All posts in the ‘ Dance ’ Category

Facebook friends have posted about how they’re dreaming of dancing. Yes. Memories of contra-dances crowd into my head, too. The first memory, from twenty years ago. Shaky and bewildered from a recent divorce, I’ve forced myself out of the house and over to the UU church in a nearby town. Dudley Laufman is the dance caller. I know no one in the hall. But soon I’m swept up in the “Paul Jones,” an easy circle dance. “Dudley dances” get …Read More

I came across a manila folder that was stained and soft from multiple uses and had “Important Mementoes” written on the outside in my mother’s exuberant upward-sloping handwriting. Among the yellowing newspaper clippings, invitation cards, golf scorecards and the like, there was a letter written to my mom by her dad, in November 1939. In this picture, my mom’s parents, Helen and Jacob Randolph, are center row, left. My mother isn’t in this picture–it must have been taken …Read More

One of my favorite Hindi movies is the 2011 blockbuster Zindagi na Milegi Dobara (Life Doesn’t Come Twice.) It’s the story of three bachelors taking a road trip through Spain, just before one of them is supposed to get married. Each picks a dangerous sport and the others are honor-bound to try it out with him, and they’re all pushed to their limits. The film explodes with energy. It’s also highly authentic in its details–it was shot on …Read More

Some time in the early 1970s, my parents met up in New York City with their friend Padmini, her husband, Dr. Ramachandran, and their son. As you may remember, Padmini (1932-2006) was the middle sister of India’s Travancore Sisters, wildly popular dancers and movie actors at mid-century. Although they are no longer with us, they still have devoted fans across the globe. My mom hadn’t danced for a long time, but Padmini tried to put her through her …Read More

This week brought the sad news of the death of South Indian film star Sukumari, whose career spanned over six decades. An accident resulting in severe burns led to heart failure on Tuesday, March 26, in Chennai. Sukumari’s year of birth is variously reported as 1938 and 1940. In any case, she was very young when she acted in her first film, Oru Iravu (1951), with her cousin Lalitha of the Travancore Sisters, appearing in scenes depicting Lalitha’s …Read More

In our family, it was taken for granted that you would dance. Here’s my mom at about age six, in Newton, Massachusetts, about to be the bride in a show called “A Kewpie Wedding.” My sister Lee at a performance in Delhi. Of all of us kids, she got the furthest in ballet, advancing from flat shoes to point. I didn’t escape participating in Woodstock School talent shows. In addition to classical dance, we learned ballroom dancing-—box step, …Read More

We were the new kids on the block in 1953, the block being Edward Elliot Rd (now Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai) and the city being Madras (now Chennai.) It could have been a difficult adjustment–but instead, it was like falling into a warm bath. This was largely because of the kindess of our hospitable next-door neighbors–the mom, Saraswati Amma, her three daughters, Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, their brother, Chandran, and their cousins, Ambika and Sukumari. We were still learning …Read More

Some of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching online for pictures of the three Travancore sisters, my family’s movie star neighbors in Chennai. Queries come from India, but also from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Sri Lanka, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Netherlands. Perhaps the sight of these three beautiful ladies has been a remedy for homesickness for people spread over the globe by …Read More

As I have mentioned, our next-door neighbors, Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, were in and out of our house in Chennai a lot. Left to right: Lalitha, Ragini, Padmini Lalitha and Ragini, alas, died way too young, but Padmini and my parents remained in touch for decades. All three stars live on in their Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Hindi movies. The Travancore Sisters’ cousins, Ambika and Sukumari, were dancers and film actors, too. Sukumari (born in 1941) is still …Read More

I’m looking through my dad’s address book. It’s got a worn green leather cover, and is bulging at the seams with stuff he inserted. He obviously copied some items over from an earlier book, but also taped in addresses from torn off corners of envelopes, return address labels, scraps of notebook paper, stickies of every color. Some things, especially notes to himself, he didn’t tape down, so you have to turn the pages carefully or bits of paper …Read More