Diva of dance

The first time I heard the name 'Saroj Khan' was perhaps when I started working on the website of a movie magazine. I knew nothing about Hindi films beyond what I had read in the newspapers, which at that time snootily avoided all things filmi, and I did occasionally listen to the radio late at night when I couldn't sleep and lights out had been enforced. Then, suddenly, Madhuri Dixit became a real person - not just a tinsel-dotted star on the big screen - to me, when a designer friend showed me an outfit he had created for her, saying that she and I were the same height and general shape, though there was rather more of her in parts than I had then. Curious about this person that my friend spoke of with such almost-awe, I did my research and found that she was the hot and happening star in the world of Hindi movies, that ephemeral existence called 'Bollywood'. And perhaps her strongest identification was that hip-swinging performance in a song called Ek do teen. Learn how to count, another friend teased me, you may even go into that field of journalism and interview her some day!

I did manage to watch the dance on television, on one of the many countdown shows telecast every week. And was amazed that someone could swivel a hip with such abandon and not fall over. More research followed, and I read that a choreographer called Saroj Khan was responsible for that creation. And that Ms Khan and Ms Dixit were bonded synergistically, each posing a challenge to the other to do better, to outdo, every time, every song, every movie. With typically elitist snobbery, I decided that both the star and the choreographer were loud and vulgar and I didn't want to know more about either. Until the night I watched Madhuri Dixit dance at a popular film awards event, doing what was almost pure Kathak, her grace and her emoting elevating the entire evening to a realm that transcended the noise and flashing lights of a world that never had too much appeal for me. The piece was choreographed by Saroj Khan, it was announced. Since then, I have wanted to meet the lady, the person who changed my mind about the jhatka-matka nautanki that I believed Bollywood to be.

Recently, I was watching a dance reality show on television. Saroj Khan, the choreographer who reigned in the kingdom of bosom-heaves and pelvic-thrusts, came on to the stage and did a tiny vignette of salsa. Her hips swayed, her hands waved and her lips pouted. And the audience, like me, was spellbound. She was not slim or beautiful, but she moved with infinite grace, each tiny shake holding so much magic that it pushed any other more vigorous performance by any other younger, slimmer, more goodlooking celebrity into oblivion. And in that few seconds of movement, she made a fan out of a skeptic - All Hail, Saroj-ji!