Sanjukta Panigrahi. A name synonymous with modern day Odissi. A born dancer, a child prodigy – her genius evident at a very tender age. She died on 24th of June 1997. Had she been alive she would have turned sixty this year (2004). |
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Sanjukta was born on 24th Aug 1944 at Behrampur. She started dancing from the age of four. Her mother encouraged her because she loved dance. But Abhiram Mishra, her father initially discouraged her. Yet Sanjukta never gave up. She persisted and blossomed in her dancing career. From the age of six she started performing. In her own words : “I loved dance too much and was totally involved in it and I was only six. While returning from school friends and neighbours would say – Sanju, will you dance for us? I would spontaneously put my books on the road and dance without any inhibitions”. |
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At
the age of nine she performed at the annual festival of the Children’s
Little Theatre in Calcutta, and the very next day she was featured in most
of the newspapers, with plenty of praiseworthy coverage. “……the surprise of
the evening was little Sanjukta Mishra….!”, “… the
entire show was stolen by a child prodigy from Orissa….”. This catapulted
Sanjukta into a series of performances – though small – 5 to 10 min
duration, she would sometimes do two performances a day! That was when her
parents felt that all this attention and applause might spoil her and
distract her from her main objective – to become a disciplined dancer. She
was taken to Kalakshetra, to Rukmini Devi Arundale. At first Rukmini Devi
was reluctant to accept this nine year old as a student. She will cry, also she doesn’t know any Tamil….! But her parents insisted.Her
mother was very keen. Finally Rukmini Devi said, I will observe her for
three months and then decide. Those three months were crucial for Sanjukta.
In those three months Sanjukta picked up working knowledge of Tamil and
never cried during the day. Being only nine – she felt homesick and wanted
to cry, which she did only in the night in her pillow.She did not want to
be sent back, she did not want to hurt her mother. Rukmini Devi admired the
grit and courage in little Sanjukta. |
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She was accepted . Her talent noticed.
She stayed at Kalakshetra for six years. She also did her academics – senior
Cambridge during that time. She got her Nrityapraveen diploma in
Bharatnatyam with Kathakali as the second subject.While she was at Kalakshetra, a musicologist, Nilamani Panigrahi visited (her future father- in - law). He seemed to like Sanjukta for his son Raghunath, who was a popular singer in Madras. Back in Orissa the proposal was put forward to the Misra’s – Sanjukta’s parents. Mother was for it, father against. “Both are artistes, how can they earn a good living?” But her mother was adamant. “ She loves dance. Only a musician will understand this passion. Nobody else.” In the meanwhile in Madras, Sanjukta had heard Raghunath singing and had fallen in love with his voice. She was willing to marry him. Raghu would come home but Sanju’s father would not relent. After a year, Sanjukta’s father packed her off to Bombay to learn Kathak from Pt. Hazarilal and incidentally to forget Raghunath too! But that was impossible. Raghunath followed Sanjukta to Mumbai! |
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In
1960 Sanjukta got married at the age of sixteen. She had her first son when
she was seventeen and second when she was nineteen. Circumstances made her
lose her childhood and her youth. Even later it was a struggle for
establishing oneself. Raghunath had left his lucrative career in Madras for
marriage to Sanjukta. They tried their luck in Bombay, did not succeed. Went
later back to Madras, but there too success evaded them. The two year
absence from the Madras music scene was not good for Raghunath. He had lost
his foothold in the South Indian music industry. They came back to
Bhubaneswar and Sanjukta took up the post of a dance lecturer in the
recently formed Music College. Raghunath started conducting national music
orchestras. Marriage in 1960 and the birth of two sons till 1964 – these
years were very hard on Sanjukta and Raghunath – economically and otherwise.
From 1966 they decided to work as a team and that’s really when Sanjukta’s
career got a boost. He started adjusting his commitments in order to be able
to sing more and more for her. In her own words : “I do believe that he
could have done much better for himself if he didn’t sing for me; as he has
such a rich voice and a typical style of singing. I cannot deny that he had
to make compromises for me”. |
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Way back, a journalist in Calcutta had said about this child prodigy: “I had
often heard of God gifted talent – little Sanjukta was that. She has cast a
spell over us”. It was true. The audience, journalists, connoisseurs had all
spotted this god gifted talent way back in 1953…. They all fell in love with
this sprightly girl of nine… till her death, her charm did not end, their love spell did not break. Not only India, but the world over people adored Sanjukta and her dance. She was very
popular in Europe and was an annual feature since 1980 at the invitation of
Eugenio Barba, a very eminent director of the Odin theatre of Denmark. She
was dance in its purest form, superb sublime spiritual… ultimately showering
the bliss of Moksha. |
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‘Sanjukta Panigrahi’ - that’s how the world knew her. But we called her
‘Sanjunani’ – we meaning most of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s disciples. It
was 25 years ago that I started calling her ‘Sanjunani’. In the Odiya
language ‘nani’ means older sister. |
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Our first meeting was at Cuttack, in guruji’s house. She and Raghubhaina (Pandit
Raghunath Panigrahi) had come to guruji’s house. ‘This girl is from Mumbai,
Shankar’s (my first guru, Shankar Behera) student, watch her dance!’ I
danced for a few minutes and guruji started yelling at my mistakes (the
perfectionist that he was !) Sanjunani said ‘Leave her
alone, she is new to your style – she will learn’. It was just five years
after this first meeting that I was travelling with her in a troupe led by
guruji for the festival of India in Russia! In the one month with her in
Russia and the 15 days of rehearsals prior to that, I got to see Sanjunani
from close quarters, and I got to know her as a person and we grew close. We
would meet rarely, only when I was in Orissa or she was in Mumbai. There was
contact of course, through the occasional letter or phone call. |
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She
died in june 1997, and was intermittently ill prior to that, but I came to
know about her cancer very late, only in March. She was in Mumbai in 1996, in Diwali – she had asked me to take Dr.
Anant Joshi’s appointment - for her knees, they hurt very badly. But it
never occurred to me that cancer would be the culprit. It was her wish that
her relationship with dance should continue till her last breath….but this illness wouldn’t allow that…she had realised this and she didn’t
want the world to know. |
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I
wanted to talk to her, desperately . Guruji said try,
but she will not come to the phone. I called. I was told she is at the
doctor’s. I called again, Babu (her older son) picked up….she refused…..Babu told her its Jhelum
from Mumbai… she took the phone….I said ‘I only want to hear your voice
Sanjunani’. She burst into tears. She tried to speak,
but she couldn’t. She cried and cried and cried a lot. She could see death
approaching, she could sense the speed at which it was
approaching…. She didn’t want to accept it, but she was
helpless, she knew it….but then how long can one control one’s emotions? The
feeling of having lost everything too soon…..!? |
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Sanjunani was an introvert. She always kept her distance, but once her
wavelength clicked with someone, she would talk a lot. She would care for
the person. Just before we left for our Russia tour, Smita (the late actress
Smita Patil, who was a very close friend of mine since childhood.) had died.
I suppose Sanjunani knew my frame of mind. Have you had breakfast… are you
tired… is your back hurting.. do you think of Smita a lot … talk to me about
her… It was not difficult for her to understand people. Yet she was never
part of the group as such. No jokes, no chitchatting, no whiling away time.
We had tremendous respect for her, maybe her nature made it more so. Her
detractors called her self-centred. But I never felt that, while performing
or rehearsing. |
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She
had once said: “ I don’t know how people will remember me. All my life I
have known only dance, and people know me as a dancer, but still I wish
people will remember me as a good human being, a sincere person. Many people misunderstand me. They think I am not sociable because I
do not go to parties or clubs. But I do not like to discuss saris and
jewellery. I may not be sociable to them, but I take care of the needs of my
immediate family as also the larger family of musicians and technicians who
are with me. |
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She
always felt that she lost out on her childhood and her youth due to her
early performances and early marriage. Maybe that is why she was always very
encouraging to young dancers in the group. She would not mind rehearsing a
particular piece ten times if a junior dancer in the group went wrong. This
happened with me. In the ballet ‘Geet Govind’ she was Krishna and I was
Radha’s sakhi. I had to box her ears in one sequence. I just couldn’t get
myself to do it. Guruji was going purple with rage,
precious time was being wasted. Before guruji could get up and slap me,
Sanjunani took my fist and boxed herself, telling guruji ‘don’t worry, it’ll happen, she’ll do it’. |
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She was very understanding about mistakes made by junior dancers. She had a phenomenal memory and was extremely cautious about her own mistakes. In Russia, after an item, she quickly came to the wings and held guruji’s feet - please forgive me for the mistake today. In the darkness of the backstage I witnessed this. I was overwhelmed and drawn to tears. Raghubhaina – her life partner and stage partner! If he ever made a mistake – she would not leave him. Once in Mumbai, I was in the audience, sitting on the front row. Bhaina went wrong, didn’t realise he’d gone wrong and kept on singing… Nani kept adjusting….! After the show I was the witness, they were arguing, he wouldn’t accept… and I had to say he was wrong! He accepted his mistake and Sanjunani was pleased as a punch - like a little child. Whenever they argued over a point like this they would get into Tamil, so people didn’t realise they were flinging words at each other …..!! |
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