Tamil Nadu Prayed - and He was born

The time: late morning on a Saturday in December 2003. The place: the highway from Bangalore to Chennai, somewhere near Irungattukottai on the outskirts of Chennai.

I had left my office in the wee hours of the morning, driving to Chennai to visit my wife, then expecting our first child. As was my habit, I had some music on in the car. Aah! The pleasure of listening to the incomparable MDR before dawn, watching the sun rise over a rolling highway to the sound of a soaring Sriraga alapana.

Bharathanatyam – The Dance of Bharatha

As you would all no doubt be aware, India has the distinction more than four millennia of unbroken civilization. It is not to say that the civilization has been static or that there is no change in these four thousand odd years, but that India has retained various elements of the past in present, assimilating various influences along the way and contextualizing the past to the modern idiom, such that it retains its relevance.

One of the hallmarks of any great civilization is its creative output, be it literature, music, the visual arts or its architecture. Today, I want to introduce to you one such art, which has a history lost in the mists of legend. It is a dance form, called Bharathanatyam.