I love being in singing classes at her school. One day I happened to be in one of those classes. They were sitting in a circle. Didi held the ladoos in her left hand. Made a trunk mudra with her right hand and the trunk would come to get the ladoos. She also sat with one leg hanging and another leg folded under. She explained this many times to get the children going. It was so beautiful!
Shree Vakratunda mahakaya koti soorya samaprabha,
nirvighnam kurumedeva shubha karyeshu sarvada
O lord with the twisted trunk, with the effulgence of a billion suns, always remove the obstacles when I am on an auspicious undertaking.
When she came to nirvighnam she fisted both her hands, crossed them and brought it down with a lot of emotions. Lakshmi was sitting next to me and wanted to know what that was. I did not know. I was doing it mechanically. I asked her to wait till one round of the song was over. Promptly she got down went and showed didi the action with that that same determined eye movement she had seen and asked her what that meant.
That prompted me to come home and google for those lines and what they meant. The school also got us to sing and make mudras for all these songs in the next parent meeting we had. That was a beautiful part of the meeting.
Watching many performances has helped. She has begun noticing that it is a language. Not only that, she has begun watching sculptures more carefully.
We went to her pediatrician's place yesterday. They had a giant Ganesh where he was picking ladoos with his trunk from his hand. Her pediatrician's wife is a kathak dancer. His daughter is doing her masters in dance from (bharatanatyam) Kalakshetra in Chennai. She started singing this song sitting next to the Ganesh. Suddenly she noticed that his hands are not folded in the mudra that she is doing. Then the doc's wife explained to her that she was making the trunk with her hand in sign language.
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