Mrinalini Sarabhai: The Voice of the Heart

Renowned dancer and choreographer Mrinalini Sarabhai is single-handedly reonsible for taking classical Indian dance beyond the shores of India and making Bharatanatyam a dance form that is revered and respected throughout the world.

Born into the highly educated and well-placed Swaminadhan family in Chennai, where the intelligentsia and elite of the time often came visiting, she enjoyed theatre and dance even as a young girl, but it was only in Santiniketan, under the guidance and encouragement of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and amongst her equally gifted friends, that she realized her true calling.

It was in the dance dramas of Tagore that her innate and immense capacity for innovation and experiment was recognized and allowed to flower. After a short stint in America, where she enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she came back to India to seriously pursue a career in dance where, along with Bharatanatyam, she discovered the pristine energy of Kathakali and used it extensively in her compositions.

Her marriage to the brilliant scientist, industrialist and visionary, Vikram Sarabhai, in 1942, helped her consolidate her dreams. Her passion for dance and her genius for re-energizing and re-inventing traditional dance techniques were in perfect consonance with her husband’s scientific career and the account, in this book, of how the two of them leaned so effortlessly, yet unobtrusively, into each other’s spheres, is a wonderful example of how science and art coexist.
In 1948, she started Darpana, an academy of dance, drama, music and puppetry in Ahmedabad.

In 1949, she danced at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, where the formidable critics of Paris were unanimous in their praise. Since then, she has travelled extensively with her troupe, bringing India and its culture alive with her dance wherever she goes.

But life has not always been easy for her. The death of her husband in 1972 was a terrible blow. Though many misfortunes have shadowed her through the years, she has faced them always with dignity, courage and abiding faith in God.

Written with disarming honesty and simple eloquence, The Voice of the Heart is a warm and vivid memoir of a life optimally lived.

Mrinalini Sarabhai writes, among other things, of her childhood, her parents, her years at school and Santiniketan, her gurus, her concerts, her meetings with a host of interesting and completely diverse people from the worlds of art and science and the wealth of friendships she gleaned from these, her role as daughter-in-law of the famed Sarabhais, her marriage to Vikram, her children, Kartikeya and Mallika.

Her autobiography is a tribute both to the wonderful people who shaped her life and her career and the strength of her own spirit that, recognizing its passion, never disregarded the voice within.

For, as this book makes clear, it is this commitment to the voice of her heart that has helped her more than redeem the wealth of good fortune and talent she was both born with and married to.