The logic of Mishra chapu Thalam:

One must leave the night behind to embrace a glorious morning, but not its memories. Perhaps the same administers to all the dance students. Unlike our school and college lessons, one need not remember all the chapters studied in the previous grades to move on to the next level. In dance, to learn a new item, one has to imperatively remember and master the formerly known dance lessons. As soon as I finished learning all the fundamental and essential adavu, I was excited to start my first dance of life. I prayed to Lord Natarajan that day, hoping for better memory and strength to learn the dance. 

The dance was Ganesha shloka dedicated to the Lord Ganapathi, the song, and the dance was composed and choreographed by My Guru Smt. Gayathri Keshavan by extracting the lines from Ganapathi Puranam In Raga Malika and set to Mishra chapu Thalam. My Guru described to me that Mishra chapu is one of the classifications of Nadai ( Rhythmic patterns) with seven counts. The song I was about to learn is set to Tha ki ta the ka di mi, where each syllable corresponds to one hit; hence, the total number of beats here is 7. 

 The technique of dividing the seven beats captured my attention. Of all the dances I have learned set to Mishra chapu Thalam, I have always realized that 7 beats are taken as the combination of 3+4 beats or the other way around 4+3 beats. I was utterly clueless, wondering why these 7 beats in dance are always taken as 3+4 or 4+3? Instead, why not the combinations of (6+1) or (1+6) and (5+2) or (2+5)? I was sure I would find an answer to this question one marvellous day.

When life granted me the most significant opportunity to teach mathematics to the young minds of this country, I made sure to research and prepare sufficient enough to answer all the possible queries that any student would ask during the classes. "The divisibility rules" was the topic of discussion, which I was supposed to deliver to the group of engineering students. I came up with a new methodology to teach students by explaining the concept of prime factorization first,  followed by the idea of the divisibility rule. As I preferred to describe how the number 4 can be written in its prime factorization form as 2*2= 4, and 6 as 2*3 and 8 as 2*2*2. After a while, I encountered a question from the student sitting at the right corner of the class  "sir, what is the prime fractionation of number 7?" 

The question was followed by a brief silence in the classroom as everyone waited for my answer. "It is 7 *1. "was the answer by one of the students, who volunteered to answer. In an obvious way, for which my reply was, "No, it's wrong. " The number 7 cannot be written as 7*1 in its prime factorization form as 1 is neither a prime nor a composite number." Many students struggle with the divisibility rule for 7 because of its nature. But if you are a student of Bharata Natyam, it's easy to remember. The number 7 is a combination of 3+4, and the prime factorization of 3 doesn't exist, and the prime factorization of 4 can be written as 2*2. Vedic Mathematics defines the divisibility rule for number 7 as "Adding 3 times the last digit to 2 times the rest gives a multiple of 7". This clearly indicates we need 2's and 3's to perform the operation on the number, which is multiple of 7. In my mind, this '2' will always be a part of 4(2*2 = 4), and the rest is 3. All put together (7 = 3+ 2*2), I found the answer in my own way why 7 is still the combination 3 and 4 in dance. When I heard back from many students that my logic helped them to solve the question in the exam, All I could do was to thank Lord  Ganapathi and my Guru in my heart.