The last Mahari

Above: Shashimani in 2011. (Photo by Sandrine Da Costa)

UPDATE: Shashimani passed away on March 19, 2015. You can read her obituary in the New York Times at this link.

The Maharis were the temple dancers who performed for Lord Jagannath in the Jagannath temple in Puri, Orissa. Dating back to the 12th century, the Jagannath temple is an important place of pilgrimage for Hindus. This temple was also once a great cultural centre where dancers and singers would worship Lord Jagannath through dance and song as part of the daily temple rituals.

Shashimani is the last remaining Mahari belonging to this temple tradition. She is now in her late 80s and lives in a lane close to the great temple. Two years ago, while conducting research for an upcoming film on Odissi, I along with the film’s director, Sandrine Da Costa, had the chance to meet Shashimani and have a short discussion with her.

We climbed up a narrow staircase to a dark room where Shashimani lives, in the house of a temple servitor. When she was told that she had visitors, she excitedly asked her student who was with her to help her apply the bright red dot of sindoor on her forehead. She wrapped the end of her sari over her head as she received us with her hands joined in a respectful namaste. She sat on the floor of her modest room and motioned for us to sit too.

Shashimani told us how she was dedicated to the Jagannath temple by her parents at the age of seven. Through a ceremony called Sari Bandhan she was formally married to the god. “When the marriage knot was tied with Lord Jagannath we became Maharis, she explained. “From that day, we became the wives of Lord Jagannath.” The Maharis would then be considered to be married women and would remain wedded to the god for the rest of their lives.

There were many dancers connected to this temple and each had specific duties (seva) to perform. There were 21 different sevas and the Maharis would take turns going to the temple to perform the rituals. “Each Mahari had different sevas to perform,” Shashimani explained.. I would dance in the morning when Jagannath would be woken up, and at night when he would be put to sleep. The other sevas were performed by the other Maharis. I would come to the temple for seva four to five times a month. After the other Maharis died, I was the only one left.”

Shashimani was a Bheetar-gani Mahari, a Mahari who would dance inside the temple sanctum. “When the main temple door closed after arati, we would sing and dance inside the sanctum for Lord Jagannath until the door opened again.” Sometimes she would also dance for the god during dhupa, the evening meal. “During dhupa we only danced, we wouldn’t sing. He would take a long time to eat and we would get tired,” she lamented. “We wanted him to eat quickly!” When I asked her what would happen after the temple doors closed for the night, she hastily replied: “Don’t ask me what happens at night time! No dancing!”

She also described for us the costumes the Maharis would wear: “We would get all decked up and wear lots of heavy jewellery from the neck to the navel. We would wear bangles and beautiful silk saris and a big garland. We would even have jewellery in our hair and decorating the nose – we would be completely covered with heavy gold jewellery. Who dresses like that today?”

The Maharis would also dance during festive occasions. She told us about the Chandan Yatra, one of the most important festivals honouring Lord Jagannath. “In front of the Lord we would dance and sing. Then he would be taken to Narendra pond. While the Lord played in the water we would sing many bhajans and songs from the Gita Govinda. After playing in the pond, the Lord would have his meal and then have a nap. In the evening he would go to the pond again. Again we would go with him and dance and sing.”

Shashimani stopped dancing in the temple five years ago because she no longer had the stamina to continue. She told us that the Mahari tradition has gradually faded because there are no Maharis left to perform the rituals. “The other Maharis have all passed away and I’m the only one left. How much can I do?” she concluded.

For a temple dancer who used to get decked up in silk saris and heavy gold jewellery, Shashimani now lives a very austere life. Unsurprisingly, she expected a donation for the time she spent with us and after refusing the first generous offer, did not hesitate to state her price. This article I came across on the Internet describes her situation in more detail and calls on the temple authorities to assume responsibility for former ‘temple servants’.

The upcoming film on Odissi will feature video footage of our interview with Shashimani. The film is still work in progress and is expected to be released in 2014. For updates, visit this page.

Odissi dancer and scholar Ileana Citaristi, wrote a fascinating detailed account of the lives of the temple dancers of Jagannath temple back in 1985. She has kindly shared this article with Sacred Space - you can read it at this link.

The text I’m pasting below was written in 1972 by Ragini Devi (taken from her book Dance Dialects of India) and offers a glimpse into the lives of the Maharis:

The Maharis of Jagannath Temple

When the great temple of Lord Jagannath became the matrix of the religious and cultural life of Orissa, the role of the Maharis in the daily rituals and festivals is clearly defined. It is said that in the 12th century King Chodaganga Deva established seven colonies for temple servants (Sebayatas) adjacent to the temple, and the place allotted to the Maharis was known as ‘Anga Alasa Patna’ the ‘place of bodily gestures’.

Maharis are the holy brides of Lord Jagannath. A piece of cloth taken from the idol is tied around the head of the initiate danseuse by the temple priest to symbolize her marriage to the deity of the shrine.

Maharis are vowed to chastity and their sacred duties and daily life are supervised by the Mina Nayak and the Sahi Nayak, temple servants appointed by the king. A valuable manuscript, Niladri Archana Chandrika, written by a Mahari of Jagannath Temple, describes the ritual dances of Maharis, and their daily life and customs.

Maharis are richly attired for temple service. After bathing, fragrant sandalwood paste is applied to the body. A colourful silk sari of traditional pattern is draped around the body and tied at the waist. A tight bodice covers the breasts. The face is decorated with the sacred ‘tilak’ mark between the brows, and delicate patterns of white dots are applied above the brows and on the cheeks. Fingertips, palms and feet are tinted crimson, and they eyes are lined black with collyrium. The hair is parted and knotted in a chignon wreathed with flowers and adorned with a golden curved disk pierced with a peg of ivory and gold. Beautiful gold ornaments decorate the head, neck, arms, ears, nose, waist and ankles.

Covering her head with a veil, the Mahari goes to the temple accompanied by the Mina Nayak. She is escorted to the inner shrine by the Rajguru, who bears a gold-mounted staff as a symbol of the king’s authority. He is always present at the dance rituals, and, after obeisance to the deity, the Mahari bows to him before beginning her dance.

There are two classes of Maharis at the Jagannath Temple. The Bheetar-gani Maharis are those who dance exclusively before the deity in the inner shrine. The Bahar-gani Maharis dance in the hall of dance (Nata Mandir) or in the temple courtyard near the Garuda pillar. Other temple servants who render daily service are the Gaudisanis, temple maids who fan the idol with charmaris, Gita-ganis (singers), and musicians who play veena, drone, drums, flute, and cymbals to accompany the dance.

There are two daily rituals at Jagannath – one at midday and the other at night. At the midday Sakala Bhupa ceremony when consecrated food is offered to Lord Jagannath, a Bahargani Mahari dances in the Nata Mandir and sacred songs are sung.

At night, after the Sanja Dhupa or food offering and just before the ritual adornment of the idol, prior to his nightly retirement, a Bheetar-gani Mahari renders dance and song before the deity. A portion of the food offerings is given to the Maharis, and this is the only food they are allowed to eat on the days of their temple service.

According to temple records there were twenty Maharis serving Lord Jagannath in the 15th century, each dancer taking her turn in the daily rituals, and all of them participating in the religious festivals. There are sixty-two annual festivals in honour of Jagannath and in two of these the Maharis have an important part. In the Chandan Jatra or Spring Festival, the image of Jagannath is taken in procession to a large tank about three miles from the temple and installed in a boat. Two boats are set afloat, one carrying Maharis, and the other Gotipuas in female dress, to entertain Lord Jagannath with songs and dances. In the Jhoolan Jatra the image of Jagannath is placed on a swing, and entertained by Maharis and Gotipuas with songs and dances.

Maharis, as a community of Jagannath, were exclusive teachers of their art. It was a custom for Maharis to adopt daughters and train them for dance service in the temple. Thus the dance retained its artistic purity and sanctity for at least six hundred years.

Maharis continue to dance in the Jagannath Temple, but their beautiful rituals belong to the past. The dance offering is perfunctory, for the sake of custom. Maharis receive a portion of the food offering and no maintenance or quarters are given to them, as before. Many of them have left the profession, and those who serve the temple are living in penury. It is only now that their art has become precious and they are in demand as teachers of dancing. (By Ragini Devi, Dance Dialects of India, 1972)

Gitanjali Kolanad’s Sleeping with Movie Stars

The title promises to titillate. And it does. But this collection of nine short stories by Gitanjali Kolanad is not only about a young woman’s coming of age but also a candid glimpse into the world of a dancer. The stories are based on her experiences living in the Madras of the 1970s where she studied Bharata Natyam at Kalakshetra, and later during the 1980s when she returned to India as a mother and settled in Delhi.

The first-person narrative is candid and personal, daring and bold, which makes Sleeping with Movie Stars a refreshing and often amusing read. The theme which runs throughout the book is one of self-exploration. A young woman is sent to India by her parents, who hope that such a drastic move will cure her rebellious streak. This is where her artistic journey and voyage of discovery begins. It is in India that she discovers her artistic calling. She readily embraces her new world and all it has to offer. She dares to test limits and move beyond boundaries. She is also forced to examine her cultural identity in a place where she is both an insider, through her Indian heritage, and an outsider – because she was born and brought up in Canada.

Released in January 2011 by Penguin, Sleeping with Movie Stars is Kolanad’s second book and first work of fiction. She is also the author of Culture Shock India which is part of the Culture Shock series of cultural guides. The author lives in Toronto, Canada where she teaches kalaripayattu.

When I met with the author, she told me how the book came about, explained how dance inspires her writing process, her memories of Kalakshetra in the 1970s, and her artistic journey.

What was the impetus to write the book?

I wanted to write about dance and what it’s like to be a dancer. Dancers don’t write about their work, while writers write about writing all the time. There are so many books about writers, painters and musicians. But few books about dancers. I certainly didn’t know when I started dancing that this was what it was going to be like and that I was going to get to 50 and suddenly look behind me and have nothing to show. You do a performance and if nobody writes about it or if it’s not reviewed, the next day it’s as if the performance never existed, except in the minds of the people who saw it. While with other art forms like painting, you still have your painting and you can show it to someone. Especially as I came towards the end of my dance career, I kept feeling this very strongly. I have nothing to show of my work because if it’s on video it’s not the work – it’s only a kind of pale shadow of the work. That was the main impetus, to be able to talk about dance. If you’re a dancer, it’s really something that you do all the time but I don’t think other people understand the kind of art form that dance is.

Is the book a true-to-life memoir?

There is this process that happens when you start writing a story. As soon as you start to structure it, it stops being accurate and factual. The book is not a memoir because it had to be fictionalised in a sense. Not because I wanted to hide anything but because the process of making a story out of what goes on in your life is a process of fictionalising. Even memory is a form of fictionalising.

I had always written journals but I didn’t know how to write. So I read a lot of books on how to write and the process of writing, and I kept writing but nothing was coming together. I couldn’t figure out how to make a story work. Since I was a dancer what I decided to do was try to structure it like a margam. It’s just one of those absolute facts of life that structure helps creativity, it doesn’t hinder it. When you force yourself to use a structure, it’s often helpful because by making constraints for yourself you actually enhance the creative process. So I thought ‘OK, I know how to do an alarippu, so I’ll make a story that’s like an alarippu.’ The first story, ‘Sleeping with Movie Stars’, starts with a motorcycle going this way and then that way because I wanted to find a way to do the eye movement that starts the alarippu.

The second story, 'The American Girl', which won the CBC Literary Award, was about another incident which just remained in my memory. I wanted to write about it and I couldn’t figure out how to do it. But once I had the first story, I had figured out a method that would work for me. So the second story is a jatiswaram, but the structure is something which is deeply buried in it. It’s not something that’s strikingly obvious. The one that’s called 'Tala' is based on the varnam and it changes time and speed. I tried to make it my most ambitious story. It was a challenge and a lot of fun too because it allowed me to think about the dances more deeply: What is the structure of the varnam, and what is it all about? So I think it clarified a lot of things for me which I wasn’t thinking of consciously when I was dancing the varnam.

I wanted to take what came out of me, what came out of my own experience and that’s one reason I stuck to the autobiographical voice, the 'I', for all the stories because I wanted them to be linked to the identity of the artist. And yet the dancer on stage is not the person. She becomes someone else. That’s what’s so wonderful about being on stage. The dance allows a transformation to take place.

Tell me about your dance journey.

I always thought I was going to be an artist. It sounds funny but I just felt that. Because I didn’t want to get married and have kids – so I thought that’s how you get out of doing all that stuff – by being an artist. Because my name is Gitanjali, I had a fantasy of going to Shantiniketan. It was my father who took me there. I had run away from home so he thought he’d take me to India for a while. I was 16. Once I got to India, he took away my passport and told me I wasn’t going back to Canada. Indian parents are like that. At that time – it was 1970 – Shantiniketan looked to me like a dead place. It was more like a museum than a living institution. And I remember thinking, ‘No, this is not where I want to be’ and left. Much later I found out that there were actually a lot of exciting things going on there. (Left: the author in Madras in 1973.)

My father left me at my grandmother’s place in Trichy and then went back to Canada. While I was there, I saw an article about Kalakshetra in Femina magazine. And I still remember thinking, ‘That’s where I want to go.’ I thought I would study painting there. But as soon as I got to Kalakshetra I could see that the only thing that made sense was to study either music or dance. At the audition there was Jaya teacher and Sharada teacher and they asked me to sing something. I couldn’t think of what to sing because I couldn’t sing to save my life! So I sang Blowing in the Wind – the Dylan song. That was the only thing I could think of! I sang one verse of that and they said, “OK that’s enough.” Then they asked me to “do something.” I didn’t know anything about Indian dance so they asked me to do thatt adavu. So I did, and they said, “OK fine. Join.” I stayed at Kalakshetra for four years. But I didn’t get my diploma because in my fourth year I left and went to study with guru A.K. Lakshman.

Who were your contemporaries at Kalakshetra at the time?

Leela Samson was a postgraduate at the time and Subhalakshmi Barua, who later married Amjad Ali Khan, was also studying there. They were both in the postgraduate section. There was the Assamese dancer Indira PP Bora. And my contemporaries, those who were in the class with me: there was Krishnakumari and Renuka. They don’t dance anymore. I find it sad because I was the worst in my class and I’m the only one who’s still dancing! Except Thomas, who’s still at Kalakshetra. And there was this girl who was a very beautiful dancer who danced in all the Kalakshetra dance dramas. She was made for dance. Rukmini Devi adored her and loved her dancing. Her name was Shanta Devi. She came during my first or second year and she went straight into third year. They never did that at Kalakshetra because no matter how much dance you already did, they wanted you to learn the Kalakshetra style, but Shanta went straight into third year. She was an amazingly good dancer. Rukmini Devi put her into dance dramas right away. She played Radha in a Gita Govinda production. I don’t know what happened to her. I think she just went off and got married. This was a thing that happened all the time.

What was Kalakshetra like?

I try not to wax nostalgic about it because it’s really easy to get into that mood of feeling ‘Oh yeah, it was wonderful’. But it wasn’t. The teaching was, in my opinion, terrible. I’m sure Leela Samson has fixed that now. I don’t think the teachers really knew what they were doing. Just because you know how to dance doesn’t mean you know how to teach and the Kalakshetra style came about through a number of misunderstandings. It’s not like you grew up in the dance style and you got the form into your body and really understood it. Rukmini Devi saw it from the outside and then she had to imagine it and reproduce it – and she misunderstood it. For example, at Kalakshetra they would say “Sit! You’re not sitting enough!” And then you’d be leaning forward and then pushing your torso back and you’d have this incredibly strange position while trying to put your arms out at the same time. There’s strain everywhere, so you don’t understand what’s going on and they want you to get your feet out more. As a dancer you could get into so many terribly bad habits. If it came to you naturally, fine. Like for Shanta or Leela, it seems to have come very naturally to them. But if you’re like me and things didn’t come naturally then everything that Kalakshetra did was wrong. It was a misunderstanding. What I realised is that forcing people into a certain aesthetic didn’t really work. (Above: At Kalakshetra, 1973.)

Kalakshetra produced Yamini Krishnamurthy, the Dhananjayans, AK Lakshman… But other than Yamini Krishnamurthy there was no remarkable dancer until Leela Samson came along and I think she came into her own once she left Kalakshetra. If she had stayed there she would have been nobody. She left and found her own way. She’s an amazing teacher. When I moved to Delhi she was teaching there and I watched some of her classes and she was the opposite of Kalakshetra. If you had a class with her she would do all the adavus with you. I really do think that the people who stayed at Kalakshetra didn’t really grow... It produced a mould.

Your book is dedicated to ‘guruji’. Tell me about him.

My guru, Nana Kasar, lived for his students. He absolutely wanted you to be the best you could possibly be, whether you ever made it on to the stage, or not. Because to get yourself onto the stage is very difficult and you can give your life over to doing that, or you can give your life over to being a dancer. He made it seem like there was a point to the process, in your own development, that had everything to do with the work we were doing together in the class, and nothing to do with being on the stage. He was trying to make you perfect, and he and you were in it together.

(Above: the author with Kalanidhi Narayanan in 1984.)

Previously I had studied with the Dhananjayans and with Professor CV Chandrasekhar in Baroda. I also learned Kuchipudi with Vempati Chinna Satyam. At that time it was considered very bad form to change gurus and styles. People didn’t like that I did that. Later I studied with Kalanidhi Narayan. She is another amazing teacher. I think people talk about her in all kinds of very respectful ways but they don’t really get to the heart of what she does. She’s another one of those teachers who’s there to make you undergo a spiritual transformation. The dance is what is important to her. These are true gurus and they give away what they have. She teaches you how you have to examine a padam to get at its essence. So you shouldn’t need to go to her to learn another padam or another javali, you should be engaging in that process with each padam and javali yourself. And she would say to me, “I don’t know why students keep coming back. I’ve given them the secret.”

I had my arangetram in Toronto around the time when I was 22 or 23. Then I came back to India. I started with Guruji when I was about 30 and I had already realised that I wasn’t going to be a great dancer, that that wasn’t in the cards for me. It was very difficult to accept that I didn’t have the gifts, the discipline, whatever it was. So at that point I tried to give up dancing – but it didn’t work. It was so much a part of me. And that’s when I went back to Guruji. He said, “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be a great dancer. It is the process that is important.”

I’ve always thought that learning a great Tanjore Quartet margam from beginning to end is like possessing a great painting by a master artist. Except instead of hanging it on the wall, you have it in you. To work on that kind of masterwork with a teacher who is able to reveal every nuance is a profound experience. That was a great year for me when Guruji and I started to work together in a serious way on something that had no other reward than the work itself.

How did you get into kalaripayattu?

I saw kalaripayattu in Delhi for the first time during a theatre festival. They advertised that they were doing a workshop and I was the only one who showed up! Gopinath, the teacher for K Narayana Panicker’s theatre troupe was there. Now Bharata Natyam dancers are more into physical training but at the time they weren’t. I started with Gopinath and then I went to Kerala with my two kids to study it more intensely. Today I teach kalaripayattu in Toronto.

What’s interesting is that kalari is not an elite art form. If you go to a village in Kerala, everyone does kalari. You don’t know what caste or religion they are or how much money they make. In the kalari you’re all equal and then you walk out and see that one of the guys who’s really wonderful at kalari is actually an auto-rickshaw driver. What a contrast to go from dance classes in Madras where all the girls come in their cars, to business men and auto-rickshaw drivers in the same kalari class. It’s incredibly egalitarian in that way. By that time I had completely lost my interest in gods and goddesses and all of that kind of thing. It didn’t interest me anymore. Kalari doesn’t have any of that.

How will people react to your book in India, especially the sensual parts?

Well I’m really curious to see. I’m not shy about saying that a lot of the book is based on what happened to me. Everything in the first story describes an actual experience, while leaving out what's extraneous. It was absolutely unheard of to live on your own at the time. But Kalakshetra didn’t say anything about it. They didn’t try to stop me from coming to class. Everyone knew I was living on my own. They didn’t say anything or try to moralise me in any way either, but the neighbours did. I was living with a Sri Lankan girl and there was also this American girl who was studying veena at Kalakshetra. Our neighbours had a problem with the three of us. The men in the village thought we were prostitutes; they had no other conception of three women living on their own.

When I first came to India I thought that everyone was repressed and that nobody had sex. But then what I realised was that nobody talked about it but all kinds of things were going on. There were some things that didn’t make it into my book. So I slowly began to realise the repression is just on the surface, you’re not supposed to talk about it but all kinds of stuff is going on, just like in the West.

Read the first short story in the collection here.

Visit Gitanjali Kolanad's website here.

Photos courtesy of the author.

Vilasini Natyam: A dance tradition revived

While I was in Chennai in December, I had the opportunity to attend the book launch of Swapnasundari’s book on Vilasini Natyam. Vilasini Natyam: Bharatam of Telugu Temple and Court Dancers tells the story of this dance tradition which was once performed in the temples and courts of Andhra Pradesh and other Telugu-speaking regions of South India.

Bharatam is a generic term which refers to the performing arts which have their origins in the Natya Shastra, Bharata Muni’s classical treatise on the arts. Every Indian classical performing art is therefore a form of Bharatam which then developed its own unique features over time in its region of origin. The Bharatam of the Telugu temple and court dancers – now referred to as Vilasini Natyam – did not go through a period of revival like many other Indian classical dance styles did around Independence, a period of cultural revival. By the 1950s there were very few active performers and this unique dance tradition was in danger of disappearing altogether.

Swapnasundari, the book’s author, is a renowned Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi dancer who rose to fame during the 1980s. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Padma Bhushan which she was conferred at a young age. Her dance career suddenly moved in a different direction after she had the opportunity to see an ageing temple dancer, Madulla Lakshminarayana, present a short performance in a small town in Andhra Pradesh. This was a life-changing experience. As Swapnasundari watched her from the audience, she was deeply moved. “The power of her art came like a flash. I was simply staggered and humbled by it. I told myself this is where I want to go, become an artist, not a dancer. I had everything going – youth, fame, affluence, popularity and she had nothing. But what she had I had not acquired in 25 years of dancing. She wiped away my sense of achievement.” (Source: The Times of India Crest Edition, 22 January 2011)

For the next five years, Swapnasundari took a break from her prolific dance career to follow her newfound passion. She travelled all over Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring Telugu-speaking regions to meet and interview the hereditary dancers of this dance tradition. She carefully documented everything she learned. She also had a great desire to learn this dance herself. It was only after a great deal of persuasion that some of these hereditary dancers agreed to teach her.

Speaking at the book launch, she described the challenges of learning this dance:

“What I learned from these hereditary dancers was what they had preserved. This had plus points and minus points. I was not getting a very sophisticated version of the Bharatam of the Telegu temple and court dancers. I was getting it in a raw state. And it was for me to adapt it in the way I was required to do for my time. That’s a plus point. The minus point was that they were not used to teaching it as a system in a way that we are used to. When studying a classical dance, you usually start with adavus and then go on to items, etc., but here there was no such system. Since they had never followed such a system, they did not dream of teaching in such a way. So my first guru would make me do a few adavus and then after a while she would start singing a padam, or whatever item I was learning. After she had finished singing the pallavi and anupallavi she would simply move to something else, like the abhinaya of a sloka. After teaching me two lines she would take a break and when she came back she would start teaching me something else. For me this was terribly confusing because I thought I would learn in a vertical way and go deeper and deeper whereas she was going in a horizontal way and trying to teach me all aspects at the same time, bit by bit. Much later I adapted to this system and I would sit with a tape recorder and a notebook and tapes around me and try to take everything down. That was the only way for me to absorb everything that she was teaching me! So there was a practical difficulty in reclaiming this material. Also, I had to struggle to disinherit my training in Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi. So those dynamics had to be disinherited in a sense and I had to start from zero.”

She spent years learning and researching the dance, contributing significantly to its revival. In 1995 the dance form was renamed Vilasini Natyam. Previously this performing tradition was referred to Bharatam, Karnatakam or Tsaduru, among other names. She now performs and teaches Vilasini Natyam to a dedicated group of students. Every year along with her students, she presents a traditional recital of Vilasini Natyam at the 400-year-old Sri Ranganatha Swamy temple in Rang Bagh, Hyderabad. This is an example of how the ritual element of this dance tradition has been reintegrated into temple worship. (Left: Vilasini Natyam dancers at Rang Bagh temple, Hyderabad.)

Swapnasundari’s book Vilasini Natyam: Bharatam of Telugu Temple and Court Dancers explores the history and revival of this dance form which was performed exclusively by hereditary female dancers. It gives an account of its origin, rise, decline and renaissance into the form Vilasini Natyam.

The book opens with a dedication by Joseph Campbell which was a pleasant surprise for me:

‘Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again’

This is followed by a line by Swapnasundari:

‘With gratitude to those who inspired me to find that space.’

The lovely photo of a dancer posing in a temple in the banner photo of this blog I’ve called Sacred Space happens to be Swapnasundari!