Dyaus turns four

We celebrated Dyaus’ 4th Birthday at Chuck E Cheeses. He actually prepared the guest list himself. 

He knew exactly which friends he wanted to invite. He even invited some friends whom he met when he was a few months old and had not seen in more than 2 years. This is what told me - my boy was growing up. As the guests walked in at noon, he made it a point to greet them and accept his gifts graciously. I expected him to be busy playing and not paying attention to who came but I was pleasantly surprised to see his mature behaviour. Jeetey raho puttar!!

The Theme
Dyaus, for the last few months has gone crazy - Crazy about BATMAN. So, the obvious choice for the theme was the same. He had a wonderful batman cake and a whole lot of Batman related gifts.

Fun and Frolic

The picture below shows Dyaus jumping out of a car. This is exactly what all the kids were doing. Jumping in and out of various rides and games. I dont know about the parents who accompanied the kids, but the kids seemed to have a lot of fun. After all the fun and frolic. Our hostess served pizza and pink lemonade to the kids. You can see them seated at the table in the picture. I’m sure they were famished after all the fun games . Kids - I hope you enjoyed the pizza! While eating the hostess conducted some interactive activities which kept them busy.

The Cake Cutting!!

The cake had a BATMAN theme. It was a marble cake with fresh strawberries inside!!! yum!! yum!!! In the picture, you can see Dyaus with me and Chuck-e...happy to be the star of the party!

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR COMING!!

Inspired by the movie Julie and Julia, I have decided to blog. I dont know how good I am going to be at this. Not too good, going by the way I have averaged at things i've tried.

There is nothing extraordinary or exceptional about me. I am a housewife, or to put it in a more politically correct manner - a home maker. An indian, living in the US for the past seven years. A bengali married to a Kashmiri.

The one thing that makes me different from most people is my ability to dance and to teach the art. Again, it is not all types of dances that I am good at but Indian dance. Any kind of Indian dance. My profession is what I love doing - I teach dance.

I'm not sure if there is anyone else blogging about Indian dance and unfortunately I don't know how to search for blogs pertaining to a single topic.

I just finished choreographing a dance on a Telugu song. Never did I think I would do this...but it was good fun. Actually getting the lyrics translated and then thinking of steps to go with the lyrics. The kids learnt the whole song in just four 1 hour classes. I am impressed.

Coming back to myself and my background in dance...

My parents were both into the arts. My father an amateur actor and my mom's family was into movies and music. Thus they expected me to have inherited some of those genes. They started me on kathak, an Indian classical dance form, when I was just four years old. Then it was classical vocals. I was thoroughly bored. Then my father took a new job in Delhi and for the first time I saw what contemporary dance looked like. I went to a concert of the Ananda Shankar troupe. I was amazed at the costumes, lighting, stagecraft and movements. I came back home and dreamt of being one of the dancers. I could close my eyes and picture myself on stage in the beautiful saris or ghagra-cholis performing one of their enthralling numbers.

I enrolled myself in the Uday Shankar Academy of Performing Arts and went through three long years of hard training. At the end of the thrid year, I topped my class in the final examination.

And then it happened - the dance director of the troupe, Tanusree Shankar, an extraordinary performer and choreographer, asked me to join their troupe in Delhi. That was one of the happiest days of my life. That day i felt - maybe I am someone.

That's how my journey into the world of dance began. Here I am today, still dancing away....