Dance And Dissent

Being ahead of her times, Prathibha Prahlad has had a rough road. The dancer on her dreams, Ramakrishna Hegde and on being single.

- Mini P. Thomas

The ceiling fan in her bed-room drones, and the attached bathroom is flooded, thanks to a leaking tap. There are cheques to be signed, packages to be couriered, plans to be approved and rehearsals to be fixed. It is one of those days in dancer Prathibha Prahlad’s breathless life.

She looks at me and says, “Come with me to the airport. We’ll talk in the car.” She is off to Delhi and then on to China. Prahlad settles down in the car, a big red bag on her lap.

Being single must be challenging, I tell her. “Very tough. More so if you are a professional,” she says. “One has to take care of everything from the macro to the micro. I have always been single, even while I was in a relationship and a lot got taken care of.”

As we talk, flashes of her older self surface, vivacious and exuberant. They take me back to her artistically done living room that had several photos of her dancing. Some photos show her with Ramakrishna Hegde, former chief minister of Karnataka, with whom she had a relationship.

One photograph that hung above the display of earthen pots and brass statues had particularly caught my attention. It showed Hegde, Prahlad and two small boys huddled together. “We were together as a family for a very short time, until death snatched him away,” says Prahlad. Hegde, 35 years her senior, died on January 12, 2004, aged 78. The twins, Chirayu and Chirantan Prahlad, are 18 now.