The Fourth Annual Kootiyattam Festival presented by Nepathya at Muzhikkulam offered two full-scale works this year: the first act of Kulasekhara's ‘Subhadradhananjayam' (eight nights) and ‘Thoranayuddham,' that is, the third act of the Abhiseka-Natakam ascribed to Bhasa (seven nights).
The festival began with a splendid ‘Akruragamanam' Nangiarkoothu performance by Indu G. As is always the case at Nepathya, the acting, mizhavu drumming, and all other aspects of the performance were at the highest level, and the result was an aesthetic experience that was overpowering, sometimes leaving us in tears. What distinguishes these performances from most others is the fact that the entire work is presented, each night contributing something indispensable to the whole.
One cannot even begin to understand the meaning of these complex works by seeing only a two- or three-hour excerpt from them, as one often does today. They require the attentiveness of a spectator who allows the work to enter deeply into his or her awareness and who slowly becomes sensitised to its natural rhythm and meaning.
Conflict of emotions
Take the ‘Subhadradhananyam,' for example, which tells of the love of Subhadra and Arjuna. Both have fallen in love with one another simply by hearsay; each carries an ideal image of the beloved in the mind's eye. Suddenly, Subhadra, who was carried off by a demon, is rescued by Arjuna and literally falls from the sky into his arms – but he does not know the identity of the girl he has saved. However, he falls for her. This creates a terrible dilemma: not only is he married to Draupadi, he is now in love with two more women, one of whom he has only heard about, and another, whom he has held in his arms.
It takes time, and considerable agony, before he learns that these two women are the same; and Subhadra, for her part, has to go through an exactly parallel process. The spectator is allowed a sustained glimpse into the minds of both these characters, who reveal to us their very personal imaginations, their memories, their wishes and desires, their often conflicting feelings, all of which mingle with the spectator's own imagination and with that of the skilled actor to create a space of almost unimaginable density and richness.
Already on the first night, when Arjuna enters (enacted by Margi Madhu), we see the intricacies of his mental world as he enacts the famous verse ‘Amba-stanyam.' The nirvahanam on the second night explains, from Arjuna's viewpoint, how he arrived at this point of time. On the third evening of the recital, he enters the ashram outside Dwaraka and shows us – moving only his eyes for the most part – the wonders of this gentle place, where moths that fall into the fire are not burned and the fawn drinks milk from the breasts of the tigress (this is the well-known verse ‘Sikhini salabho,' one of the high points in all of Kootiyattam).
I knew as I watched Margi Madhu perform the verse with his eyes that I was seeing a masterpiece at the edge of what is humanly possible, and I was grateful that I had been given the gift of eyes of my own to see it.
The fourth night, and throughout the remaining half of the composition, the Vidusaka enters – the good friend and ironic companion of Arjuna and, in a sense, the other half of the Nayaka's own character. The Vidusaka pokes fun, in fast-paced Malayalam, at the romantic fantasies that have until now constituted the play's main theme. This pairing of hero and clown added immense depth to the characters, with commendable performances by Margi Sajeev Narayana Chakyar and Sooraj Nambiar, among others.
Perhaps the culmination of the entire action came with the extended enactment on the seventh evening, which dealt with Brahma's creation of Subhadra, upon whom he lavished all female qualities – beauty, delicacy, sweetness, and so on, leaving nothing over, holding nothing back; so now every time Brahma wants to produce another woman, he has to go begging to Subhadra. This verse, like so many moments in Kootiyattam, also shows us the Kootiyattam actor at work, modelling and shaping a creative performance at a level of perfection.
‘Thoranayuddham,' one of the most famous and dramatic of all Kootiyattam performances, is a showpiece of the genre. It includes two superb enactments of the ‘Kailasoddharanam,' in which Ravana lifts Mount Kailasa and shakes up Siva and Parvati who are dwelling there, followed by ‘Parvati viraham,' when Parvati expresses her jealousy of Ganga.
War and heroism
Being focussed on themes of war and heroism – Ravana's overt public persona – the play also offers several examples of the richly imagined Padappurappadu, the preparation of the army for battle. Ravana appears here as an overpowering, often arrogant figure; yet we also see him gently nurturing the Kalpavriksha trees from Indra's heaven that he transplants to his garden in Lanka. This, then, is a drama of complex characterisation with tragic tones, as becomes clear in the final night of the performance: Vibhisana fails to sway Ravana from his self-destructive course and shows us the agony of despair.
Here, too, the Nepathya team produced a brilliant, profound artistic whole. The Ravana of the ‘Thoranayuddham' eventually evolves into the love-sick, lovable Ravana of the ‘Asokavanikankam'; each major Kootiyattam composition evokes other central parts of the repertoire, thus enhancing the depth of the characters and illuminating the contexts in which they become who they are.
These two great plays thrilled us and changed us – a delegation of Sanskrit and Malayalam students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – as only great art can do.
Dr. Prof. David Schulman is a literary critic, cultural anthropologist and Head the Deaprtment, Indology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
