July 27th, 2011

Leela Naidu – Down Memory Lane

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Memory Lane! It’s a lovely phrase, but don’t expect these pages to give you the impression that the past takes up a particular place in the mind, reserved only for memories. If my past were like a lane, it would no longer be frequented, for the houses there are now empty. Once they contained each one of my yearnings, joys, interests, the wonder, enthusiasms and illusions that did not last beyond certain years or had to be given up as I tried to probe more and more into life with the beginnings of experience. The windows of these houses that opened on various perspectives at different ages would now be closed; there would only be the blind alleys from where I retraced my steps, having understood the futi­lity of my efforts.

What happens to such a deserted place? It gradually becomes the trackless expanse it was before the “lane”, the thoroughfare, came to be. That is how the greater portion of one’s past, with its innumerable incidents, day to day ex­perienoes, is no longer in the memory.

But still memories remain. What are they? Only those experiences that sank deep enough in the mind to become knowledge, visions of life (though still subject- to change), that help us steer our way.

The earliest impressions I am still concious of were derived from Nature and music. I can see myself as a mere toddler sitting in my nightie, propped up by my father, on the rail­ing of a circular park in Dadar singing “Twin­kle Twinkle Little Star” and experiencing every night the same wonder and delight at gazing at the constellations, and treating the myriads as a family in which the biggest star was Daddy, the second biggest Mummy and the tiniest— how I used to twist my neck in all directions— was Leela.

On a starry night anywhere I have always lifted my head to look at the sky and get that feeling of expanse and of the physical symbol of a goal, walking with my eyes fastened on a star piercing the night with its light.

Then flowers. I would always bury my nose in their pollen for their fragrance, observe their translucent petals, or look out for the sprays of colour of the bougainvillaea, the flowering trees and creepers.

I would waddle on the beach searching for the Sea Anemone. Ever since that tender age of three or four, I have loved Bombay for the presence of Nature—the great trees visible everywhere, the luxuriant gardens, and wind-blown palms.

Throughout my stay in Europe I felt homesick for Bombay, and, after a holiday back in India, when I was about ten, that took us all over the South, along its coasts, the lagoons with fishing villages, and the countryside, I cried so much when we returned to a wintry Geneva, that my mother promised to take me every remaining summer in Europe to the South of France to be near the sea and the few palms and bougainvillaea it has to offer.

The first aspect that comes to my mind of any place I have visited or lived in is its land­scape. In Geneva, where I studied, I would go roaming in the underwood or in the acres of park to witness the first signs of each season. It gave me those moments of peace, in which I realised that in Nature everything is beautiful.

As I have already said, music and its in­fluence on me are among my very first me­mories. It was a great treat to have Mummy sing to me lovely old French songs, lullabies, Ave Maria and opera airs. I would sit on her lap while she played the piano or I would listen spellbound to records and radio pro­grammes of Indian and Western music. I was soothed or stirred by the melodies.

By the time I was five, I was drawn to Chopin’s music. By then I had read and re­read the composer’s life in my favourite series of children’s books on great musicians. Once, when my little companions were enumerating their best friends, I took out a portrait of Cho­pin I had, and declared: “This is my greatest friend.”

Around that time, at a recital by the pupils of a piano professor living a floor below us, I heard a young woman, who had nearly com­pleted her training, play a Chopin polonaise. I thought she played with great feeling and thereafter, whenever she came for her lessons, I would manage to be near her car to gaze at her admiringly.

The professor took me also as a pupil. He made me practise the finger exercise on a table and allowed me to touch the piano-keys only on Sundays to produce very simple tunes. Thanks to this grounding, I forged ahead when I joined the Music Academy in Geneva, with­out any set-back due to faulty position of the hands or lack of strength in the fingers.

But I did the dreary table work only half­heartedly. Then I broke the rule altogether to practise a piece I wanted to play on Mummy’s birthday as a present for her. It was a sur­prise to everyone that day when I took out a big book, titled Simplified Classics, and started to play Chopin. I was so moved at this op­portunity that half way through I broke into tears and could not play another note. I only managed to murmur: “Oh Mummy, it is such a beautiful piece.”

It was indeed a beautiful piece, but it was the Funeral March I had chosen to play on my mother’s birthday!

I was also an ardent lover of dance before going to Europe. Listening to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite about ballets of fairies, water- nymphs and elves I had felt transported to the world of these little sprites and had tried steps of my own. Then onwards, I would dance away to any dance music and soon took up ballet in earnest.

The most vivid memory I have of my first stay in Paris is that of the splendour of a ballet at the Opera. I was in a sari, a little girl of eight. I can still visualise some of the scenes —dancers in exquisite costumes in groups of three, as festers at a king’s court, and in large ensembles as sprites of the wood gliding across the stage to the strains of romantic music that filled the house with its amplitude.

The ballets, operas, the symphonic and piano concerts, the plays and fine films, those offered me the moments I cherished in Europe —moments in which I shared the feeling and harmony of those works of art.

The years I spent in Geneva as a student are summed up in my mind in terms of work. I found out that work can be exhilarating. In school and college every subject became ab­sorbing due to the intelligent method of teach­ing and the way one was made to think and explore for oneself.

I enjoyed concentrating on my work and did not miss even a fraction of the time in which I was to equip and exercise my mind. My professors of piano revealed to me the elements of the ideal approach to work: conscientiousness, loving care for details, the perfectionist’s spirit that drives pupil and master alike to seek out what has yet to be improved.

Before I tackled the score of a new piece, I was told: “You are not to bring out your own feeling but follow with the utmost respect the instructions of the composer. You are to interpret his feeling, his spirit.”

From the age of eight to thirteen I attend­ed classes of dance improvisation to classical music at the Institute of Eurhythmics. My ima­gination was continually-exercised and the first theme on which I composed a dance was The Canary and The Black Cat. At the last piano note my heart was in my mouth and I could not help trembling quite like a bird that has escaped from the claws of a big cat.

I went before a movie camera for the first time when I was at this Institute. I was nine then. A Swiss documentary was made on our group dances and one of my solos. The film was shot in the vast auditorium of Radio Gene­va. I remember peering at the inevitable chalk-marks at my feet. I was intrigued by the numerous preparations, the measuring tape being brought to my nose from the camera and the clapper, but I was not in the least self- conscious or nervous.

When I saw the documentary at a cinema, my new gigantic height that filled the huge screen made me laugh and laugh at myself.

School and amateur dramatics, in which I took part, instilled an abiding love of acting in me. Those were efforts to understand human behaviour, to slip into the part, and see that thoughts, voice, movement, costume even, become expressive of the character. Nothing else had set my whole being so active. I re­membered this when I took up acting as a career.

About other experiences that have brought me to the present, I prefer simply to quote a venerable person who once wrote to me: “The past has been assimilated in essence in your present. Your present stage of development includes the wisdom born of all your previous experiences.” (This interview was conducted in 1961).

Memories