A hundred emotions flit through her face. Her eyes speak, and so do her lilting eyebrows, trembling cheeks and lips. Together they take the viewer through love, laughter, anger, fear, compassion, wonder and more. For Margi Sathi, Koodiyattam and Nangiarkoothu artiste, her face and the myriad expressions that dance on it effortlessly are testimony to the exemplary performer she is.
Sathi was in Kozhikode city recently to give a lecture demonstration on Mukhabhinayam as part of Aattasaptakam, the seven-day festival on the Mahabharata. From novice to veteran, everyone had something to take back about the ancient art of Koodiyattam after her engaging session. If years of training opened her to the immense possibilities of the eyes, Sathi demonstrated how sound her training is when she wrote “amma” in Malayalam with her eyes.
The performer who was introduced to Koodiyattam at the age of 11 continues to explore creative frontiers as she takes up film assignments. After her debut in “Nottam” in 2006, where she played a Koodiyattam performer, Sathi comes back with “Ivan Megharoopan” as the mother of poet P. Kunhiraman Nair.
At the Mukhabhinayam session, a couple of Koodiyattam aficionados teased Sathi about her film assignments. “There have been two different reactions to my acting in films,” said Sathi candidly after the lecture. “Some have really liked it, while those who have seen my Nangiarkoothu have not been very appreciative.”
Sathi, however, doesn't approach cinema from the high pedestal of a classical performer. Though she has not gone seeking movies or accepted all the roles that came her way, she views cinema with the creative curiosity of an artiste. “I have never considered cinema an inferior art. But the films I have acted in have been art house productions. When it comes to films, I am yet to master the art of dialogue delivery,” she says. If in Koodiyattam every expression and movement is enhanced and performed, cinema, she learnt, is about economy.
Sathi's passion remains Koodiyattam, the 2000-year-old classical Sanskrit theatre she stumbled into when she joined Kalamandalam in Thrissur. “My grandmother loved Kathakali and among the grandchildren, she used to take me along to watch the performances as I was the only one who would not fall asleep during the night-long recital,” remembers Sathi.
Her father, also a Sanskrit scholar, realised his daughter's affinity for the arts and enrolled her at the nearby Kerala Kalamandalam to learn Koodiyattam. It was as if the art form chose her, for Sathi was ignorant about it till she stepped into the Kalamandalam.
However, after eight years of rigorous training, the teenager realised there were hardly any takers of this art form much older than Kathakali. Though Koodiyattam performed traditionally by women belonging to the Chakyar and Nambiar communities was taught to Sathi, an outsider, by her teachers at the institution, she realised there were hardly any opportunities. “Even when we used to perform it at Kalamadalam there were not many takers as people perceived they wouldn't understand it since it is Sanskrit,” says Sathi.
Young Sathi found few avenues to perform and she used the time to finish her schooling. But her marriage to Subramaniam Potti, who encouraged her and her art, and her arrival at Thiruvananthapuram where she joined the Margi theatre dedicated to Koodiyattam, reinforced her ties with Koodiyattam.
At Margi, prompted by D. Appukuttan Nair, Sathi also delved into Nangiarkoothu, a temple art that had almost ceased to exist. Sathi is now counted among the handful of women artistes who have revived the form. In Nangiarkoothu, Sathi has scripted the performance manuals “Kannakicharitham” and “Sitayanam”.
“I would like to perform ‘Bhakta Meera',” she says. Sathi, who has performed at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, says that after her husband's death on the sets of “Nottam”, she has lost her most ardent supporter.
“Earlier, I used to travel to Delhi to perform about thrice a year. But travelling for performances has been severely affected after my husband passed away,” says Sathi, who now teaches at her alma mater.
