Clay feet

As a dancer, I know my feet from the inside: I can move on only toe mounds or heels. I know how to make music with them. But my feet, from the outside, are not me. They are my mother's

(This is the second in a new series I’m writing about my body, in continuation with the essay on breasts that I wrote for Immortal For a Moment by Natasha Badhwar. I realise that as a dancer I have a hyper-awareness of my body, gifted to me partly by the temple sculptures that inspire the style of Odissi I practice, and partly by the way this knowledge interacts with my world and my memories. The essays from this series explore the crossroads between dance, culture and memory — which is my favourite place to rest, and which was the point of this substack after all.)

A dancer’s feet always have too many stories to tell.

One of the favourite things for photographers to do at dance recitals, is photograph the dancer’s feet. As if those two parts of the body are a face of their own — different arrangements of their parts expressing different emotions. Dancers however, rarely notice their feet in that way. We mostly feel them from inside. We are intensely connected to them, but by focussing really hard on them, what we really do, is in a way, transcend them. Sometimes becoming deeply focussed on something creates an opposite effect: you go past it. By remembering some things very hard, you are finally free to forget them.

Much before I became a dancer though, my sister, who studied art at college, took me to an exhibition of her classmates’ works. One artist’s work stood out for me, so much so, that even today, almost three decades later, I often find myself thinking about it. His sculptures were life-size, human, and had one defining quirk: really, really large feet. Even while face-to-face with them, it seemed as if you were looking at them from the ground up, the bodies foreshortened comically against giant feet. But these were no grotesque Picassoesque figures. There was a beautiful harmony in those terracotta clay bodies, a beautiful peace on their faces; I wanted to keep looking at them.

My son is only nine, but his shoe size is only two sizes smaller than mine. When we go sneaker-shopping, he looks comical in new shoes: a lanky, baby-faced, awkward, gentle body in adult feet. He is growing like a reed and has the most terrible sense of balance in the world. I look at him in the shoe shop and I am reminded of the sculptures I saw as a girl. Maybe that’s why we need big feet; they act as counterbalance for our sky-reaching minds and bodies; to have giant feet means to have stability.

Do the tallest trees have the most spread-out roots? I am not sure. I would not be surprised if they did.

For me, my feet are the most secret part of me. If my stomach is where my unprocessed feelings go to die - a graveyard, almost - my feet are where my needs reside like a secret. I touch them sparingly. They’ve been a total no-go zone for lovers. Pedicurists are wildly amused by how much I squirm. My feet propel me intensely, and I try my best to keep my gaze averted from them.

As a dancer, I know my feet from the inside: I know all the parts they comprise of, I know how to isolate these parts and manoeuvre them. I can move on only toe mounds or heels. I know how to make music with them, I know how to stamp them hard into the ground and draw up energy from the floor like a bucket from a well. I know how to lift a foot into the air and still live, have balance, not keel over.

But my feet, from the outside, are not me. They are my mother’s. The same pronounced arch, the same lanky toes, the first one taller than the big toe. The same slender length, the same thin skin, the same curvature of the nails. These are the feet that I have seen from the doorway of her room, propped up on a bolster cushion, as she lay collapsed on her bed at the end of the day, one forearm covering her eyes, her facial features falling sideways like a dead person’s. My mother’s feet are the living embodiment of her fatigue. Both physical and existential. “Mere panje dabaa de,” is all she ever said when I asked her at such moments, “Can I do something for you, Mumma?”. No matter how long I pressed them, they were still tired.

In one of our sessions, my therapist once told me that children partake of their mother’s emotions in the womb. It’s like saying, “Here, let me take this from you. So you can be lighter. So that you can connect with me.” I didn’t just take my mother’s emotions, I took her feet too. They ache all the time. I cannot get myself to say to anyone, “mere panje dabaa de.”

And so, I am a relentless mover. I don’t sit for long. Getting cosy in a chair for hours is like a small death for me. My feet are always on the move. When I was younger, I drove almost a hundred kilometres in a day, packing in several visits across town. As a dancer I have traversed hundreds of kilometres within the space of the classroom itself. It’s ironic, how much I move my feet in order to not notice them.

A few years ago I discovered that I have a congenital issue with my hip, and haven’t been able to dance as much as I used to. For the last two years, pain has restricted my movements immensely. I have been forced to resort to grounding activities like meditation, yoga, somatic experiencing and breathwork. I have been advised to not dance too often, move too fast or exercise too much — all the things I tend to do in order to outrun my thoughts.

Slowing down these last few years has forced me to look at my feet. To look at my needs as well. To crave stability. To want to belong. To have connection. To enjoy rest.

Of late I have begun practicing a style of yoga that is very focussed on the feet. If I have to dance again, I must learn to stand on my feet properly, is what the doctor prescribed. Now I am learning to discover these feet again; the ‘tripod’ underneath the sole that I need to keep balanced, the outer edge that corresponds with the outer edge of my body. The top and the bottom, which are hooked to my body's front and back. I take my mind to my feet at random moments during my day: standing in the kitchen, walking home from the lift, pushing my son on his cycle. Lying in bed at the end of the day, the feet of my mother propped up on a bolster in front of me.

This slows me down. Gives me more pleasure than Raj Kumar got while staring at Meena Kumari’s feet in Pakeezah. It’s a relief to not keep my needs a secret from me. It's also a relief to reckon with the simple fact that I am not just turning into my mother; I am my mother. There’s no shame in it.

I think again, about the sculptures I saw as a young girl. Sometimes, on good days, I imagine my slender feet becoming heavy, grounded, growing roots like them. They feel mountainous and solid. Even if for a short while, I feel as peaceful as those clay people did, so sure of receiving just what I need.

(This essay was first written in response to Farjad Nabi’s prompt, “what would your feet say to you if they could talk?”, for a precious writer’s cohort I discovered during Natasha Badhwar’s Memoir Writing workshop. )