It was August 2021, the world still reeling under the new waves of the pandemic that had grounded and left most of us more isolated than ever. I had not visited my family back in India for nearly one and a half years and even within Singapore had limited opportunities to catch up with friends owing to Covid-restrictions. So, when the opportunity to perform my first Odissi recital came around, I did not hesitate in sending the invitation over to my girlfriends. In a group comprising women from Italy, Kazakhstan, the Philippines and Vietnam, the tickets were purchased within minutes. Mercifully, my friends are kind cheerleaders and overlooked my missteps.
I began my journey as an Odissi student in 2019 at a studio in Singapore. Every time I’ve mentioned this to someone, it intrigues or surprises them. The foreigners are curious to hear more, especially since Bharatanatyam and Kathak are more popular and widespread across the globe. My Indian peers, on the other hand, try to connect the dots. Odissi is one of the major classical dance art forms that originates from eastern India. I am neither from that part of the country, nor do I have any past experiences in learning the dance form. Hence, for most of my fellow Indians—locals and expats—in Singapore, it is a new aspect of my Indianness that they would not associate with me. Odissi intrigues them, not simply as a dance form, but as an opportunity to know India better.
Growing up in India, my idea of being an Indian was summed up as an accident of birth. My name, place of birth, religion, nationality were all aspects of my identity in which I didn’t have much say. When I moved to Singapore in 2015, I noticed that others’ perceptions of me were largely based on stereotypes. I was assumed to be Indian because I ‘looked’ Indian, enjoyed Indian food, could speak Hindi (I was often mistakenly asked, “do you speak Hindu?”) and watched Shah Rukh Khan movies. At first glance, a Chinese Singaporean taxi driver would ask me if I was from North or South India. Upon my answering North, the conversation would dive into Delhi, Hindi cinema, pollution, women’s safety and food. My Indian identity thus could be easily merged with countless other Indians that the driver had seen or met in Singapore.
This stereotype largely stems from a blanket perception of what being an Indian means, due to both a lack of knowledge and representation. Despite belonging to a country with over 1.3 billion people, 700 indigenous tribal groups and over 19,500 mother tongues (including dialects) [1], who I am as an Indian is often derived from basic, visible identifiers.
Odissi has offered me a way to break this monolithic representation and explore my Indian identity in ways that no one, including me, could have anticipated. The dance form became a way to ascertain my Indianness to myself, fellow Singaporeans and even the non-resident Indians in my circles.
I stepped into my first Odissi dance class, knowing nothing beyond the address of the studio, and yet the enunciation of the ukutas (phrases that are used in combination with rhythm) was all that I needed to begin my journey. There were no stereotypical assumptions about my identity or expectations that I could dance well just because I was Indian. Like other students, I developed a love-hate relationship with some of the steps while practising the chauka and tribhangi positions, our teacher often asking us to hold still as our thighs gave up in pain. I struggled doing the bhramaris (pirouettes) or uttohlittahs (balances on one-leg) and was amazed at how my body could learn to do them at the same time. More importantly, though, Odissi offered me a chance to venture into a known unknown—the India I only knew from a distance.
Essayist Rebecca Solnit observes that we think about ‘growing up’ “as though we were trees, as though altitude was all that there was to be gained, but so much of the process is growing whole as the fragments are gathered, the patterns found”. Through lesson after lesson, and subsequent interactions about Odissi, I find new patterns that help me navigate my Indianness more authentically in my current country of residence.
Learning Odissi in Singapore has helped me renounce the exclusionary idea of art belonging to a single place and helped me work towards deepening my Indian roots. Despite Odissi’s origins within the Indian shores, it has found its students, patrons and disciples across the globe. At the dance studio, my Filipino classmate enthrals me with his firm grasp of the Battu footwork, while my Chinese Singaporean classmate showcases her curiosity to learn poems from Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda as a full-time music student. The multiculturalism and diversity of Singapore is clearly visible in the dance studio, and no one feels alien to it. At the same time, as an Indian, I feel encouraged to learn more about Odissi and share its history with those around me.
My journey with this dance form has also led me to ask deeper questions of what makes one an Indian, beyond their name and place of birth. The intersection of my North Indian upbringing with Eastern Indian heritage offers a refreshing perspective, allowing me to explore my Indianness in ways I had not earlier.
I straighten my back more regularly as my dance teacher’s instructions come to mind. I sing to ‘“Shankara Pallavi’” and ‘“Manglacharan’” absent-mindedly. I am in awe of renowned Odissi dancer Madhavi Mudgal’s performances. I regularly follow other Odissi dancers on social media and am drawn to their dedication to this performative art. Somehow, I feel more Indian today than I did before I began learning this dance.
After watching my performance, my Kazakh friend decided to give Odissi a try. The thought left me gleaming with joy—I had passed on my Indianness in ways that transcended borders and nationalistic gatekeeping. In recent times, the rise of right-wing Hindutva politics in India has included the aggressive promotion of the idea of the Hindu Rashtra, associating one’s Indian identity with being upper-caste Hindu. Singapore became home for me by virtue of its academic and professional offerings, but when it offered Odissi to me, it turned into a home that does not question my Indianness. I no longer feel the need to justify my unique and evolving Indian identity.
Mariyam Haider is a Singapore-based researcher-writer and spoken word artist publishing poetry, non-fiction and personal essays on feminism, culture and social justice. Her work has appeared in Scroll, Asian Review of Books, Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy, Livemint and Mekong Review, among others. Mariyam produces and hosts the Main Bhi Muslim podcast, which offers space to people from the Indian Muslim community to share their diverse experiences. She was the researcher for former Financial Times journalist James Crabtree’s Billionaire Raj (2018) and science journalist Angela Saini’s The Patriarchs (2023).
[1] According to India’s 2011 Census, the raw data of mother tongue names recorded from all respondents was 19,569, prior to “linguistic scrutiny, edit and rationalisation”, after which 1369 were categorised as rationalised mother tongues, while 1474 were treated as ‘unclassified’.
