‘Thirumandiram of Thirumoolar in Bharatanatyam’ by Uma Ramesh was presented by Natyarangam under the endowment in the name of Dr. S. Ramanathan. Uma Ramesh is a mature dancer, having had more than 30 years of performing experience. She was trained under gurus K.J. Govindarajan and Kanaka Srinivasan and is at present under the guidance of Prof. C.V. Chandrasekhar and abhinaya expert Bragha Bessell. Besides performing and studying for a Masters in Fine Arts from Sastra University, she teaches Bharatanatyam to Corporation school children in Tiruvanmiyur on a voluntary basis.
Having taken on the theme of Tirumoolar’s mandirams, Uma did justice to the heavy content of the text. With the help of eminent artistes: Tamil scholar and son-in-law of Dr. S. Ramanathan, Dr. S Raghuraman, who guided her through the text, Nattuvanar K.S. Balakrishnan who helped with music direction, nattuvangam and rhythm design, mridanga vidwan G. Vijayaraghavan for varnam jatis, Bragha for the abhinaya portions, V.V. Ramani for costume design and Sujit Shridhar for the recording, Uma’s margam carried a good balance of artistic inputs and spiritual and yoga-related wisdom.
There was, however, a doubt regarding the use of the ‘peripheral’ meaning amounting to symbolism as against ‘pari bhasha’ or inner meaning in the interpretation. As per scholars including Dr. Raghuraman, while there are words that might seem like references to Lord Siva, Chidambaram, dancing god, etc., the work only deals with ‘Sivam’ or Pure Consciousness. According to Dr. Raghuraman, the allusion to dancing refers to the spiralling movement of the energy as it rises up in the spine in what Tirumoolar called Siva Yoga or Nava Yoga (Kundalini Yoga) while Tillai is only a reference to a Tillai vanam and not specifically Chidambaram. It was his decision incidentally to interpret the verses using symbolic references. He felt that the peripheral meaning, which incidentally meant dumbing down the high philosophy, will make visualisation easier for the performer and more acceptable to the viewer.
Eloquent explanations
The choice of verses provided a sequential understanding of the text. With eloquent explanations prefacing every presentation, Dr. Raghuraman took us through the tenets of the high philosophy and its attainment.
He had included one of the three mahavakyas of Tirumandiram, ‘Anbe Sivam’ (Love is God — mandiram 270). The sequence commenced with the story of how Thirumoolar came to be Sundaranathar, who takes on the body of the cowherd Moolan to pacify the sorrowful cows.
Description of Sivam with reference to his attributes numbering 1-8 in ‘Onru avan thaaney’ (mandiram 1) was brought in between a Siva procession, Mallari-style.
According to Dr. Raghuraman, Nandi is the ‘sthoola sharira’ of Sivam. Nandi taking the form to convey philosophy was presented along with a rhythmic sequence capturing Nandi playing the mridangam and Siva dancing.
The varnam titled ‘Shiva anubhava’ presented Siva leelas from Periya Puranam such as the destruction of Tripura in ‘Thiriginra muppuram’ (mandiram 348) and the Pasupatinath temple sthala puranam in ‘ Uruvadu Aridandi' (Mandiram 351) in between well-executed jatis. The usi, tisra and other jatis were most pleasant to the ears.
The pancha-raga, panch-tala thillana signified the pancha- krityam (functions) of Siva-Sakthi as Ananda Thandava.
The physical attributes of Siva such as the damaru, the Rudraksha, the skull garland, and his body, dancing to show that the entire cosmic energy is Sivam, ‘Engum Thirumeni.’ It was a brisk, symbolic end to the well-thought-out recital.
