Struck off from this world in his prime, while still at the very acme of his performing career, Pandit Durga Lal’s premature and sudden death in 1990 has left behind a trail of vivid memories and tales about this legendary dancer’s genius and charisma. While fortunately there is the odd YouTube video online that immortalises this beacon of the Jaipur Gharana, his legacy primarily lives on through his students, some of whom have made it their life’s mission to transmit his work and art to the future generations. At the helm of this laudable undertaking is guru Uma Dogra, a leading Kathak dancer and teacher based out of Mumbai. As the senior most pupil of Durga Lal, her contribution in preserving his memory in the hearts and minds of not just practitioners of the dance form but also lay persons interested in dance cannot be overstated.
In Hyderabad with her students for a Kathak Festival organised by Akruthi Kathak Kendra as a tribute to Pandit Durga Lal, Uma Dogra shares memories of her time with her beloved guru. She reveals that she started training with him when she was only 14 years old and he himself was just about 24 years old, already a star in the making. She fondly remembers the training itself which was one long unceasing lesson that never really began or ended in class. More often than not, the lessons would come at unexpected moments like once at a performance in Patna, on stage he asked her to keep the chandas of ‘taka takita’ while his tabla accompanist and he kept playing around with complex rhythmic variations. ‘Maintaining laya is one of the most difficult things in dance and he thrust this responsibility upon me right on stage!’
This was a time when the guru and shishya relationship extended into every aspect of life, and the student pretty much became a member of the guru’s family. Uma Dogra recalls helping out her guru ma in the kitchen, while Durga Lal himself would stand in the doorway reciting a tukra , teaching her how to do padanth . Even though he was only nine years older than her, he was a fatherly figure and extremely protective about all his female students. “I used to complain back then that I couldn’t really have boyfriends because guruji wouldn’t let us get distracted and frowned upon adolescent frivolities.’ “He was a Greek god of the Kathak world and his presence on stage was like thunder,” She exclaims as she talks about his reputation as the king of laya , whose presence on stage was as electric as it was technically sound. A complete artiste who could play the tabla as well as the pakhawaj, he was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi award when he was only 36 and was already matching his wits with artistes who were at least 20 years older than him like Pandit Ravi Shanker and Kishen Maharaj.
Uma Dogra has been teaching Kathak in Mumbai for over 30 years. She emphasises that she only imparts Pandit Durga Lal’s lessons in the first two years of her students’ training, mainly his tatkar s, tihai s etc in order to ensure that his bani of Kathak lives on.
She has been organising a dance festival in his honour for nearly 20 years now and claims that her efforts to create an informed audience in the Bollywood dominated world of Mumbai has paid off, such that today there is a dedicated group of people in the city who are classical dance literate.
