Protima Bedi

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Protima Gauri Bedi

Born February 12, 1948(1948-02-12)
Delhi, India Flag of India
Died August 18, 1998
Malpa, Pithoragarh Flag of India India
Occupation Dancer, Model
Website
Protima Bedi at the Internet Movie Database

Protima Gauri Bedi [1] [2] (October 12, 1948 – August 18, 1998) [3] was an Indian model turned exponent of Indian classical dance Odissi, who in 1990 established 'Nrityagram', a dance village near Bangalore.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and marriage

Protima Bedi was born on October 12, 1948 in Delhi [4], the second daughter in a family of four. Her father, Laxmichand Gupta was a trader who belonged to a bania family from Haryana, and her mother Reba, was a Bengali. Protima's father had to leave home because of opposition to his marriage.

In 1953, her family moved to Goa, and later to Bombay, where she received much of education, including college education, at St. Xavier's College, Bombay. She had become a prominent model by late 1960s. In 1974, she came into news for streaking during the daytime near Juhu Beach in Bombay [5]. It was during her wild modelling days that she met Kabir Bedi. Within a few months of their meeting, she walked out of her parents' house to live with him. They got married in 1969 and had two children - Pooja, who took acting for a brief while and a son, Siddharth.

[edit] Dance

In August 1975, at the age of 26, an Odissi dance recital [6] completely changed her life when she ran into the Bhulabhai Memorial Institute by chance, and saw two young dancers giving an Odissi performance. It filled her with a kind of passion she'd never known before, in spite of its extremely complex rhythms, patterns and sophisticated hand-and-eye gestures. She became a student of Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra from whom she learnt the art of dancing for 12 to 14 hours a day and faced a lot of hardship as a beginner. She transformed herself from being the tight trouser, halter neck, off-shoulder girl with gold streaked hair to Protima Gauri, later as Gauri Amma or Gauri Maa, as she was affectionately known amongst her students [7].

“ You have only to ready yourself, to allow things to happen as they should. The greatest favour you can do yourself is to 'get out of your own way'.
- Protima Bedi, Timepass: Memoirs [4]		 ”

To her dance was a way of life, she proved to be an excellent learner and later she set up Nrityagram, a dance village, on the outskirts of Bangalore. To perfect her dance, she started studying abhinaya from Guru Kalanidhi Narayan of Madras. From then on, she started giving performances all over the country. Around the same time, Protima started her own dance school at Prithvi theatre in Juhu, Mumbai. It later became the Odissi Dance Centre. After her separation from Kabir Bedi in 1978, she was looking for an anchor and she found it in her dance.

[edit] Nrityagram

Main article: Nrityagram

Nrityagram, situated on the outskirts of Bangalore, became India's first free dance gurukul [8], village for various Indian classical dances, consisting of seven gurukuls for the seven classical dance styles and two martial arts forms, Chhau and Kalaripayattu [9]. She wanted to revive the guru-shishya parampara in the right kind of environment. Nrityagram was inaugurated on May 11, 1990, by the then Prime Minister, V.P. Singh. The dance school has a small community of students from all parts of India, but with a common aim - dance. The Nrityagram ensemble was soon performing all over the world [10].

Nrityagram, created as a model dance village, was constructed by master architect, Gerard da Cunha. It had even won the 'best rural architecture' award in 1991. To raise funds to run Nrityagram, a tourist resort Kuteeram was built in 1992. Nrityagram is also the venue of the annual dance festival Vasanta Habba, which was first started in 1994. Vasanta Habba has not been held from 2005-2007, due to the advent of the tsunami and a shortage of funds.

[edit] Final years

Protima's son Siddarth who was suffering from schizopherania committed suicide in July 1997, and in early 1998 she announced her retirement [11]. Subsequently, in August, Protima Gauri set of to her pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar and it there that she disappeared after Malpa landslide, a landslide near Pithoragarh [12], in the Himalayas, leaving behind her most lasting achievement — a flourishing dance village, Nrityagram, where students continue to learn the classical dance styles of India. Her remains and belongings were never found.

Her autobiography, Timepass was posthumously published by her daughter,Pooja Bedi.

[edit] Further reading

  • Time Pass : The Memoirs of Protima Bedi/Pooja Bedi Ebrahim. New Delhi, Penguin, 2000. ISBN 0-14-028880-5.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Obituary India Today, September 7,1998.
  2. ^ Protima Gauri Bedi nrityagram.org.
  3. ^ Dream nrityagram.org.
  4. ^ a b Time Pass : The Memoirs of Protima Bedi, Introduction, pp.1-2
  5. ^ Protima's interview on naked run Hindustan Times.
  6. ^ Protima Guari Interview Rediff on the net, August 22, 1998.
  7. ^ Bina Ramani Mourns... The Indian Express, September 22, 1998.
  8. ^ Nityagram profile indoindians.com.
  9. ^ Odissi Kala Kendra Contemporaries in Odissi.
  10. ^ Dance in Review The NY Times, June 22, 1996.
  11. ^ Bowing Out India Today, April 27, 1998.
  12. ^ Obituary NY Times, August 30, 1998.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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