Ellaiamman Kovil Temple is the centre of attention at Besant Nagar. Writers, artistes, fishermen and children have huddled in front of the temple to listen to a Panchavadyam troupe. The percussionists lunge forward and step back as they strike their heavy chendais hard.
The procession progresses to the Dindigul Thalapakatti Restaurant on the side of the beach. The waiters peep out to see where the noise is coming from, while a few evening joggers click pictures of the group.
The procession continues back to the temple through a long-winded route that snakes its way around the Urur Kuppam. The residents of the village smile at the group. There is an air of the familiarity: after all, this is the third year of the vizha. They are used to their village teeming with festivities, colours and sounds during this time of the year. It’s almost like a carnival.
Singer T.M. Krishna, activist Nityanand Jayaraman and other volunteers, along with the chieftans of the kuppam, are busy setting up the stage and art installations. Behind the stage, musician Sangeetha Sivakumar preps the artistes with the programme schedules of the day.
Children of the Olcott Memorial Higher Secondary School have exhibited clay figurines. An old, dilapidated scooter, decorated with small idols and sculptures made of coconut shells has also been turned into an installation.
Veronica, an Urur volunteer, clears her throat and taps the mike to announce the first programme of the evening.
Children who are playing in the sand pause and look up. A bajji seller fries the first fresh batch of the savoury snack for the evening. Day one of the Urur Olcott Kuppam Vizha has officially begun.
The first programme is a percussion ensemble by the girls of Avvai Home, who play the ghatam with the maestros of the Carnatic world such as Guru Prasad (ghatam), Tanjore Praveen Kumar (mridangam), B.S. Purushothaman (kanjira), Chandrasekara Sharma (ghatam) and K.V. Gopalakrishnan (kanjira) along with the Paraiattam team led by Deepan. The audience claps and whistles when the pariattam beats grow louder.
The peppy drum beats soon give way to melodic Carnatic strains. Ranjani Santhanagopalan, Bharat Sundar, Vignesh Ishwar, Vidya Kalyanaraman, along with the classic music percussion artistes, take over the stage for a Carnatic choir. They sing ‘Palum Thenum’, a Mallari piece, and proceed to ‘Brochevara Raghuvara’ by Mysore Vasudevacharya and ‘Nambikettavar Yevarayya’ by Papanasam Sivan.
The classical music segment concludes with a composition written by Bharat Sunder, on the five elements: fire, earth, air, water and wind.
The Shraddha theatre troupe presented a children’s mime about technology that makes brainless bommais (dolls) of all of us, a play on an artiste’s struggle to stick to his individual expression and the fraudulence of the politicians of our land.
The reference to thalaivar (leader) without a head, strikes a chord with the present times, and people in the audience laugh when the actors ask, ‘Did you see the head of our thalaivar ?’.
By now, more women from the kuppam have gathered at the spot.
Says S. Karthika, a B.Com student, “Many of us in the village cannot even afford normal education, forget about learning the arts. We never get an opportunity to listen to these concerts, otherwise. This is a great opening for us. We are also proud to host an event that exhibits works of our children and bring people from other parts of the city here. If not for the vizha, they would not have even come to know of our existence.”
