One of his students said to me one time, "oh you can get away with anything, he really likes you, he has not let anyone into his family the way he has with you"
But that is actually not the way I saw it at all. I don't think I was his favourite nor could I have gotten away with anything. Earlier, he had cut off students who broke his basic rules, and I am sure that if I had gone to another teacher, or if I had started throwing my weight around in class, or misbehaving in any other way, he would have cut me off just as swiftly as well. He was a very impartial and a very strict teacher. There was this dichotomy: as soon as he came out of class, he was a very gentle person, very human and approachable and open to everyone. But once he entered the classroom or started any task concerning dance - it was like he was a different person: there was a very systematic and correct way to do things, and that's how he would do it and nothing or no one could sway him from that.
I don't know if you can call that closeness. As I said, in the classroom, I always kept a distance, I never stepped out of my role. He was the guru and I was the student and I never tried to second-guess him or poke or pry. The one difference between my behaviour in class and that of other students who had had a falling out after advancing a lot was that I never told or asked him what to teach me. Some students would get tired of rehearsing one varnam for many years and they would ask things like "can you teach me this" or that piece as if they were ordering off a restaurant menu. And he would never like that. It would annoy him. The other difference was that I always took corrections without getting upset. If any student got annoyed or upset at his corrections, then he would lose interest and back off.
To me it was so simple: it was not a question of my being patient at all. I could see that he had a system and that he was following it. I also saw from the way he other taught other students that only students who could absorb all his corrections for piece number one, and demonstrate that, show that - only then would he go onto piece #2. He was not going to simply gloss over lots of pieces just for the sake of quantity.
The other reason I never got upset and always wanted more corrections was that obviously the more you were corrected the better you performed: whatever it was, whether adavus, or bavam, or reciting tirmanams, singing - it was only through this cycle of practice and corrections that you were going to get better. And what was the point of coming all the way here and setting aside the time to learn if not to improve. So, if he made me sing "Ye ... ma gu .. va" and was not satisfied with the "gu" part, and he made me listen and repeat after him 50 times, 100 times, 200 times, I was not at all bothered, I was quite happy that he was making that effort for me.
The more you were willing to work for him, the more he would work for you. This is what I saw with dancers also. The best dancers, the ones who had the nicest adavus and the best bavam, were the ones who had that endurance.
Sometimes after I would toil like this for weeks and finally if he was satisfied he would say "aa, athaan, ippo sariya iruku" (there, that's it, now it's correct).
Yes, it was mentally exhausting but for me this kind of work was so satisfying. After a full morning class like this, he would stop at noon to go take his bath, and I would just feel a high, an endorphin high, like you feel after swimming or running, and for the whole afternoon, I would feel this way.
Now for me, usually those 3 or 4 hours in the morning was enough. I needed that afternoon break. After lunch I would quickly lie down on the floor in the living room, Mrs. M._ would bring me a mat and pillow, and everyone would watch one of those old black-and-white tamil films they would show on TV and gradually drift off into sleep.
Master would be sitting in his corner chair mumbling something, looking at the paper and reading slowly, occasionally reading a sentence out loud, and still singing bits of the song from the morning.
Those blissful afternoon naps.
But to go back to the opening comment: no, I was not close in the conventional sense of the word. I did not speak to him or to his family the way I would speak to someone my own age.
Even though he had let me stay with his family and I knew all about their lives, I would never interfere or give my opinion on anything related to family matters. If any discussion would occur among family members, I would just go upstairs to the classroom and sleep there on the folding bed. Or I would stay upstairs till whatever family-matter discussion was over. Some students who spent a lot of time in the house would address people as brother - sister, etc., but I never crossed that line. I was an outsider and I always addressed people in a formal way. In any large joint family, there is bound to be rivalries, and although I was aware of it, I was very careful never to voice any opinion that was inappropriate or to take any sides. I just stayed out of it.
In spite of all these formalities that I was so careful to observe, there were times, here and there, when someone was giving me food, when I would lie down to watch the afternoon movies, when I would sing or do nattuvangam - I would feel so peaceful and so content in a way I had never felt before. I would feel such a deep connection.
Some people look at these formalities and rules and restrictions as being very stifling - but in fact I did not feel it that way at all.
During all those years I visited Master and sat in his classroom or terrace or living-room being taught by him, there were many times when I felt that behind the teaching there was a lot of generosity and affection freely given to me. And of course that elicits a response in me. I t is a very powerful interaction, but it is it's own separate and special thing. It does not mean that we are friends or equals: there is a vast distance or gulf that separates us, he is such a senior and from a different time, and I am learning from him, and from a totally different background. So it cannot be called closeness. And of course it does not exist in all teacher-student interactions.
I think also that the fact that Master comes from an ancestral family of teachers has a lot to do with it. They are the ones who know the art of teaching as it existed historically. They know how to give of themselves and when and to whom and under what circumstances.
