... Of Mothers / Managers

Having a classical dance teacher as your mother is a pretty tough condition. You know, for one, you’ll be waking upto those monotonous classical songs every day, you’ll be subjected to thunderous ‘tha-thayyams’ during the class hours, you’ll have young girls running around your house yelling at each other, you’ll have their mothers gossiping in the drawing room till the classes get over everyday ( that means putting up fake smile to hide the irritation for not being able to watch T.V for at least four hours) and worst the only subject your mother happen to speak will be about ‘adavus’, ‘mudras’, ‘thillanas’, and the various artists in the field…. which all comes across as Na’vi to me. But that’s irrelevant; the topic I am writing is actually about the mothers/managers of the students.

Its actually the program season when my mother is completely busy, and has immersed herself into training kids for the upcoming ‘D’ day. Now, it dawns upon me that being a dance teacher itself is a tough job. Though she is doing what she loves best, it’s the whole package of crying, bitching, complaining etc by the aforementioned M/M that makes it irritable.

These M/M seems to have no end to complains. ‘My child shouldn’t stand in left, she should be at centre.’ ‘Why she is wearing a red dress, we would have liked the green one’. Etc etc… damn! People, atleast she is on the stage.

There’s this female who now and then picks up fight with my mother. Her child happens to be the best we’ve got, so this female makes sure that her child is not treated like the other ‘less accomplished’ students. She deserves better… doesn’t she? So one day, she decides that her child would not be attending the classes here…. Because how dare the teacher decide how her child has to behave. Another one, whose child has an important performance at ‘D’ day proclaims just a week before that her kid won’t be performing that day. “ we have an unavoidable marriage function”. Obviously they aint ready to buck out ‘dakshina’ for the artists providing music for her dance. “sad” replied my mother “I was thinking of teaching her Jathiswaram” (That happens to be an important dance form in bharatnatyam, and a new one for her). They come next day claiming “the marriage was postponed”. I saw another M/M coming and asking “Mam, you are charging much for the performance, let us have some concessions. (hush)we wont say anything to anyone(/hush)”. Ehh! Woman… your husband earns a fortune, you live in a fancy house, and you carry designer handbags. It would have been considerable if it had been that other girl’s parents who have hard time making their ends meet. And to whom we are giving it… oops you weren’t supposed to know.

There have been instances when the kids stops coming altogether because the teacher shouted at her for not getting the eyes right. “how dare you?” shouted the M/M from other end of the phone “We’ve never raised the voice against our child”. What! Are you kidding me? If it had been my sister, she’d have been grounded for complaining against the teacher. Also I must say there are smart M/Ms too. This female starts gifting sarees, gets me cool T-shirts and nice shirts for my father during these program season. And she’d very casually drop in one day and say “You know mam, it’d had been nice if my child gets to perform a single item”. Aww!! What can my mother say… we’ve already accepted the bribe.

It gets worse once the program gets over. Unlike teachers in other field, a dance teacher often get accused of favoritism. The M/Ms would get angry for no particular reason. “teacher-u never cared about my child, all you cared about were Anu”, “why my child got only 2 items, while so-so got three”, Man! You should look at their faces, they could just eat my mother alive. Its mostly to outdo other kids. During program season, the gossiping ladies won’t see eye-to-eye with each other. Its more ridiculous if a talented student falters during the performance, you can see other M/Ms almost smiling. Duh!! They would be bitching about one another to my mom, in my front room, in my sofa while I have this urge to get out of my room and shout at them… “Alright woman, your child is the best, but why is it so hard for you to understand that other parents are also blinded by same illusion.”

Anyhow… you all need to know that the dance teacher has been training students for close to a decade now. So… she knows the best. She knows what a child wants, how capable she is and what is best dance form for her. You needn’t decide it for her. After all she has raised

successfully one girl child and a super intelligent stud (#me).