When a marriage proposal comes from someone you can only think of as a god, it can be more than overwhelming. You wonder whether you are dreaming, and your life thereafter is just a trance. You don’t think of yourself as a dance; for, dance is life.
It was during a chance trip to Paris in the summer of 1931 with her father Akhoy Kumar Nandy, when the 11-year-old Amala met a few young men at the Exposition Coloniale where a group of Indian artists were said to be performing.
One of the older of these youngsters introduced himself to the Nandys as “Uday Shankar” and wondered if Amala would like to come home to play with his younger brother, one who was called Ravi. The boys were playing basketball when the landed; Uday’s mother Hemangini Devi noticed the little girl in a frock and took her in – she gave Amala a sari to wear. She was already part of the family.
Till then, all Amala had seen in her life were the occasional jatras at her small village, now in Bangladesh. And then she saw Uday Shankar dance. The impressionable girl went into a thrall, now into her late Nineties, she still remains so.
Soon she was to accompany Uday Shankar’s dance troupe across the world. All she did during the hectic and exacting tour was to keep a promise to her father – that of writing a diary. Though Akhoy Nandy was not to keen to let his daughter take up dancing, he gave in once Subhas Chandra Bose implored him to do so. Bose had seen her perform at a friend’s house. Amala was, therefore, allowed to join Ashankar’s centre in Amora.
Some years later, during a visit to Chennai, Amala had retired for the night after a party when the legend himself knocked at her door. Uday Shankar who was to complete 39 the next day (December 8, 1939), took a chair and announced that he had decided to get married. Amala’s throat ran dry and managed to blurt out that she felt very happy for him. Shankar asked whether she wanted to know the maiden’s name. She mustered the courage to say that she did. He replied, “Her name is Amala.”
Uday Shankar would have girls swooning, women falling all over him. That the maestro would fall for her was something she could not have imagined in the wildest of her dreams. But the two kept it a secret – for close to two years. The world noticed the chemistry when they dance together, it was so perfect that people failed to notice that when Uday and Amala dance, they did so as one.
Kalpana was to happen a few years later. Uday Shankar worked on the film for over five years at the Gemini Studios in Chennai. He wrote and directed the film, a story that revolved around a young dancer’s dream of setting up an academy, a reflection his own, which he eventually did in the Almora hills. The film was the first to feature a dancer as the lead actor and the fantasy ballet went on to become a landmark film. Shankar’s cinematic essay itself bombed at the box office; he never made another film.
Over the years, the couple had the world at their feet. But, by and by, Shankar could not grapple with the fact that he was no longer the prince charming. He produced Chandalika without Amala, and was even said to be romantically involved with a young girl in his troupe. They were to come back close, very close, shortly before his death in 1977. The last few years, the Shankars had stayed separately.
Amala Shankar, till this day, remains active. She dances, she speaks, as often as she can. She’s still smitten by the father of the modern Indian dance, but you can notice a tone of regret somewhere. She keeps reiterating that the recognition and respect she subsequently got was what Uday Shankar had deserved all his life. It is Amala who keeps the Shankar gharana alive with her daughter Mamata and daughter-in-law Tanushree.
Her son Ananda had opted for music because, in his own words, “I cannot live up to a legend.” Amala was to lose her son too, but she did what Ananda would not want to – she lived up to the legend.
