Nahid Siddiqui, eminent Kathak dancer. Words are not always descriptive. Those three words that introduce Nahid Siddiqui don’t tell of the challenges she surmounted to reach her present status, having lived through exile from her native Pakistan, fierce opposition to the pursuit of her art under the Zia regime and later returning to continue serving Kathak in Pakistan, because that is where she feels her contribution is most required. Nothing succeeds like success, as they say. So it’s only natural for audiences to applaud a successful artist rather than remember the difficulties that brought her there. Eminence can be a cloak. But for Nahid this isn’t very important, not because her story does not have relevance, but because even as she practises an intensely visual art, she is focussed on that which is seen when the eyes are closed, when the senses tune in to an inner world. And even her Kathak, in these self-aggrandising times, is of the inward variety. It is but a language, not a cage, she points out, saying the gurus often make dancers feel they must restrict themselves within boundaries. But dance is for the free in spirit, she avers.
Nahid remarks that while some people, living in a place where there are no restrictions to practising an art, yet choose not to pursue it. Even the progeny of gurus give up their family tradition for more lucrative occupations. “But obviously, that urge of dancing was so strong in me, in any case I don’t know what would have happened if I had been in a situation where I was not at all stopped from dancing, or not made to feel guilty about it — which I never did.”
The barriers put in her way, and being banned by the military regime, she notes, had another effect of making her realise that what she was doing had great significance. “So you become like a spring, which comes back when you suppress it. How much will you suppress it?”
She calls herself a quiet revolutionary, not the kind that answered gunfire with gunfire. “Dance is another name for freedom. I always say, only a free person can dance. So I was not restricted even though I was part of that society. I wanted to break the norms.”
And today, living in Pakistan decades later in a very different Pakistan, she is still concerned about breaking norms. “I’m breaking the conditioning even in the form, because I could break it otherwise.”
It is as if, she says, people are given a frame and told, you cannot step out of these bounds. “ Bilkul nikal sakte hain. (Of course you can). Because you make everything as limited and as vast as you yourself are.” She quotes an interesting metaphor, “They always say if you want to control your cattle, leave them free in a much larger area. They can’t go anywhere else. They will come back.”
Just as no one can stop people from experimenting with language and creating new words, artists can create new works within their medium. She points out, though, that in using her language to create a different visual poetry, she would not introduce, for example, the demi-plie (half sitting position). Even her students’ work labelled new would not make use of say, rolling on the ground or jumps uncharacteristic of Kathak.
Even as she delves into Sufi poetry of Bulleh Shah and others, using the technique of Kathak to pull audiences into an otherworldly joy where no one needs to understand the rhythmic cycles or the tukda patterns, she also works with children.
“We are penetrating into the education system in Pakistan. My students are teaching in schools, and we have special strategies, like for the tables,” she says. “My father told us, a long time ago — he passed away three years ago at the age of 100 — that he never forgot his tables because they were taught in ragas. He said they used to go home singing.”
Learning facts with melody is likely to implant that information on the brain much faster than if it is presented “dry,” she notes. “They must bring all this into the education system.”
Now, just as awareness of Yoga is growing, she says, it is important to introduce arts like music and dance at the school level, so that children imbibe them along with academics. She and her students are formulating a syllabus designed to both teach the arts and to teach through the arts. However, the endeavour is only a couple of years old, and her students have been teaching in private schools of Pakistan for about a year now.
The veteran dancer points out how natural music is to human beings. How bright is the smile of a baby on hearing the tinkling sound of bells tied on the crib? “The azan used to be sung five times a day in different ragas according to the time of day.” Later due to changed circumstances, this was stopped, she rues.
Whatever changes — welcome and unwelcome — politics has inflicted on society, it is hard to turn the clock back. Grown-ups may be set in their ways, but children are open to fresh ideas. This is why Nahid and her students are conducting training for teachers too. “Teachers don’t really know the psyche of children. They just come to do a job, and leave. We don’t want job-doers. Somebody who feels for the cause.”
