Posts Tagged ‘ Bharatnatyam ’

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

My mother, Ruth Woodman, had studied ballet in New York City before marrying my dad, Everett Woodman. By the time they reached Madras (now Chennai), India, she had two little girls and was about to give birth to a third, and the dance career had been put aside. But, as luck would have it, our family happened to move in next door to a family of dancers. The three daughters—Padmini, Lalitha, and Ragini—were known as the Travancore Sisters …Read More

“Write about something different next week,” my sister Lee suggested. Okay, I won’t write about Mr. Patch this time, although I haven’t abandoned him. Here’s another elderly Indian gentleman—and teacher—who was hiding in my files: On the back of this photo, I had written “Guru Pillai,” and the names of the four students, including me, far right. I didn’t date the picture, but the year was 1959. These days, if you know just a little about someone, you …Read More