The day one of my biggest dreams came true. (this is gonna be long so bare with me).

Let me back up a bit. My whole life I’ve been extremely blessed. I have parents who love me immeasurably, sisters who are my best friends, and was raised by a community that taught me to be the best version of myself. One of my greatest blessings in this life has been to learn the ancient Indian classical dance styles of Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi from one of the most dedicated, talented and inspirational people on earth. Growing up so far away from home, there is always the fear that we’ll lose our Indian roots. But I’m happy to say through the efforts of my parents, guru, and community alike, I am closer to my roots than I could ever think was possible.

For those who don’t know, an arangetram or rangapravesam, is meant to be a classical dancer’s first solo performance, after his or her guru deems them ready. In the United States, this has no morphed into a huge industry, where kids learn dance randomly for a few years, and once they are about to start college, put together a performance, and call it a “dance graduation”. The whole purpose of what an arangetram/rangapravesam means has totally been lost in translation. I have a lot to say about that but this isn’t the post for that.

Anyway what better place to start the story of how I went on this crazy journey of completing my rangapravesam than at the beginning. I started learning dance from Sandhya Aunty when I was 5 years old, and let me tell you I did not like it. I went because my mom made me go, and my teacher scared the living daylights out of me. I’m pretty sure I cried every class I went to. For most of my childhood, even through high school, dance wasn’t my favorite thing. I liked learning, but I saw class as more of a social gathering to see my friends than as a place I wanted to learn. I was always lazy to practice, hanging out with friends seemed more important, and I didn’t feel like I was good enough in any way to do anything with my knowledge of dance. As I grew, at first I wanted to do my Rangapravesam just for a chance to get to perform for a long period of time. The more I grew and became confident in myself and in my dance, the more I saw my peers completing theirs and seeing how proud they were of themselves, made me want the same for myself. My favorite part about going to arangetrams or rangapravesams was watching how these dancers, my peers who I grew up with watching and performing with blossomed from awkward little kids to beautiful and graceful performers, and that what I craved for myself.

One of the biggest things I learned through this process was trust. My parents, sisters and I put our full trust and faith in our teacher and like she has done our entire lives, she knew what was best and therefore we came out of the whole experience with results beyond our wildest dreams. I think I mentioned before most people who complete their arangetram or rangapravesam do so right after high school. When I was a graduating senior and all my friends were training for theirs and I was not, I was so bummed that I was not along there with them. While my teacher did think we were ready at the time, I am so glad we waited. I felt more worthy as a dancer because of it and I was more mature to appreciate the process more.

So normally when someone does a program like this, it’s by themselves. Occassionally you’ll find two people who will do theirs together, but three is pretty uncommon. When the idea of us doing our rangapravesam first came up, only my older sister Sriya and I were going to do it. But after talking to our guru, she forced our little sister Srivi to do it too. Best. Decision. Ever. We’re pretty unique and don’t do things “normally” so of course we had to make it more memorable. What could be more memorable than 3 sisters sharing the stage together for 3 hours?