Shruti Pai - Interview w/ Artists of 'Invoking the River'

Shruti Pai is a CDI Kathak Fellow and a dancer in CDI’s dance company Chitresh Das Dance. She currently lives in San Francisco and performed in the premiere of “Invoking the River” on October 14-16 at ODC Theater in San Francisco.

Shreya: What does Invoking the River mean to you?

Shruti: Since all the dancers for this show have a section where we are dancing as our individual river, this whole process has really given us the opportunity to take a river and then explore what it means to us. Over the past few months, this has taken a lot of unexpected paths and really helped us discover new things about ourselves – like what’s important to us, the ways that we resonate with our specific rivers, their origin stories, and their modern implications.To me, Invoking the River means taking the idea of a river, which means something relatively simple to most people, and pointing out its deeper meanings and the way it can relate to me and everyone around me in different ways. 

When I first chose the river Godavari, which is one of the largest rivers in Southern India, it took me in a very unexpected direction. When I did more research about the river, I found out about its importance to the widow remarriage movement in the 19th century, and I was able to learn a lot about that movement and why it’s important to me given the current political climate and the current state of women’s rights and empowerment, especially in the US. So Invoking the River also means exploring these values, seeing how they’re important to me, and learning about the history of women’s empowerment in India and relating that to the current events in the US. The biggest change this show has had on me is the realization that the important work that has been done to empower women in the past is still relevant now, and that we need to remind people that there’s still lots of work to be done in this area. 

Shreya: Can you talk more about why you specifically chose to portray Godavari?

Shruti: I was first interested in Godavari because it flows across the center of India and it ends in Andhra Pradesh, where my mom is from. When I was doing my research about a town along Godavari and how the people in those areas rely on the river, I learned about Rajahmundry, which is a city on the banks of the Godavari. Rajahmundry was where the widow remarriage movement began in India; it was started by Kandukuri Veeresalingam, who was a stalwart for women’s empowerment. He advocated for widow remarriage, which at the time, was unheard of, and also fought against child marriage and the dowry payment system. 

When doing that research, I was horrified to read the details of what widows went through and continue to go through today – shaving their heads, abandoning their colorful clothing and beautiful jewelry, and neglecting their marriage, femininity, and any ability to be desired. In the most extreme cases, they threw themselves on their deceased husbands’ funeral pyres. In essence, their self worth was limited to their roles as wifes. That really struck me because I picked my river shortly after the overturning of Roe v Wade, so these issues felt especially relevant. 

Because this whole movement happened on the banks of the Godavari, it was such an important resource – for example, Kandukuri and his wife Bappama Rajyalaxmi lived on the banks of the Godavari and used the water from the river to take care of the widows and children they were housing. The impact of Godavari and this movement on the expectation of women and widows was revolutionary, and was something that really resonated with me given the current issues we’re facing in the US. I’m hoping that by picking this river, I can offer the audience a sense of hope that may be lacking these days. 

Shreya: Is there anything that surprised you in your research?

Shruti: Something that surprised me was how revolutionary these ideas were. For some context, Kandukuri Veeresalingam posted a set of journals on women’s topics that were considered taboo at the time in India, and he went on to create an entire association whose purpose was to remarry widows. I knew the widow remarriage movement existed, but as I did my research, I was surprised to find out how progressive this thinking was, especially for the 19th century given the stigma around widows in India. Seeing that gave me a lot of hope – in 2022, when we seem to be going backwards with a lot of women’s issues, I saw that that kind of thinking can be reversed with enough work. 

Shreya: What did your storytelling process look like? How did you transform this research into a story and a performance? 

Shruti: Since my main reason for choosing the Godavari was the widow remarriage movement, I knew I wanted my dance to tell the story of a widow. This is a very loaded topic to put into dance, so I was trying to find a balance between showing the river itself versus her identity as the Goddess Godavari, as well as intertwining Godavari’s voice with the voice of the widow. When we were choreographing the piece, I was trying to figure out this narrative between the widow and Godavari and see how Godavari would respond to the widow’s voice. It’s been a long, difficult process, but it’s been amazing to see it all come together. Now that we’re at the end of the process, it’s very rewarding to see how far we’ve come. 

Shreya: How have you leaned on your Guru sisters throughout this process?

Shruti: We’ve been leaning on each other a lot, especially because we’re all in the same boat of having really abstract concepts we have to translate into dance. For the majority of my dance career – starting from when I was 6 years old through the Youth Company and even afterwards, joining the Fellowship – this was the most freedom I had to figure out what’s important to me, and decide for myself what that would look like through dance. This was completely unforeseen territory and that process was extremely difficult, but since I didn’t have to go through it alone, it was nice to be able to reach out to the other dancers for help with certain parts or see if they were able to convey a certain emotion or aspect of their story that I was struggling with. This process got stressful and difficult at times, so having them as a support system made things 100 times better. 

Shreya: Finally, what are you most excited about in the lead up to the performance?

Shruti: I’m excited to see how the audience will interpret the pieces. With my piece, I went into it wanting to tell a very specific story, referencing this specific movement, but it’s still open to interpretation. The audience won’t be told exactly what to think, so I’m interested in seeing how others might relate to the dance. So far I only know my interpretation and what the dance means to me, so it’ll be so interesting to hear how it impacts others. 

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Featuring choreography by Charlotte Moraga, music by Utsav Lal, multimedia & poetry by Alka Raghuram. Performances by Chitresh Das Dance Vanita Mundhra, Shruti Pai, Mayuka Sarukkai & Kritika Sharma and live music by Utsav Lal (piano) and Nilan Chaudhuri (tabla).

Shreya Khandewale is a Chitresh Das Youth Company alumni. She started studying Kathak at Pandit Chitresh Das’ institution as a child and continued to study for over a decade. She performed her graduating Youth Company Showcase in 2018 and is now a CDI Community Communications Contributor.