Shruti ChaturLal is proud of her heritage; her grandfather was Pandit Chatur Lal one of the very first musicians to introduce Indian classical music to the West in mid 50s.
But Shruti herself is making waves with her partner yoga choreographer Suman Kanawat in their Euphonic Yoga endeavour, and Hyderabad will be audience to the audio-visual yogic poetry this weekend.
Origin story
With her father and brother in the music realms, sureheaded Shruti didn’t want to follow suit.
Having always loved yoga, she explored how much people tend to miss out on the other aspects of yoga, explaining, “Many people think of yoga and assume it’s all about pranayam or surya namaskar, but there’s a lot more such as the seven chakras.” So the 31 year-old started a discussion with Suman Kanawat about new avenues and pitched the very beginnings of Euphonic Yoga to her.
“Suman was on board, and that led to a research over three years,” she recalls fondly, “We wanted people to embrace the wider aspects of the practise, incorporating classical music and classical dance to it in our own ways. Each of the chakras has a corresponding musical notes and at times, the ragas correspond to the chakras too — but these frequencies didn’t always merge. See, chakras have personalities too so we had to be very mindful of how we formulated everything. And that’s how we worked with the basis of footwork. It was all about getting the structures right before going public with this.”
Given her family’s famed background, Shruti did not want to make any mistakes hence the three years of research and continual perfection of the formula.
One of her initial clients was a lady with high thyroid levels and after several sessions, the client claimed that the levels had dropped. Another client was one with paralytic attacks which sessions of the practise alleviated.
Looking back, Shruti and Suman never thought they would be as big as they are — they’ve done performances at TEDx events and even went to big cities in Europe where yoga and its innovations are often welcome.
The Euphonic Yoga family has also grown, featuring Srishti Amita Devi, a Hindustani vocalist, Swati Mittal, a Bharatnatyam dancer, Taranpreet Kaur, a yoga expert and Ishita Jain, a Western Classical dancer.
“Yes, we are largely women-oriented,” admits Shruti who adds that the team loves to work with organisations and individuals who aren’t hugely established. “We want to help those who don’t have a platform.”
“We’ve been working with 150 underprivileged children and the Telangana Government through our Can and Able programme,” she says, “which has seen a lot of growth. The kids we work aren’t paid monetarily but we do help out with clothes, amenities and, at times, their education.”
The Hyderabad chapter of Euphonic Yoga will feature a deity-focussed performance which will surely garner plenty of attention.
The art form has been gaining rapid popularity with the likes of Purbayan Chatterjee and other formative figures in Indian Classical realms. In fact her own father, who was at first very worried about Euphonic Yoga endeavours, sees the wide traction the organisation is getting and introduces himself as her father, in which Shruti takes a lot of pride. “This whole experience has really taught me to relax,” she laughs, “and I’ve been known to be a little stressed here and there!”
The Euphonic Yoga show will be taking place on April 1 from 4pm till 5:30pm at MCR-HRD Institute of Telangana in Jubilee Hills
