Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Kathak Queen Sitara Devi wanted to meet PM Narendra Modi


Kathak Queen Sitara Devi wanted to meet PM Narendra Modi, wrote a letter to the PM few weeks before her death


The last letter that Sitara Devi wrote was to Prime Minister Narendra Modi






Just a few weeks before she was admitted to the Cumballa Hill Hospital, dancing legend Sitara Devi in a recorded video interview had told IndyaNewz.com that she wanted to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sitara Devi was a great fan of Modi and hoped that Modi would help her get her dance academy moving. All her hopes were pinned on Modi. She even wrote a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested us to forward it to him, says Flynn Remedios, Editor of IndyaNewz.com. The letter was dictated by Sitara Devi to her daughter Kathak guru Jayanti Mala Mishra who penned it down in the presence of a couple of her students and handed it over to the Editor of IndyaNewz.com. That was probably the last letter that Sitara Devi would write. A copy of that letter still is in possession with IndyaNewz.com and is published below. READ THE LETTER HERE.

For the last 30-35 years Sitara Devi had been running from pillar to post to get a plot of land in Mumbai, sanctioned for a dance academy which she planned to set up. At her insistence about six months ago, on the 26th of March 2014,  IndyaNewz.com launched an online campaign on Facebook titled "Support Sitara Devi" (Facebook.com/support.sitara.devi), but like the dancing queen's efforts, the campaign fell on deaf ears. A very sad tribute to the fallen legend, the campaign did not even get  50 LIKES on their Faceboook page and was abandoned by the organisers.  Says Flynn Remedios, "We tried to popularize the cause, but there was no response.  We had to abandon it as there were no funds and even the media was not so supportive."



A scanned image of the letter can be found at the link below