way to defeat these issues was a strict regime of drinking a delicious daily beverage, hot water, followed by shots of cough syrups of all kinds!
And last but certainly not the least, prayers.
2. Gruelling practices were both a boon and a bane. What is more of a boon for a dancer than to be able to dance each day, 24/7, without a care in the world?
Then again, it's tiring, frustrating, confusing and more things than one.
Our call times they were ranged from 5 am on average to 3 am on a costume/location practice day.
We practised from 5 am to 9 pm every day. A day in our lives was no less than a roller coaster, emotionally, physically, and mentally.
3. Homesickness was felt in bundles. I haven't been away from home ever. Delhi was and is a home away from home. But I missed even the smallest of things from back home.
I missed my home, my room, my turf.
But all was forgotten, and nothing mattered when we were out there doing our thing with patriotism coursing through our veins.
It was an unforgettable experience.
