As Aditi Rao Hydari’s walk from Heeramandi song Saiyaan Hatto Jaao goes viral, we ask kathak experts if it’s actually the ‘gaj gamini’

What is ‘gaj gamini/gat’?

 

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Shinjini Kulkarni, granddaughter of the Kathak Maestro Pt. Birju Maharaj, throws light on the ‘gaj gat’. She says that a ‘gat’ imitates the walk of an animal, and an elephant’s sway is depicted through this gat. “This sway doesn’t come from the hips, but from the entire body, especially the torso mimicking an elephant’s sway,” the Kathak exponent tells indianexpress.com

“When I watched Heeramandi, I was personally able to connect this step with the one in the song ‘Mohe Panghat Pe’ from Mughal E Azam wherein Madhubala walks away from Dilip Kumar. The iconic step was choreographed by my great grandfather Pt. Lacchu Maharaj,” she recalls.

“In my humble opinion, Sanjay Leela Bhansali could have been inspired by the song or that step. I would, however, refrain from interpreting it as the ‘gaj gat’.

Padma Shri awardee Shovana Narayan talks about ‘gaj ki chaal’ as one of the 10 categories mentioned in the Abhinay Darpan, as part of Kathak’s repertoire. The elephant’s sway finds application in Kathak’s ‘nav ki gat’ (rowing the boat) as well, she says.

The sway of the hips has been one of the most sensuous dance steps, and so many songs and poems have been written alluding to the swaying of a woman’s hips.

Chaturvedi says, “This walk is a sensuous titillating bollywood walk as most bollywood dances are. In fact the similar walk was used for Madhuri Dixit in Devdas.”

On Richa Chadha’s sequence

 

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Shinjini says, “Richa’s song had the most number of hastaks, as she performed some tukdas in the song. The songs have been performed by some of my very close and talented colleagues who are great dancers. But it must be noted that when choreographing a film song, they aren’t looking for factual accuracy.”

“Given the fact that she’s not a trained Kathak dancer and had to pick up the song in a week’s time, there’s only so much that she could possibly be doing. One can take it as a indication of what Kathak could look like, but if you were to define the dance form as such, I don’t think that this is the Bible for it,” remarks the dancer.

In general, there is a bigger discourse on how much Kathak did Tawaifs actually do, and has that been shown with sufficient accuracy, Shinjini doubts. I wouldn’t suggest watching Heeramandi to really understand the history of Tawaifs or Kathak, she concludes.