The Undoing Dance - Srividya Natarajan

 What a pleasure reading this book was. Wonder why SN does not write more often. I did read her 'No Onions Nor Garlic' and loved it. (Maybe I should go and revisit it again.) But what struck me most was the use of her language, (very precise), the layers she wove into the book and how it all came together in the end. If she takes on the caste system in the Onions, she delves into the devadasi system in this one.

Her introduction is as a student of the great dance master Kittappa Pillai and of the singer T. Brinda. She has taught and performed classical dance all over the world for three decades and more.

The book begins some 13 generations before our protagonists time, when a king who has removed a dancer from his service is forced to bring her back because of divine intervention - the temple he is constructing is stuck because the dome cannot be erected whatever they do. He has to call her back and then it is done. That is the power of the devadasis then, and how much the gods revered them. Over the years the system falls out of favour with society and without patrons who support them, they become women of ill repute, their art seen as something dirty.

To escape from this cycle, the ageing mother Rajayi, who ekes out a living selling flowers near the temple now, sends her daughter Kalyani away to Madras, to marry a well settled official involved in promotion of arts. Rajayi has secrets to hide and so has Kalyani. In fact, so it seems, has everyone. As the story moves on we find that Kayani's son by her master, Velu, is now staying with her mother, and the man who raped Rajayi, has a daughter who was once Kalyani's husbands's lover and who is now making a documentary about Rajayi. It all comes together finally, the two sisters, Rajayi and Lila, finally making peace with the system, Kalyani going back to her husband and the art kind of left in Kalyanikkarai.

The characters of Rajayi, Kalyani are strong, their lives and their desperation comes out clearly. The description of dance, the way the dancers feel about it, is fascinating. The end was rather cinematic but perhaps needed something as drastic to make the change happen. Loved it.