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Page 1 of 3 Dance with me
The fluidity of movement is unmistakable. In his speech, expressions and
body language. Choreographer Mahesh Mahbubani shares the lilt that courses
through the cells of his bone marrow. By Shilpi Madan
He's changed 26 houses in 41 years, across the globe. Has cleaned a
priest's house for ten pounds an hour to make ends meet. And is the the
sole soul in India who's trained in and is knitted deeply to classical
ballet. Yet free spirit Mahesh Mahbubani disarms with his simplicity.
“As a child I used to have a problem communicating with people, so I would
dance. And when I’d dance, I’d forget everything else," says Mahesh, his
eyes mirroring his passion. "Dance has always been a point of reference
for me. My medium of expression.” Here is the eldest of four siblings, a
self-admitted loner in a house full of people
who has always been fond of taking to centrestage.
He would script a movie
and transform into an actor, in an empty room. And would write on the
walls, instruct imaginary students and mark attendance, the next moment.
Drama was life. Then when he was 15, his father went through a financial
crisis. "I begun taking dance classes to earn money, using my gift to
contribute my bit," reveals Mahesh. "The freedom of earning and spending
my own money set in. And I decided then that I wanted an unfettered life.
And that I wanted to be on my own."
Of course, the freedom brought with itself the responsibility for his own
choices and actions. He took to training under fitness icon Ramma Bans in the early 1980s and
held dance and exercise classes at Sea Rock Hotel in Banstand, Bandra,
earning Rs 1200 for 8 hours a month those days. The taste of success was
heady.
But before he could develop the frog-in-the-well attitude, Mahesh moved to
Delhi. "Simply to find out whether I could survive in a new city."
Reality byte 2. "Here I begun to integrate dance with fashion, hair and
make up, to exploit my creative facets. And learnt that games and lies run
rampant in the field, and that 99% of people are fake," says Mahesh. So he
devised his own method of sustaining sanity. By focussing exclusively on
the creative aspects of projects, getting paid and getting out. The boy
who never talked, learnt how to say no, and realised that it was fine to
say no.
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