Bangalore either, in a village called Ecchur near the town of Senji, a villager stands on a small stage-like structure and hollers “Kelai Draupadai” (Listen Draupadi). He calls out to the mythological Draupadi, asking her to listen to a retelling and re-enactment of the epic by the entire village. Draupadi, for the village of Ecchur, is not just a mere character in an epic but is in fact ‘Draupadi Amman’, a revered deity of the village. So, as part of the rituals of the Draupadi Amman festival in the village, the Mahabharata is re-visited both as a discourse during the day and as enactment in the form of a koothu performance at night. Interestingly enough, Draupadi is invited to both witness and act in this performance.
The festival and its prime constituent — the Mahabharata koothu which is performed in over 200 villages in Tamil Nadu has survived for over 1300 years and is an active piece in the puzzling map of wide-ranging oral traditions of the country. Moreover, it unwittingly co-exists with urban India that is most often so far removed from traditions such as the koothu in this instance. However, recently, at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, there was an attempt to bridge the gap between urban India, more specifically urban Bangalore, and Ecchur through the screening of ‘Kelai Draupadai’ a film by Sashikanth Ananthachari, documenting the 21-day Draupadi Amman festival. Accompanied by commentary that was both insightful and critical, Sashikanth’s film made the narration of the epic and the koothu performance intelligible for the few that had turned up at the screening in Bangalore.
“The community is the protagonist of the film. They are an active ingredient in the narrative of the epic, in the sense that they organise the event, participate, enact and facilitate, celebrate and immerse themselves in it, until they become one with the story, its shape and its content,” said Kalyan Raman, who introduced the film at the screening and also translated Alwar Saint Villipuththur Azhwar’s version of the epic, for the film.
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Surpassing caste divisions, the entire village is seen coming together to plan and execute the performance. Different castes take on the responsibility for the koothu performance of different sections of the epic but for the duration of the entire festival, the village functions as a single unit. Sashikanth highlights the fact that listening to the Mahabharata again, for the villagers, is supposed to cause introspection among the community and force them to question the validity of rigid identities of caste and gender. “By playing and witnessing characters like the Pandavas who go into exile and live their life in disguise, the performance talks about the fluidity of identities and is layered with questions about the futility of holding on to rigid identities,” said Sashikant in a discussion after the screening. The koothu itself blurs identities. The villager playing Dushasana, before disrobing Draupadi, takes a moment to step out of his character, and says, “ O Draupadi Amman, I apologise for what I’m about to do,” and then steps back as the evil Dushasana and gets into the violent act. The film also shows fluctuating identities in the instances of men and women being possessed while a certain story of the Mahabharata is being recounted or staged. Women are also seen worshiping and seeking blessings of actors playing divine characters. All of these, the commentator in the film argues, are integral to the festival itself.
The question that is waiting to be asked, however, is whether urban India can relate to a festival like this. “Kelai Draupadai tells us that a koothu performance with such a rich oral tradition and history is happening so close to all of us but is not intelligible to us in our modern lives. We have no way of reading this,” remarks Kalyan Raman.
In line with this thought, towards the end of the film, Sashikanth explores the future of a festival like this owing to widespread migration from villages to cities and surprisingly enough, he is met with an enthusiastic bunch of youngsters who promise to never let the tradition die out.
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( Kelai Draupadai is the first part of the trilogy that Sashikanth is currently working on. Post production was done with the help of India Foundation of Arts and Panos)