“Yellamma is a woman just like us,” says Shilpa Mudbi Kothakota. “She curses, swears and gives birth … her frustrations are very similar to that of a modern woman who is watching her story.” Kothakota, the co-founder of the Bengaluru-based Urban Folk Project, will be in town this week with Yellamma and Other Stories .
It is in this context that she is talking about her interest in the myth of Yellamma. “I was a documentary filmmaker for around seven years and travelled to rural parts to shoot. And this triggered a desire to rediscover my own roots.”
She also worked with Kumaran Valavan, the founder of India Nostrum Theatre, in Puducherry and “did theatre and films till I could figure out what it was that I wanted to do.” At one point, Valavan asked her to research the myth of Yellamma for a play on the Sri Lankan tragedy. Kothakota was familiar with the myth as it was very strong in Bidar, Karnataka, where she comes from. “We used to celebrate the festival of Yellamma in our village. Instead of the Satnarayan puja for a house-warming or a naming ceremony, we would have the Yellammanaata, in which all the relatives would participate.”
When Kothakota moved back to Bengaluru last year, she decided to start pursuing Yellamma. What she found interesting was that the myth changed “every 30 km. We followed the myth through songs that are around 1500 years old and came down to us through the devadasis. The key elements are: Renuka gets married to Sage Jamadagni and is banished. She gives birth to Parasurama and he beheads her. In between there are a lot of moving pieces about why she was banished; how she gives birth to Parasurama, whose son Parasurama is really... All of which change depending on the community that is telling the story.” Though this is a telephone conversation, her staccato bursts make it seem almost as if she is checking off the points on her fingers.
Kothakota prefers the version told at Saundatti, one of the biggest centres of Yellamma worship. Here Parasurama, having been brought up by his mother, is desperate to know who his father is. And desperate enough to kill his mother so that the father will acknowledge him. “It boils to down to just that: having a father’s name,” says Kothakota; her tone close to a sneer. “After all Jamadagni is a saptarishi. It’s a powerful name; like Trump.”
The Yellamma version at Saundatti ends with Renuka-Yellamma ridding herself of the men in her life and settling down in the village to form a community of devadasis. “The key is that all these village deities had been built and nurtured by communities that had something to say about these female energies and personalities in their lives. We have grown up not knowing our own folk histories. We study global history, we know all about World War II and the Cuban civil war but we don’t know what happened in our cities 60 years ago.” Thus began an experiment to trace folk history. Kothakota believes that we can understand ourselves and our history better by studying our folklore. “We need to study our texts in different contexts, not just from the philosophical or religious angle,” she exclaims. “Take Greek texts. How much we have learnt about psychology from them! But we won’t do that for our texts.”
Shilpa Mudbi Kothakota with Manjamma Jogathi
Which brings us to a difficult aspect of the Yellamma story: the devadasis and the jogathis (transgender people). “They are the keepers of the mythology. A few hundred years ago, they were learned scholars and had a place in society. Now we’ve turned the devadasis into prostitutes and the jogathis into people who are fighting for their rights,” she says sadly. “In Yellammanaata , the person who plays Yellamma has to be a transgender woman. Over 50 years of playing the goddess, she gets married and has children, almost as if her sexuality and gender are beyond question.”
She points out that each village deity has a back story, each of which is resolved in a particular way. “And that resolution is part of who we have become today. Even today, we see women as wives and mothers. We want to address that through these songs and stories.”
They are still working on presenting the Yellammanaata to a larger audience. “We still have to build it. There are so many versions in which Parasurama or Jamadagni are presented as heroes. For us, Yellamma is the hero. We also need to get the right version for our times.”
At the performance
Yellamma and Other Stories will tell the stories of Yellamma; of Radhabai, the last choudki player; of Manjamma Jogathi; and of how the team met and why they do what they do
The stories will be in English, interspersed with songs in Kannada, Marathi, Urdu and Hindi
They will present three shows in Coimbatore — today at PSG College of Arts and Science, Avanashi Road, from 6.30 pm; on March 8 at 641, 7th Cross, Bharathi Park Road, Saibaba Colony, from 6.30 pm; on March 9 at Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Chinniyampalayam Post, from 5.00 pm. All are welcome
The two shows in the Nilgiris — on March 10 at Canasu Café, Hotel Preethi Classic, Ooty, from 5.00 pm and on March 11 at Rotary Hall, Kotagiri, from 5.00 pm — are fundraisers for the SPCA Ooty and Inner Wheel Kotagiri. Donor passes of ₹200 and 500 (Ooty) and ₹300 (Kotagiri) are available
Contact 9894350810 (Coimbatore), 9442644283 (Ooty) and 9442271525 (Kotagiri) for more details
