What a wonderful cover picture of the Vajifdar sisters, Shirin, Khurshid and Roshan ("Dared to dance,” Parsiana, March 7-20, 2021)! I read the account of their amazing lives as path-breaking artistes and dancers.
The sisters, I imagine, were part of what was described as the Chetana set of artists, writers and free thinkers. The Chetana restaurant at Kala Ghoda in Bombay’s art district was started in 1946 by Sudhakar Dikshit. It is reputed to have launched the Bombay Progressive Arts Movement that encouraged artists like Maqbool Fida Husain, Francis Newton Souza, Krishnaji Howlaji Ara and Akbar Padamsee who were considered reactionaries against the nationalistic aesthetic of the time.
I seem to recall a conversation with Shirin Sabavala, wife of artist Jehangir Sabavala, and her sister, educationist Dr Kamal Wood, describing how they would go skinny dipping in the waves at Juhu beach on moonlit nights. The image remains of how one of them described the phosphorous rippling down their bodies, though I cannot remember who said that.
Theater veteran Hima Devi, who was also a dancer in her early years, and the novelist Raja Rao were also part of group along with noted author Mulk Raj Anand, husband of Shirin Vajifdar, as were yesteryears’ actress Devika Rani and her husband, the Russian artist Svetoslav Nikolaevich Roerich for whom Roshan Vajifdar was a muse. It seems some were also Theosophists, hence the treks to Madras and Rukmini Devi’s fledgling dance school.
It’s sad that there are no proper records of that bygone age.
I was a student at the Presentation Convent, Kodaikanal and remember Roshan Vajifdar though we knew her merely as Ms Ghose ("Dared to dance,” Parsiana, March 7-20, 2021”). Wow! This article has revealed to me the reason why she was at my school — because she was actually a Parsi! And the style of dance she taught was Bharatanatyam. Plus, sort of Bharatanatyam meets disco lights!
Regarding the skinny dipping incident, my recollection is that I heard it from one of the participants during a formal interview. It was described in a book written about Ananda Wood’s mother Kamal and her sister Shirin Sabavala … and that small rarefied world of free thinkers and Theosophists! That’s where one read about the phosphorescence "and we emerged from the sea, our bodies spangled…”