A role model

As I sat talking to Shovana Narayan on her last visit to Vienna recently, she seemed to transform before my naked gaze into a deity with multiple arms.

I imagined one arm reach out to hold hands with husband Herbert, another stroke the head of son Ishan, third sign government files, fourth explain single hand gestures from the Kathak dance, fifth to say Happy New Year on the mobile, sixth to continue eating the dinner I served her and the seventh hand me her memoirs…Wow!

Drenched in admiration I was unable to make note of what the other arms were up to.

I have known Shovana for nearly three decades. We got married within a few months of each other. While many of us left what we were doing before we married, changed our family name and followed the husband to cook, clean and keep home tidy for the children that came, Shovana chose to do other things.

She kept her government job and danced professionally to flower into a bureaucrat, teacher and writer of Padmashri fame, and remained happily married. Above all she has never stopped laughing.

When she was pregnant with Ishan, in the absence of emails, I wanted to know if that happened by post. Often I teased Herbert to tell me what Shovana is like when she is annoyed.

“Does she ever get sad?”

“Come on…Of course she does. She is a human being after all,” was the reply of the quintessential diplomat. Perhaps before Durga was converted into a deity by fans and followers, the goddess was also a human being, I consoled myself.

Ishan is 21 years old and without regrets admits to this day that he cannot imagine his mother being anyone else except Shovana Narayan.

This is a great tribute actually to marriage, motherhood and to woman at a time when all three are forced to transform one hundred and eighty degrees in the face of all the exciting new challenges posed by society. While news from numerous other couples married around the same time is often grim with 60- year- old husbands, I am told, in bed with 20 year old chicks and middle- aged women groping for happiness in hairless toy boys while their children look for solace at Bars in Long Island Cocktails, the good news from Shovana’s home and hearth is most refreshing, and assuring.

How she did it all was something that neither she, nor Herbert was ever able to tell me in person. But that is no longer a grudge I hold against the couple, as it is all there in Meandering Pastures of Memories, Shovana’s memoirs.

Shovana attributes the success of her marriage mainly to Herbert’s accommodating and ego-less personality. 

The absence of undue male vanity and his pride in his wife’s achievements was visible at the Padmashri award ceremony she says when Herbert, Austrian ambassador, introduced himself at the Rashtrapati Bhawan as Mr.Shovana Narayan.

The bond that she shares with her son is based on always telling the truth and nothing but the truth, giving the child tremendous confidence in himself and in his parents whether they lived under one roof or across seven seas from each other at different times in their life and different careers.

It is not just her but every individual is multiple faceted, says the Kathak diva.