Never the one to mince her words, noted Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam dancer and activist Mallika Sarabhai offers a pithy response to an oft-asked question. Had Gandhi been alive today, what would he make of his country? "He would have been heartbroken, but he would have found strategies of bringing people together," she says, referring to the pragmatist in him.

This and several other probing questions have surfaced in her imagined conversations with the Mahatma, with whom her family has shared a deep connect. And it is this exchange that finds its way into her dance theatre piece, Svakranti: The Revolution Within, which she performed in Mumbai at the National Centre for Performing Arts' Pravaha Dance Festival yesterday.