The life of S. Malathi, who passed away last month, was a story of the joys and pains of living one’s feminism. Her feminism was defined by instinct and action and rarely by theory. Her rebelliousness, yearning for freedom, naïve faith in egalitarian ideas, and a firm belief in theatre as a vehicle for change, were all woven into a lifetime in Kannada theatre.
Her journey from Sagar, a small town in Shivamogga, to Mysuru, Bengaluru, Delhi, back to Bengaluru and then Sagar reflected the joys and sorrows, exhilaration and pain, of a woman who chooses to live a feminist life in a society that spoke of progressiveness but remained largely patriarchal.
Malathi’s presence in theatre matured in the seventies in Samudaya, a theatre group which attracted young minds and brought left-wing nuances even to originally conventional plays. Malathi played the title role of Kuri , a sheep, in the Kannada adaptation of Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena’s Bakri directed by M.S. Sathyu for Samudaya. There were no dialogues for her, only the occasional bleats, and yet the play revolved around this guileless character and the blows it received from a devious political class. For some time she came to be known as ‘Kuri Malathi’ to distinguish her from other Malathis. It did not annoy her. Perhaps she was comfortable in the absence of guile, a value she retained through her life.
When the late C.G. Krishnaswamy galvanised Samudaya with his street theatre, a new enthusiasm and inclusiveness came into Kannada theatre. The overwhelming success of ‘Belchi’, an anti-Emergency play, which did many hundred performances in street corners, brought with it a new sense of freedom. A workshop conducted by Badal Sarkar on using the body as a prop opened up new vistas to the financially starved medium. Malathi’s later foray into taking theatre to the smaller towns and villages owed some part to this influence.
The post-Emergency period saw theatre being used extensively to give vent to the anger of deprived groups, reflected in the aggressive lyrics of young Dalit poets, who were to later become icons. But it was only a matter of time before this idealism interacted with an increasingly cynical social milieu to generate a complex reality that left the guileless confused.
Malathi was not only guileless but also impulsive, emotional and outspoken. Her defiance was not confined to the then symbols of liberation like smoking or drinking. She disagreed and was vocal about it. She also did little to shield her personal life from her professional one. Her brand of feminism cost her dearly and she was willing to pay the price.
She was going through a particularly bad patch in 1985 when a conversation about Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , written in the nineteenth century raised her spirits. She was by now a graduate of the National School of Drama in Delhi, and well aware that when the play was first performed in 1879 it had caused a riot in the conservative European society. Malathi wanted to direct the play. She and I decided to work on a translation from the English version to Kannada together, so that we did not miss the nuances in either language. Malathi not only directed the play, Vasanthi, for Samudaya but also played the role of Nora, an ordinary woman who wakes up to the fact that her existence is of no more relevance than that of a doll. For Malathi playing the role to full houses in Ravindra Kalakshetra in Bengaluru was a kind of catharsis. When Doordarshan, the primary channel at that time, televised it, the outreach was complete.
The financial strains of being a full time theatre artist in the eighties were made more difficult by the social pressures of living alone in a big city. When her efforts to find a niche for herself in commercial cinema proved to be financially and mentally exhausting, she decided to return to Sagar. Her abandoning the anonymity and opportunities of the big city to go back to a small town where everyone knew her, spoke volumes of her faith in her family standing by her, even as she pursued her unconventional dreams. The touching dedication she wrote to her mother, two younger brothers and their spouses in her book, ‘Helabekenisitu’, for standing by her in her helpless moments captures it all. She also met and married Purushottam Talavata a fellow artist from the region. The proximity to Heggodu, the influence of K.V. Subbanna and the Ninasam theatre group made very fertile land for cultural activity. Malathi began to write the plays she wanted to perform and take them not just to other small towns but also to villages. As her work with the local population grew so did their respect and admiration for her. A local paper dedicated an entire issue to her on her demise. Malathi had gracefully made the transition to the role of mentor.
The change was not only in how she related to others but also in her sense of herself. Late in her life she did a play on Saraswat identity. The protagonist of the play urged all Konkanas who were being persecuted and driven out of their homes to speak to each other in no other tongue. The play was in Kannada and I had associated Malathi with no other language. But the play did suggest that Malathi’s journey of a lived feminism had finally taken her home.
