Still Sultry Lavani

The Rs 200 per ticket wasn’t a big deterrent for the middle-aged men who turned up wearing safari suits and sporting thick black moustaches. We must admit that it made us look a little out of place. To avoid the public glare,we went and parked ourselves in an inconspicuous corner,ironically in the first row. The name of one of Maharashtra’s most famous Lavani artistes in the title – ‘Archana Sawant presents Lavani’ – was good enough to pull an eager crowd.

Host Kumar Patole’s barrage of one-liners,with tongue-in-cheek humour had the audience in splits. The first in the series had one of the members of Sawant’s troupe perform a hip-breaking Lavani called ‘Saanga Naa Mi Kashi Dishte’. She gyrated her hips to the tunes of the synthesizer,the dholak,tabla and electronic drums. While a male singer called Sunil,sang the song behind the curtains in a female voice ,an audience member whipped out a camcorder to record the number.

The grand build up for Sawant’s performance ensured that the crowds were not left bored and wanting by a string of witty jokes interspersed in the performances by Patole. In one instance when he was pulling the leg of the late Mughal emperor Shah Jahan by chiding him for building the Taj Mahal,Patole turned towards us and remarked,’Te Bagha aamche Chikne Shah Jahan pan hastaya’ (Oh look even our clean shaven Shah Jahan in the aisles is laughing). Of course the good natured humour didn’t prevent us from turning beetroot red with the crowd repeating their,whistle-clap-scream routine.

Sawant’s dancing style ,combined with an audience gone wild dancing and sending her flying kisses ,while she winked ,was a whole new experience. Sawant’s performed a prem-geet (love song),and more than one person remarked on her dancing prowess. .

The second half of the performance saw Sawant perform a rain song; hats off to her for singing and dancing at the same time. Someone sitting next to us almost went to the extent of jumping on stage with Sawant,for his five minutes of glory. The high point during the performance came when the entire troupe performed the number ‘Disla ga bai disla’ from V Shantaram’s film ‘Pinjra’. The fag end of the three hour long show saw Sawant perform the hugely popular ‘Chikni Chameli’. The audience,which had shown no signs of wearing out,sprang to their feet once again to repeat their routines. We on the other hand,exchanged one last polite smile with Sawant who blew a kiss at us,and trudged away.