I am used to calumny, which I fold and sink into my mental bathtub, says Mallika Sarabhai

Mallika Sarabhai, a versatile Indian artist, discusses her experience writing a book during COVID-19 and her role as Chancellor of Kerala Kalamandalam.

Mallika Sarabhai is one of India’s more versatile women. She has been a dancer and choreographer, actor in films and theatre, columnist and activist.

During COVID-19 she found out that she also enjoyed the process of writing a book. Free Fall: My Experiment with Life was written when her Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad had to be shut for the first time. “Publishers had been asking me to write an autobiography for a long time, and I thought COVID was the right time,” Ms. Sarabhai told The Hindu during the Kerala Literature Festival, where she is a speaker. “And I loved writing the book. I have written columns for some 25 years. Now I am toying with the idea of writing fiction.”

Ms. Sarabhai at the moment is focused on taking Kerala Kalamandalam forward. She was appointed as its Chancellor a year ago by the Kerala government. Recently, there has been a controversy about her remuneration, but she said she was not bothered by it.

“I am used to controversies, I am used to lies, I am used to nonsense,” she said. “When I began my career, I got a bad review, which said why someone as beautiful as Mallika Sarabhai wasted her time dancing and that she should leave dancing and go to films. I turned that review – which appeared in a newspaper – into a boat and sank it into my bathtub. Even today, when people write calumny about me, I fold it and sink it into my mental bathtub.”

She said she was happy that she was welcomed with open arms by the students and the faculty of Kalamandalam. “Of the many things I have wanted in life to do, education and going into a university was never in my dreams,” she said. “I have lived with the thought of Kalamandalam always, from as early as 1979, when I had just started dancing. My mother [Mrinalini Sarabhai] was asked by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was the External Affairs Minister, to head a delegation to China, which we had been at war with for 24 years. A part of the delegation was from Kalamandalam, including Gopi and Raman Kutti Nair.”

When the offer to become the Chancellor of Kalamandalam came, she said she was keen. “I saw the challenge in bringing an institution back to an international standard,” she said. “And I also wanted to experience the joy of working in Kerala.”