User:Pectore/Mitha

Indu Mitha (1929 - ) is a Pakistani exponent of Bharatnatyam and one of only two in the nation (the other being Sheena Kermani). She is also a faculty member at the Rawalpindi campus of the National College of the Arts.

Personal life
Indu Mitha was born Indu Chatterjee to a Bengali Christian family in 1929. Her father, Gyanesh Chandra Chatterji, was a professor of philosophy and president of the Government Colelge in Lahore, which was where Mitha grew up. Her family moved to Delhi from Lahore during the Partition of India. In Delhi, she learned Bharatanatyam from Vijay Raghava Rao and Shrimati Lalita.

In 1951, she married Captain Aboobaker Osman Mitha, a Mumbai Memon against the wishes of her family, and moved back to Pakistan. Their daughter Tehreema Mitha is an accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer.

Career
Under the banner of Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization, Pakistan began regarding many of the aarts, as haraam. Surprisingly, it was during this time, that Mitha began teaching Bharatnatyam in Lahore. Her first position was at the Lahore Grammar school, where she became a celebrated dance teacher. Her students and her were even able to put on a full-on performance at the end of her first teaching sojourn.

Her early performances occurred were at private all-women parties, military functions, and Red Cross charity shows or in front of the All Pakistan Women's Association. She now does one show a year for private audiences, mostly all-women groups, due to the heightened atmosphere linked to the rise of the Taliban

Adaptations
To suit Pakistani "cultural" norms, Mitha has altered the performance and style of the Bharatnatyam she teaches. She has composed Bharatnatyam songs in Urdu, due to her lack of udnerstanding of Tamil, Telugu or Sanskrit, the three languages Bharatnatyam songs are composed in.