It is all about Sita, the heroine of the epic Ramayana who offers immeasurable scope to delve into the character from time immemorial. Anita Ratnam’s “A Million Sitas” (18th show across three continents) balanced itself on the varied regional/pan Indian versions of Ramayana which were all based again on the Sanskrit original by sage Valmiki.
Adopting a Harikatha style of narrative technique spiced with song/verse by the supplementary artiste (Sharanya Krishnan), body movements (her dance), facial expressions, dramatic gestures, a few props in the form of motifs/puppets (courtesy Neeloy Sengupta), juicy commentary to engage the audience, Ratnam, an intellectual and innovative artiste, working on Indian history or mythology is known to set her viewers thinking. So was “A Million Sitas” where she played myriad roles – the narrator, commentator, dancer, not to talk of Sita, Ahalya, Mandodari, Shoorpanakha, Manthara. Delving into each of these characters, the machinations of their mind and resultant deeds, she finally questions the justice that was meted out to all these women at the end of it all. Whatever be the mode of conduct, women are bound to be judged from a male point of view which is acceptable to the rest of the society – so there is a Sita in every one of us, bearing the brunt of situational disasters.
Anita Ratnam
While this is the crux of the theatrical presentation, the manner in which Ratnam actually dealt with this is what makes the production unique. In the Harikatha style, she had a bard/singer in Krishnan who rendered a few Tyagaraja kritis like “Sitamma maa yamma”, (Vasantha raga) and “Sita kalyana vaibhogame” (Sankarabharanam) and keertan in Tamil and Hindi (Tulsidas, “Sri Ramachandra kripalu”), a tanam (Carnatic style), a tribal Tamil soothing lullaby! The songs gave the melodic touch to the narration and mime, interspersed with soundless dance movements; soundless because the artiste was barefooted with no anklet bells to jingle.
Multiple motifs
Switching back and forth in narrating the pivotal events in Sita’s life where the other four women play an indirect role, Ratnam roped in a lot of elements from contemporary drama like motifs to identify Ram and Ravan; the use of a fairly lengthy gossamer cloth that acts as a veil in delineating Ahalya’s character, the use of smaller props like a basket bowl, small brass bowls, pictures/painting of Tanjore Rama Pattabhishekam scene (coronation) and a Raja Ravi Varma’s portrait of a forlorn Sita to drive certain truths home from the 21st century viewpoint. If she jibed at Manthara’s vile connivance as present day political astuteness, she hammered in Ahalya’s curse of being turned into a stone as nothing worse than ‘to live like a stone with a stone (stony husband)’. She came out her best when she expressed the tempted yet guilty and frightened dilemma of Ahalya as Indra approaches her. The sound of morsing and percussion with an aesthetically designed headgear for the dancer went well with the emergence of Shoorpanakha. The artiste here went on to narrate the disaster wrecked by two egoistic men (Ram and Ravan) through war which left in its trail wailing widows and mourning mothers. This could verily be the penultimate comment instead of being inserted between Shoorpanakha’s maiming and Ravana’s reaction! Sita walking with a gossamer veil like a queen to ‘tanam’ in the background, post war towards a seemingly happy life ahead as Rama is coronated the king with herself as the queen was well brought out. The soliloquy which questions the plight of all the women involved in this tragic war ends with the ironic song “Sita Kalyana Vaibhogame” which Ratnam interprets as a misplaced song for Sita never really enjoyed her life after she was married to Rama! This song usually does the round at all auspicious occasions in many a south Indian household involving girls and women, hence the pun! What Ratnam missed was the point that the coronation picture (Rama Pattabhishekam) which adorns every household in the south, is not about Sita’s expression in as much as the picture in total carries the connotation of a unified family of brothers, a vastu balancer since it contains pictures of other Gods and so on. The presentation was part of the XXVII Film Congress at the India International Centre.
