Having fallen in love with Kathakali irrevocably, Probal Gupta – the boy from Calcutta – took his initial lessons early in life from Kalamandalam Guru Govindan Kutty in Kolkata. After long years of training, he felt the need to move on. And in 2003 he relocated himself to Bengaluru with a thirst to know more. He was subsequently trained by Sri Fact Padmanabhan and presently he is under the tutelage of the famed Sadanam Balakrishnan. Learning under this learned guru has been the experience of a life time, confessed Probal.
Probal Gupta’s productions have been a mixed bag of both good and bad. But his solo production from Nivantakavacha Kalakeya Vadham – performed at Kolkata’s Rabindra Sadan on the invitation of Sarbani Ajanta Kalasangam to celebrate the 5th year of her festival in honour of Rukmini Devi Arundale – where he was in the role of Urvashi was challenging indeed.
Probal specialises in both Purushvesham and Streevesham in Kathakali. It was learnt and performed with care and diligence. In the story, taken from the great epic Mahabharata, Arjun had saved Urvashi, the reigning queen of heaven, from the clutches of demons Vajrabahu and Vajraketu, whose main activity seemed to procure damsels. So overwhelmed was the eternally youthful and beautiful Urvashi, that falling in love with the handsome and young son of Indra seemed natural and inevitable.
Proficient in the art of wooing, Urvashi approached Arjun with her amorous feelings. Though she raised her eye brows when he referred to her respectfully, that as the wife of Pururaba, she was in the position of a mother to him, she continued in her plea with vivid physical description of the handsome Arjun and his attractive V-shaped body. She was struck and tormented with Kamadeva’s arrows.
Playwright Kottayathu Thampuran has used several similes and metaphors to describe the greatness of Arjun as a warrior prince and as a man endowed with physical beauty, through the descriptions of Urvashi. She, who had never been turned down by any man, was amazed by the unrequited love of Arjun. She threatened him with dire consequences and cursed Arjun to spend the life of a eunuch. What befell Arjun on account of this irreversible curse would be the subject matter of another story.
The padam of Urvashi from “Nivatakavacha Kalakeya Vadham” is a 16 matras paddiniya chitta padam choreographed by the Central Sangeet Natak Cademy Awardee Natyacharya Guru Sri Sadanam Balakrishnan. It is only through Kathakali, which is a complete theatre, that one is capable of describing aesthetically the ruby like lips and the curved eyebrows of Arjun, punching it with the amorous feelings of Urvashi, who is supposedly the most exquisite beauty of Indralok – the kingdom of Indra or heaven. And the story in the hands of Kalamandalam Sadanam Balakrishnan has achieved an altogether new dimension. Each and every movement, be it the brisk movement of the eyebrows to depicting subtle pleasant feelings or lifting of one eye brow to display ire, or for that matter the movements of the upper muscles of the cheek to let out steam and the smile of Urvashi in love was choreographed with a smoothness to perfectly blend with rhythm. Probal Gupta came out a winner with flying colours. From stepping into the shoes of an apsara in love and one who had always been confident to being reduced to the position of begging the man of her dreams to accept her only to be spurned and in between alternating with emotions of rage, revenge and remorse.
