Dance reunion after 19 years

She was putting on her uniform, getting ready for school. Outside the house were two visitors, who had walked down from the nearby guest house in Cheruthuruthy. Sindhu Shyam heard them ask if she was interested in acting. Lohithadas, the director and Venu the cinematographer had come in search of the 15-year-old girl in the neighbourhood, who, they were told, knew to dance. And that’s how Sindhu came to movies — to her first film Bhootakkannadi.

Even 19 years later, luck continues to make things happen for her. And so without planning it, she had a special kind of reunion last year with five of her friends from college. They were meeting after many years and when they did, they chose to dance together on a stage in Guruvayoor like they did in college, at St Mary’s, Thrissur. This August, Sindhu and her friends will perform together again in Singapore for Onam celebrations. Between her rehearsals and shooting, Sindhu has just enough time to tell her story.  

“There were seven or eight of us in the college dance team. We regularly attended youth festivals and other programmes. We had all parted ways afterward. And then last year, one of the girls in the dance team — Cinna Chandran — was coming to Kerala from the US. So we planned a get-together,” Sindhu says. “Two of us — Manju and I — were in Chennai. There were two teachers — Bini Balakrishnan and Anitha Krishnan, and a reporter called Dhanya Kiran. We began a WhatsApp group and started talking about a get-together. Dhanya then suggested we could have the reunion with a dance programme and since I was still active, I did the choreography.”

Sindhu has been learning dance since she was four. Not surprising, given she lived next door to Kalamandalam, Kerala’s prestigious dance school. What’s surprising is that she stuck to her dance through all the years when many women tend to slip away to other facets of life — job, marriage and children. Sindhu had all of those too, but she danced as well. She also continued to act.

Soon after Bhootakkannadi, there was Lenin Rajendran’s Mazha, another offbeat film. In early 2000s, after her graduation, Sindhu became the lead of a popular television series called Vava, which she’s still remembered for. Marriage took her to Chennai. And there she found herself in Tamil serials. “I also became the disciple of noted Bharatanatyam dancer Chitra Viswesaran. I found out from her how there was more to dance than the performance.”

Movies continued on the side. She appeared in Mani Ratnam’s Aayudha Ezhuthu as Soorya’s sister, Shyamaprasad’s Ore Kadal and in Mission 90 Days, she was a journalist. There were other movies too, but somehow she did not make it big in commercial cinema. “I was not really confident about acting in commercial films, not that I stayed away on purpose.” But when it comes to dance, she knows what she’s doing and how much she wants to do. The group dance with her friends had rekindled a new spirit for the art form.

“We called ourselves Rithu Sangamam, because there were six of us. We did a solo performance each, in our own individual styles and ended it with a jugalbandi of Mohiniyattom and Bharatanatyam, as a celebration of our friendship.” Those three days ahead of the show, spending time at Cinna’s house in Thrissur had reminded them of their passion to dance. “We were all there with our children. And Cinna’s parents and brother would take care of the kids.”

By the end, they decided to do it again the next year. But by then, other commitments had stopped a couple of them from travelling to Singapore. “Dhanya and Cinna couldn’t come. Luckily (another chance happening here) another dancer from the old college team — another Dhanya — said she could come. So it’s five of us going to Singapore, and we are calling it Nirthya Panjamam. It was initiated by Manju, who had moved to Singapore.”

Sindhu who is now acting in two Tamil series — Deivamagal and Pakal Nilavu — would also be seen in Jayam Ravi’s new flick Bogan. She’d also love to do performance-oriented characters in Malayalam. “When I watch the different types of movies Malayalam is making, giving importance to many characters and performances, I wish I could be part of those.”