47) Hero after Death

The clouds were muggy and there seemed a determined draught presaging the arrival of the monsoon rains. After my routine morning walk and exercises on an aggravating knee, I saw the papers. My eye ran over the obituary columns and I spotted the name Usha Srinivasan alongside a picture. Her husband had inserted a first anniversary observance and I felt a wave of sympathy.

Usha died last year in her mid 50s of breast cancer. She was my cousin from the maternal side and we had not come across one another in life. My mother and her brother had a running feud over 4 decades.

The cause of such bitterness dated back to this mail from my uncle as he wrote to my dad,” My sister is foolish that I wish to have nothing to do with her. Kindly don’t invite us for marriages and deaths in your family and so shall we. I wish to snap this bond completely and even pretenses are not required”.

This mail was written in 1962 much before my birth and so I missed out on my celebrated cousin – the great Usha Srinivasan.

Usha was a Bharatnatayam dancer of world renown and we followed her progress from the papers just as it indicated her death a year back.

I did a google search that led me to her brother in Mangalore. He blogs avidly and I emailed him introducing me as his cousin and how sorry I was on Usha’s death. The response was lightning quick where-in he gave his numbers and imploring me to contact Usha’s husband in Chennai. In the meanwhile Dr. Vasudevan had sounded his brother-in-law on my mail and probable call.

I spoke to Mr. Srinivasan and he was as warm as the situation warranted on this poignant day,” Forget the past and let’s make a new beginning. Please come to my house at 6’o clock in the evening for Usha’s shradanjali”.

I went into their palatial bungalow in Adyar with mixed feelings. How does one feel visiting a cousin’s house after her death especially after her parents had been so antagonistic to mine? Her husband Mr.Srinivasan was hospitality personified as he led me to tastefully done drawing room that had photo frames of Usha in various dance mudras.

Rarely have I found a person so friendly on a first meeting as we got on family news and gossip after 4 decades. Both father and son still mourned the untimely death and not 5 minutes passed without her reference in the conversation.

He said, “Usha was a perfect woman. She brought her son Vivek so well that now he is working for Infosys after his IIT and IIM. She was a talented dancer and has performed concerts round the world”.

I saw Vivek and though still not 30 exuded grace and culture that comes only from a cultured upbringing as he attended the guests who had dropped in. Even as we were talking, there was a flurry of phone calls from across the globe from her former students. They expressed their gratitude and recollected Usha’s role in their lives and feeling lousy that she had been plucked in her prime.

When alive, Usha ran a dance school and her students had assembled on this day as a show of solidarity to the family.

One said,” When I first came to learn dance, Usha aunty helped me with my maths. She was very concerned and our interactions did not pertain only to dance”.
Another said, “This house was always a transit accommodation for anyone coming from a different city for a performance or when we shifted residences”.

Over 20 girls assembled and practiced the mudras taught by my cousin as we waited for others to join. They stood in two columns and prostrated in front of her photograph in a dance mudra. Then each walked up to the dias and placed a rose under her portrait.

We stood in silence for 2 minutes and there was not a dry eye in the gathering.

I had never seen my cousin when she was alive and felt amazed at the number of lives she had touched.