The way many Indian men and women think and their normative patriarchal mind-set have been the focus of discussions, over the past months, after the ban on Leslie Udwin’s India’s Daughter . Opinions have been sharply divided. Some believe the film makes Indian men appear depraved and misogynistic. Others find a disturbing attempt in it to create a larger-than-life ‘good hero’ out of a ‘normal young girl’. In either case, it has been a field day in the media for stereotypes, which seem as cultural as they seem political.
Suffocated with these thoughts, I ‘escape’ to the sylvan campus of Kalakshetra, in Chennai, on the last day of their four-day Kathakali festival, to briefly take my mind away from ‘contemporary’ discussions on ‘patriarchy’ or ‘our good culture that has no place for women in it’ and take refuge in the comforts of ‘tradition’.
Today’s episode is yet another vadham — Nivadhakavacha Kalakeya Vadham. What a grand title! There are few things more dramatic in Kathakali than the vadham /killing of an evil asura or rakshasa by a morally upright, virtuous hero in magnificent regulation costume. And today’s three-and-half hour long performance is every bit compelling, despite tending to hurry towards the end to wrap up before the 10 p.m. curfew hour.
The slew of characters on stage is spectacular and larger-than-life: Urvashi, Arjuna, Indra, Bheeru, Kalakeya, Nandikeshwara; the costume, stunning. What is riveting about a Kathakali performance with multiple characters is the array of vesham s/make-ups. There is also the added thrill of Bheeru and Kalakeya making their entry through the aisle amid the audience. And then an ‘unorthodox’ improvisation when Bheeru informs Kalakeya — in a spurt of colloquial Tamil — about Arjuna killing his friend Nivadhakavachan. Nice touch, that. Suddenly the discourse opens up. All it takes is a couple of sentences spoken in a familiar tongue. A Kattaikoothu moment. Works just as well as the poet’s Manipravalam.
By 9.30 p.m., Kalakeya has been put to the sword (or given ‘ mukti ’), Bheeru has managed to escape from the battlefield and Urvashi and Indra have changed out of costume. Fruit baskets are presented as tokens of appreciation, technical staff and organisers are thanked and the audience files out. There’s a general feeling of an evening well-spent.
But something continues to niggle within me. Another version (Kathakali lovers might consider it blasphemous) has been looping in my head from the time the love-sick apsara , Urvashi, opens her heart to Arjuna; comparing his lovely lips to the bhil fruit and tells him, very graphically, of her desire for him. The ‘ minukku ’ leaches out and her face takes on hues of ‘ paccha ’. For ‘good human women’, it takes ‘courage’ to tell a man that you desire him. That kind of courage, however, is a given for an apsara or a rakshasi , not bound by conventions that ‘good human women’ have to follow; good human women’s faces are never clouded by desire and hence their collective, morally righteous face is a neutral shade of minukku . So why has Urvashi been given a minukku vesham ?
A word about the importance of vesham in Kathakali. Vesham helps introduce the character. For paccha vesham characters like Arjuna and Indra the green colour signifies noble, virtuous, divine, valorous, male heroes. Kathi vesham characters like Ravana, noble by birth but with an evil streak, also have green makeup but with red knife-like drawings on the cheeks. Thaadi vesham characters are of three types: vella thaadi (white beard and makeup) for wise helpful characters in supporting roles such as Hanuman or Nandikeshwara; chuvanna thaadi (red beard and makeup) for extremely evil characters like Kalakeya; and karutha thaadi (black beard and makeup) for forest dwellers and tribals. Kari vesham is for rakshasi s like Puthana and yellowish lustrous minukku for women and ascetics. The receivers know the codes and can successfully decode them. These codes have now ossified along with the stories and our ways of telling, in fact, reveal quite a lot about us.
With most performances based on Indian mythology, you invariably know the story. You know the good guys from the evil ones. In Kathakali, this is further reinforced through their respective makeup/ vesham . But you go not to listen to a story being told; you go to watch the story unfold. And this is where the teller of a story can and — perhaps must — use creativity to gently subvert the age-old telling. Listen, for instance, to those stirring lines of passion that Urvashi has in the attakatha (performance script). The poet must have nursed deeply feminist convictions.
Even as Urvashi turns a heroic ‘ paccha ’ with every passing minute, bravely importuning a reluctant Arjuna, who shudders with equal amount of rage and revulsion, what is happening to his paccha vesham ? In almost slow-motion animation, this celebrated ‘hero’ seems to transform before your eyes into a kathi vesham , as he spurns Urvashi – spitting cruel words at her, accusing her of waywardness, immorality and promiscuousness. Suddenly, Arjuna is not a heroic character at all.
As he doles out insults followed by prim advice, Urvashi the apsara will have none of it. Citing his mother as an example, she tells Arjuna what promiscuity is in ways that he cannot but understand. The episode ends with Urvashi’s curse: a euphemism, perhaps, for her expression of untrammelled desire that emasculates him? He now needs to kill two (obliging) asura s and their armies before he can feel like a man again. And doting dad, Indra, arranges for this.
Arjuna is the judgmental patriarch, the good son and brother who does not dare stand up to his mother’s command to share his ‘prize’ wife with his brothers (if he did not want to) and then restlessly wanders off to conquer kingdoms and women who never quite learnt to say ‘no’ politely and firmly. Whichever way you look at it, I’m beginning to think, the idea of heroism sits weakly on him. And on many similar heroes of our favourite tales. So why are we telling these stories the way we do? Isn’t it possible and even desirable to retell our old stories in new ways to help us find their meanings in a new world, where the strength of one does not emasculate the other or wreak violent vengeance on a third? Cannot we decide if the heroes of our stories were really heroic? Were our women heroes merely lustrous? Was the asura avenging his friends completely evil? Where are the traces of his paccha ?
What are our stories about masculinity, femininity, valour, nobility, desire, freedom, exploitation, racism and the ‘other’? What we see played out on the daily stage is disturbing, and is that why we insist on banning that which we do not wish to acknowledge as a rot within? Would our heroes stand the test of the retelling? Or would they be revealed as propped up pygmies, spoilt brats and misogynistic patriarchs? Would our women be just pale caricatures of femininity or would they be unleashed as the full-bodied, full-blooded women they are? And our villains, are they merely dark and pure evil, incapable of a single redeeming thought or act?
As the practice of Kathakali has shown over the years, there is room for constant improvisation for the actor, for change (women replacing the female impersonator in minukku roles; or Bheeru and Kalakeya breaking into Tamil dialogue); and for assimilation (adapting King Lear and Othello). The poet who penned Urvashi’s desire and her rage in this attakatha was probably testing progressive waters. But time has come for that part of the story to resonate in a million hearts. All it might take is a small step like tweaking the makeup to retell old stories in new ways.
It’s time to choose the stories we must tell with courage, conviction and the right colours. Or else, our young men will continue to grow up distorted and misogynistic. Our young women, who internalise this patriarchy, will be unable to express desire and choose instead to be merely desirable. And no amount of nationalistic jingoism or bans will change the image of the country. The constant othering by gender, caste, religion, class, tribe and minority will end up creating more and more villains and instil in our young, faith in bloodthirsty, vigilante justice, where the only vesham each one will sport will be a chuvanna thadi or a kari vesham .
Gita Jayaraj’s M.Phil dissertation was on Kerala’s ritual performative form, Theyyam.
