LIFE ENRICHMENT 5: BELGIAN LEARNING INDIAN DANCES

LIFE ENRICHMENT 5:

BELGIAN LEARNING INDIAN DANCES

BY P S SUNDAR

I first met Miet Bleyen (pronounced as Mith) on January 18, 2008, when I attended her classical dance presentation at St. Jude's Public School and Junior College, Kotagiri, on the invitation of St Jude's Chairman P P Dhanarajan who told me that she had come to stay with her host B Natarajan, another friend of mine, living next doors to St Jude's. 

It was the first time I saw a foreigner, Belgian in this case, performing Indian classical dances, Bharathanatyam and Kuchipudi, as also a Bollywood folk.  And, her husband Jan Du Chan gave necesary explantions to give value-addition to her performance.   This itself was sufficient reason for me to write an artcile on them which appeared in The New Indian Express on Jan 20, 2008 as under: 

This article helped Miet and Jan re-live their visit to and performance at Kotagiri and even on Feb 8, 2014, Jan wrote to me, "Re-reading it took me back to Kotagiri.  So, thank you for that". 

Interestingly, this article, among others, helped Miet gain a Flemish (Belgian) Government scholarship to visit India next year as she told me when she visited me in Coonoor on Feb 3, 2009.   This was how she looked in Indian salwar-kamizee in my photo:

By that time, her organisation, 'Apsara India' at her home town Gent in Belgium has become popular for teaching Indian classical dances as I documented in this article published in The New Indian Express on Feb 4, 2009:

And, she visited me again the next year -- July 28, 2010 to be precise. This time, she had come to learn Kathak from Pooja Gupta who was living in Wellington. This is the best aspect of Miet..she has been frequenting India since 1993 to learn the different dance forms.   In the bargain, she developed closer proximity with Indian culture.  She started buying Indian dress and jewellery, learn languages, respect ethnic tradition in the villages..she is practically a vegetarian enjoying sambar, rasam, idli and dosa as I documented in these two articles of mine published in The New Indian Express on July 29, 2010: 

These two snaps I took of her on that day show her depiction of Indian classical dance pose: 

Two days later (July 30, 2010), Natarajan hosted a lunch in honour of Miet and us at Wellington Gymkhana Club.  Miet came dressed in salwar again as these two photos show, Natarajan is in the second photo: 

On Aug 10, 2010, Miet hosted lunch at Taj Gateway Hotel, Coonoor, in honour of Natarajan, Pooja Gupta and us.  In her Indian slawar, she posed like this with Pooja Gupta at Gateway All Day (GAD) restaurant: 

I took these snaps of Pooja Gupta and Miet demonstrating Kathak poses on the lawns of Gateway Hotel:

My article on this appeared in The New Indian Express on Aug 11, 2010 as under:

We have experienced Miet's Indian-style in food during her dinners with us at our home. 

She visited us again with Natarajan this year -- on Jan 7, 2014.  That was when she told me that in 2013, she passed through an accident in Kolkata requiring her treatment and bed-rest for some weeks. 

Natarajan hosted lunch in our all our honour at Wellington Gymkhana Club on Jan 7, 2014.  This is Miet's pose wearing salwar I took then:

And at the lunch,  I snapped her with Natarajan as this:

The next day, Miet left for Gwahati, Assam, to learn Kathak from Pooja Gupta who now lives there and Sattriaya dance with another teacher.   She kept interacting with me periodically and these stand to establish the reality that she is an ardent, hard working admirer and learner of Indian classical dances and tradition.  "I teach whatever I learn here to my students back home in Belgium", she tells me. Something good for every patriotic Indian to feel happy about!