THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Malayalam is the last thing you would expect to gush out from the suite Jaikishore Mosalikanti and his wife Padmavani Mosalikanti stayed in the capital city. But, instead of their native tongue Telugu, it is flawless Malayalam layered with an ignorable Telugu accent that catches your ears when you walk towards the Kuchipudi dancers’ room. While ushering us to his room Jaikishore instructs two of his students about the next class he would be conducting in the capital city in Malayalam. And you cannot but stop yourself from asking – Malayalam?
He smiles and says, “Don’t be fooled by the little Malayalam I blurt out to my students. I am far from being an expert in it. Since I have been teaching Kuchipudi at dancer Neena Prasad’s institute for the past few years, I have learnt some basic Malayalam to communicate with my students.”
Jaikishore and Padmavani embarked on a creative journey years ago, when they stumbled upon each other on a matrimonial site. Jaikishore puts their association in a pertinent way and says while he is the passive side of the partnership she brings out the much needed aggression and resolve in it.
Jaikishore’s father MS Rao was a noted violinist at his time and played for Kuchipudi exponent Vempati Chinna Satyam for years.
“Our family in Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, was thronging with barristers and lawyers until my father altered the tradition. He wanted to become an advocate but due to some mishap he couldn’t write the exams. He was pursuing violin as a hobby. So in order to buy a violin he came to Chennai. But the music connoisseurs in the city told him he has a good hand and should stay in the city,” says Jaikishore.
Rao became one of the most sought-after violinists in the Chennai film industry, thus making him a familiar name in the art circuit. Vempati, who came to know about him through his friends in the film industry, asked him to be a part of his orchestra team. Little Jaikishore, who used to visit his father at Vempati’s theatre was easily swooned by the art form.
“When I was about two or three I used to watch the dancers in Vempati’s troupe perform. I used to reprise the glimpses of what I have seen there for my mother to see. One day Shobha Naidu, a renowned kuchipudi dancer, saw my attempts to perform the dance. She put forward a word to Guruji to teach me dance,” recalls Jaikishore.
Vempati, who never took children under the age of ten as students, gave a concession to his violinist’s son and taught him the first lessons of Kuchipudi. At first, Jaikishore was swayed away by the attention he was scoring from the peers as he was the youngest of the lot. However, at the back of his mind he was never intending to take up dance as his profession.
“Guruji always took dancers with great personalities for his dance dramas. He wanted them to carry a role with elan. I was quite small for my age. Hence, it took him years to consider me as a dancer in his group performances. By 1990s he started giving me small-time roles such as cows, peacocks or a horse,” says Jaikishore.
It was in 1994 that he got a chance to follow his Guru on an American trip where he witnessed the overwhelming response from the audience.
“When Guru told me, no doctor or engineer would get a chance to experience the awe and respect an artist gets, it dawned on me that dance is what I should pursue and nothing else,” quips Jaikishore. However, his family comprising father and sister was dead against it. But he started choreographing for established dancers independently.
In 2002, his cousin found the match of Padmavani for him from a Telugu matrimonial site.
“Her profile came as a surprise because I had met her in another Vempati’s institute in Mumbai years ago when I went there to teach a few students. I couldn’t have asked for more as she suited my requirements perfectly. It turned out to be a match made in heaven,” Jaikishore says with a smile. And Padmavani takes over from there.
“I learnt Kuchipudi under Vempati for years but when I told my father that I wanted to be a dancer, he was not convinced. But when this proposal came everything fell into place. The only thing I felt was that Jaikishore was not ready to take his art forward. He was not confident enough to perform his own choreography on stage,” says Padmavani.
After their daughters were born Padmavani did her masters in Kuchipudi. By her insistence the couple started their own dance school, ‘Shivamohanam’, which was named after their two daughters. Jaikishore, who kept a laid-back attitude about dance until he met Padmavani, started taking it all seriously. After building a Kuchipudi institute that gained disciples from across the country, they have been globetrotting to spread the message of Kuchipudi around the world.
“We have 2-3 institutes in Russia, US and many other countries, where we have to visit once in a while to give the right training,” says Jaikishore. The couple does not let ego or arguments come in between them or their art.