The last living lineage of a clan that was pledged in service to the deity of a temple, the duo Annabattula Lakshmi Mangatayaru and Sai Leela are visibly elated with the Sangeet Natak Akademi’s award bestowed on them as traditional theatre artistes belonging to the Devadasi system (Kalavanthulu of Andhra Pradesh). “It is a recognition of our hereditary art form that was originally born and bred in the temples, blossomed with royal patronage and blotted out by the British moral policing leaving our ancestors high and dry,” the righteous anger cannot be missed in the voice of Mangatayaru as she gracefully accepts congratulations.
The award announcement carries an adjunct ‘Kalavanthulu’. What does it indicate? “It is a Telugu term which means those in the service of arts (kala), a more colloquial term for Devadasi (temple dancer). Perhaps it was mentioned to clarify our status as custodians of performing arts. Though we no longer dance as part of temple ritual, since its ban ages ago, we performed at religious functions during our heyday and later took to imparting dance to few interested aspirants in and around our native village Mummidivaram in the fertile east Godavari district of coastal Andhra,” she explains.
Tracing ancestry
One is curious to know how far the ancestry can be traced. “My ancestral tree strikes its roots in my great great grandmother Annabattula Buli Satyabhama who was brought to Mummidivaram to serve as Devadasi in Uma Sureshwara temple at a very young age. Being the principal dancer of the temple, she was allotted a part of the temple fertile land for sustenance which passed on to her kin. My mother Satyabhama was named after this illustrious ancestor since she inherited the same beauty and talent. It was the family’s tradition to make the daughters adept at classical dance, music, Puranas, kavyas, itihaasa, Adi Sankara’s ‘Amarakam’, Jayadeva’s ‘Ashtapadi’, Kshetrayya’s padam, Sri Krishna Karnamrutham, Shabda Manjari, Kalidasa’s ‘Raghuvamsam’, Amarakosham, Adyatma Rama keertans (Telugu) — it was a study in itself that took ages to master, the only redeeming feature being that the learning started usually in childhood and by the time the girls turned into youthful dancers they would have imbibed all the necessary learning. So the Devadasi legacy passed on from the great grandmother to her daughter Suryakantham who passed it on to Buli Venkataratnam, my grandmother who was the last to serve in the temple. My mother Satyabhama who was just 13 years younger to her mother, though proficient in dance, was content to be a vocal accompanist to my grandmother, like my cousin and co-awardee Leela Sai is to me. We learnt under the tutelage of my grandmother who was the first in the family to be recognised with a State SNA Fellowship in 1968 and with the ‘Bharata Kala Prapoorna’ title by AP state government in the year 1972. I’m proud to be her direct descendent,” says Mangatayaru.
Detailing the Devadasi repertoire, she further elaborates that apart from the temple ritual, there was a public performance called Kacheri ata also called Nattuva melam or Meju vani. In this a lot of solo pieces were performed like varnam, pallavi, padam, javali, sloka, tillana apart from kalapam like Bhama Kalapam (Satyabhama’s theatrical characterisation) and Golla Kalapam (theatrical dialogue dance of a milkmaid). But her grandmother’s forte was Golla Kalapam composed by the 18th Century saint-poetess Tarikonda Vengamamba of Chittoor near Tirupati.
Literary work
How could a literary work travel all the way to east Godavari village from a distant place of its origin? “A Brahmin scholar by name Sri Atkuri Subbarayadu of Chittoor left his native village which was struck by famine and made Vishwaruni Agraharam in Mummidivaram his home. He was without a family and soon my great grandmother came to know through other pundits at the temple that he was well-versed in dance, rhythm and music. She sent her daughter (my grandmother) who was then a child to learn the Golla Kalapam from him. He must have had the copy of the original dance drama (‘Gopi Natakam’) penned by the saint-poetess. My grandmother mastered it and taught it to us as well as my mother. Today, it is the exclusive Golla Kalapam and of course our ancestral Bhama Kalapam that has brought us laurels.”
What is the difference between these two Kalapam of the Devadasis and the same existing in Kuchipudi repertoire? “The script for Golla Kalapam followed by Kuchipudi gurus was penned by Bhagavatula Ramakotaiah while our tradition adopted Vengamamba’s manuscript. In (Satya)bhama Kalapam, the performing style slightly varies. The less popular Golla Kalapam is about a young milkmaid’s spiritual propensity as against an egoistic Pundit who ridicules the maiden’s lowly birth and vocation, whereupon she sermonises (in Sanskrit) much to his surprise that ‘by birth one (and all) is a Sudra (gross body); by purification process one becomes dwija (twice- born); by study of Vedas one turns into a Vipra and when one realises the ultimate truth (Brahman) only then is he called Brahmana’— the essence of religion in just four lines! There are many students from other States who are either coming to me to learn this work of art or are inviting me for workshops. On one such occasion I had visited Tarigonda and felt a pain that my ancestors who lived by this poetic wealth did not even know of the whereabouts of this village from where their magnum opus originated. Even today, this award actually belongs to my ancestors who danced for the divine unknown and untouched by mundane considerations,” she flicks away a tear that is about to drop as she bids adieu.
