Some rituals never seen before

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The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (INGCA) is a veritable living theatre with simultaneous performances in several open air and covered spaces all day long. The festival of Mahabharata, Jaya Utsav, which opened on February 10, and will conclude on March 10, is a feast that scholarship provides once in a while. Besides the performing arts there are rituals never seen before in performance. For instance the Aravan Festival celebrated by the transgender community of Tamil Nadu, their marriage to Aravan, the son of Arjun and Kanniga (Ulipi)who is ceremoniously killed the next morning leaving the transgender widowed.
It was prophesied that only the killing of perfect male would ensure a Pandav victory in the Kurukshetra war. Not finding one amongst themselves, the community appealed to Aravan who agreed laying down three conditions; he will be married before the sacrifice, he will die a hero’s death and that he will be able to watch the 18 days war. Since no one agreed to give their daughter to be widowed, Krishna agrees to marry Aravan. The community travels from Koovagam to Panghaladi where Aravan was sacrificed. They erect a pole on the ground. On the 13th day, dressed as brides they go to temple where the priests marry them to Aravan. Many males also join the transgender and transvestites in the ritual. After a night of celebration, the next morning the idol of Aravan is taken out in procession to much clapping and dancing, before being ceremoniously beheaded. The Aravanis then ritually break their bangles and wear white saris all the while mourning the loss of their husband Aravan. It is quite a sight seeing a bunch of transgender sitting under a tree all dressed in white saris.
Whereas women’s roles are played by men in many folk performances, in the Garud Vyooh by the Gharwali people of Uttarakhand not only was one of the main singer narrators a woman, but Kunti in the mourning procession for Karan’s death was also a woman. This is part of the Pandav Leela tradition where the local bards sing stories from the Mahabharata pertaining to the many battle formations of vyuhs or vyoohs learnt by the Gharwalis during the sojourn of the Pandavs in western Uttarakhand. Krishna forms the Garudvyuh for the Pandavs. When Ashwathama asks Karan to mount him in his arrow so that Ashwathama can admit his poison into Arjun and kill him, Karan refuses to do something so ignoble. Shortly after that when the wheel of his chariot is stuck in the mud, Karan is killed by Arjun. In an open air arena theatre, the warriors dressed in red for the Pandavs and blue for the Kauravs go round and round in a circle mocking war in right earnest whilst a motley army of soldiers fight in the centre of the stage. The Gatka, or the martial arts of the Sikh warrior’s who were proficient in hand to hand combat with the sword and the staff or “lathi” is part of the Shastra Vidya which belongs to the Vedic tradition, in which Krishna had mastery over all sixteen principles. Descriptions of Krishna feats on the battle field abound in the Mahabharata. Impetus was given to Gatka by the Sikh Gurus Hargobind and Gobind Singh. Today it is the preserve of the Nihang sect, which is proficient at the art form as was evident at the performance in which both men and women took part; the women wielding the sword and lathi in combat with the men in equal measure. The actual stage performances begin at 6.30 each evening. The two I caught was a Therukoothu performance of the Keechak Vatham and a Bhaona play, Ghatotkacha Badh. The former is a folk theatre form from Tamil Nadu and is performed during the Draupadi Amman festival. In the thirteenth year of the Pandav exile, when Bhim is employed as a cook in King Virats kingdom and Draupadi as a maid to the Queen, Bhima saves Draupadi from the lusting Keechak, the queen’s brother.
Bhima, disguised as a fine lady, meets Keechak who tries to flirt with him. There is plenty of action towards the end as the Kathakali-style –skirt-clad men chase
each other across the stage and down below the apron. The slaughter of Keechak by
Bhim does not have the high drama associated with the same act in Kathakali. The
enactment is full of fun and jokes with contemporary gossip and comments thrown in by
the joker or vidhushak and the narrator who introduces the cast. The dialogues also vary
from the script according to the wit of the performer. The actor playing Keechak is V.
Dakshinamoorthy one of leading players of the tradition.

The Bhaona performance of GHATOTKACH VADHAM by the Sri Sri Beloguri Sattra,
Narayanpuri, Lakhimpur, Assam started off very well. The drumming was spellbinding.
In their dramatic involvement with their art, the drummers were reminiscent of the
Manipuri drummers, except that the Bhaona drummers have more delicate movements.
A female impersonator comes and performs a dance that appears a cross between kathak
and bharatnatyam; he parleys with the singer about the play and finally joins the orchestra
or the BAYAN.

Belonging to the tradition of vernacular drama in the ‘brajbuli’, an artificial language
created by Sankaradeva (1449-1568) in place of the difficult Sanskrit, the bhaona is

inspired by ‘oja-palli’ and ‘dhuliya’ along with Sanskrit aesthetics and has Hindu sacred
texts for its theme. Performed inside the sattra the bhaona once considered a ritual and an
act of piety by the orthodox neo-Vaishanava circle, is today a performance form for the
proscenium stage. The first scene of Ghatotkach Vadham where the protagonist meets his
mother Hidimba the forest demon wife of Bhima to bid her farewell before his departure
for Kurukshetra is full of pathos as Hidimba knows she is sending her son to die.

The play becomes pure commercial company theater with the entry of the Pandavs in
their glittering attire and rhetoric speech, where they plan their war strategy with Krishna.
Ghatotkach strikes terror amongst the Kaurav army and is finally killed by Karan who
is forced to use the Agniban (fire arrow) meant to kill Arjun. The comments from the
orchestra are also reduced in this new and modern form.

Besides several other performances, the exhibitions mounted alongside, the daily film
shows, literary evening with persons in the know, master craftsmen at work are some
of the highlights of this extraordinary exploration of the greatest book of all times of
which it is said ‘what is there in the world is in the Mahabharata, and what is not in the
Mahabharata does not exist.’.

JANAM’CHAR RANG. The Jan Natya Manch (JANAM) best known for its agit prop
street theatre, presented a delicate nuanced play CHAR RANG on the well equipped
proscenium stage at their Muktadhara auditorium off Gol Dakkhana. Sudhanva
Deshpande and Brajesh have adapted the play from Rabindranath Tagore’s novella
Chaturang which is a tale of an old fashioned family living in times of change and how
it affects some members of a family leaving the others untouched. The play takes off
from the feminine aspect of the story where weak women suffer under pressure from the
patriarchal family, and attempts to the link it to the life of women today.

The action shifts between reality depicted by actors and fiction by beautifully designed
rod puppets by animator Shaaz Ahmed manipulated by member of the cast. In the reality
sections that occur in the classroom coffeehouse/canteen and the metro, there is a lady
professor (a subdued and intense portrayal by Jyoti Roy) who is a good teacher and a
good daughter until the time she decides to marry a man who belongs to a lower caste.
The other weave of the fabric is the reference to a soothsayer/godman/ operator (a subtle
performance by Brajesh) who manages to seduce the minds of some students with tricks
they come to rely upon.
The charms of this play in the underplaying of the proselytizing aspects which writer/
director Sudhanva Deshpande does with finesse. By placing a mysterious glass painting
which alters shapes and colours as it reacts to the proceedings interconnecting the two-
the story so wonderfully told by the rod puppets and a narrator and the cast of realistic
characters – Sudhanva creates imaginative theatre.

From Kavita Nagpal