Internationally acclaimed Bharatanatyam exponent Indo-Canadian Lata Pada, who holds the rare honour of being a South Asian who was awarded the Order of Canada, was back to her favourite city in India from Toronto with her newest production Mandala. The author had invited Pada some years ago, on behalf of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Jadavpur University’s Department of Comparative Literature, as a keynote speaker for their Annual International Conference.
Pada is no stranger to Kolkata. Two years ago she conceptualised, choreographed and performed in the lead role in a dance drama based on the Game of Chess episode of the Mahabharata in collaboration with a foremost Balinese dance troupe and presented Pralaya at Kalamandir to a hall with standing room only.
“On an ordinary day, the phone rang.” Those are the first words of the presentation of Revealed by Fire, which Indo-Canadian celebrity Bharatanatyam dancer created in response to the loss of her husband Vishnu Pada and her two teenage daughters in the Air-India bombing. On June 10, 1985, Lata Pada left Toronto for Mumbai to prepare for an important solo dance performance scheduled in Bangalore in July of that summer. Her husband Vishnu and daughters Brinda 18 and Arti 15 were to join her in Bombay in two weeks.
“On that ordinary day in June, as I rehearsed in my Guru’s studio in Matunga, Bombay, I received the fateful call; Air-India Kanishka flight 182 that was bringing my family from Toronto to India had exploded over the Atlantic Ocean killing all 329 aboard. A terrorist bomb placed in a suitcase had been suspected as being the reason for the downing of this flight en route from Toronto and Montreal to Bombay.”
An unknowing victim of a heinous act of terrorism, the safe world of her home and her nuclear family had been violently destroyed, and her identity as wife and mother irrevocably altered. Life, as she knew it, had ended in the same fire that had consumed her loved ones. Plunged into the depths of despair and unspeakable pain, she was engulfed by darkness and futility.
She says: “Through the haze of sedation, pierced by searing memories of Vishnu, Brinda and Arti’s faces and voices, unanswered questions tormented me. Why me? Where and who could I turn to? How can I survive? Do I have a right to live? Life was a seemingly endless spiral of pain, anger, frustration, confusion, guilt and overwhelming emptiness.”
Many women have been victims of terror and murderous acts but few find the path or the courage to transform blistering sorrow into creative success. Pada is clear on how dance helped her reconstruct herself: “Dance was a journey of discovery into my self-identity, its ability to be a cathartic agent in times of darkness. For me, the most Padaimportant aspect of dance is its power to heal and bring meaning to life when you need it the most.
“Due to my personal history and the tragedy in my life, I’ve seen the power of dance and art as an important tool to overcome some terrible things that happen to us. Through repeated performances of my work, Revealed By Fire, I experienced myself the change it brought in me and the many people have been transformed who saw it. This work has not only given me a new meaning in my life, but it provided a deeper understanding of the transcendental value of art in our lives for my students and my audiences.”
Pada’s lecture demonstration as a distinguished visitor to my undergraduate class at the University of Toronto in 2011 drew a standing ovation and there were many post-performance discussions on how lucidly Pada was able to kindle meditations about grief and the healing qualities through art.
The author with Lata Pada
In 1964, Pada arrived in Canada as a young bride to a mining town in Northern Manitoba. She had just started her career in dance in India, having studied it from the age of seven. “When I arrived in Thompson, my dance for this remote town of 10,000 audience was literally a tale out of the Arabian nights! Dressed in a rich embroidered silk costume and elaborate jewellery, I was a novelty and viewed as very exotic. To reach out to this totally uninitiated but curious audience, my performance was part lecture-part demonstration.
She has forged a path for herself and has come a long way since. Lata Pada established Sampradaya Dance Academy as well as Sampradaya Dance Creations in Mississauga (a suburb of Toronto) in 1990 and “there has been no looking back since”. Both organisations are separately registered and administered with dBoth organizations function out of an 8,000sqft dance space with two offices, staff room, two foyers, three dance studios with sprung floors; one of them is a large one which converts into a black box theatre for 100 seats, fully equipped with state-of-the-art lighting and sound.
“Since I lived in Indonesia with my family from 1969 to 1979 on a remote mining project, my teaching was interrupted for a decade; though I took every opportunity to train in Balinese and Javanese dance forms. Due to the proximity to India from Indonesia, I returned regularly to train with Guru K. Kalyanasundaram in Mumbai for short periods of time. Upon my family’s return to Canada in 1979, I started teaching again.”
She points out that at that time, the Indian diaspora had grown exponentially, with many trained music and dance teachers; first- and second-generation professional and well-established Indo-Canadians committed to having their children train in the Indian classical dance and music systems. In Canada, there was a growing awareness about the importance and value of the heritage and cultural values that new immigrants were enriching Canada with.
Pada says: “In the beginning, I had to work tirelessly to demystify the notion to the larger public and the funding agencies that Bharatanatyam was not an archaic dance form or an antiquated tradition - unchanging and dormant, valued only for its cultural retention. It was an important expression of Canada’s multi-cultural and artistic richness. Our themes for new productions had to be versatile and unique enough to explore new performance approaches that could be accessible for audiences beyond the Indo-Canadian community.”
Pada reminds me of our friendship that spans over 12 years: “Passing through Bangkok airport in 2010, my eyes fell on your meticulously researched book Dance of Life: The Mythology, History and Politics of Cambodian Culture. I just had to buy it, heavy as it was, my carry-on luggage groaning under the weight of far too many impulsive last minute purchases. Your captivating account of the history of Khmer dance kept me engrossed on my long flight back to Toronto and I made every attempt thereafter to contact you. And then I found you. And now, so many years later it is a firm and close connect with you, as I visit Kolkata. Dance connected us then and it is dance that has woven an abiding friendship now,” she observes.
Julie Banerjee Mehta is an author of Dance of Life and co-author of the bestselling bi ography Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen. She has a PhD in English and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, where she taught World Literature and Postcolonial Literature for many years. She currently lives in Kolkata and teaches Masters English at Loreto College