I've been reading some translated Sanskrit plays of Bhasa, specifically the Pratimaanataka aka The Statue Play. A dull sense of familiarity began to creep up on me as I read the play and to my horror I discovered that I had actually studied it in my first year of college, although in Kannada. (Horror, because it seems I was not asleep in the last bench, as I imagined I would be, and actually remember some important bits.)
This is relevant with regard to my earlier post, where I mentioned the punning of character names in the openings of Sanskrit drama. (The term used in the book is paronomasia, which on further investigation is a synonym for pun – so much for that!) Pratimaanataka begins with an oblation that by paronomasia introduces many of the names of the characters as well as the name of the play itself. This convention is diabolically difficult to replicate in English and I've been wondering how it could manifest in modern writing.
The other discovery (continuing on my exploration of cyclic structures) is the convention of framing the play as an interrupted ritual. The prologue of most of these plays invariably has the stage manager welcoming the audience, only to be interrupted by some commotion from backstage – either an actor bringing in news of some import, a commotion and so on. This convention kick-starts the play into a mode where the audience is privy to the covenant of willing suspension of disbelief for the performance to unfold.
What is a bit frustrating in these translations is an annoying sensibility that seems to impose a five act structure onto all plays. I'm finding that the content has been slammed into a formal structure, where clearly there is another system of thought implicitly present. This is something I'll be encountering a lot, I predict, and I will often be guilty of the same myself. This is also something that will necessarily inform how a retelling of the V&B tale can be validated in a modern context, as regards to content as well as form – how to walk that tight-rope between transposition and re-imagination.
Moving on… I visited the Chottanikara temple near Ernakulam. It was truly an awesome experience. I'm viewing it as a playwright and also at some level as a student of psychology – so I'm not really going to go into the formal religious side of it.
Suffice it to say, it is an immersive collective experience that strongly utilizes spectacle and ritual to effect rudimentary behavioural changes, some pronounced, some subtle. It is very difficult to interpret the effectiveness of this 'treatment' when the validity of the whole system is problematic. It cannot be viewed as a truly scientific system, but to disregard it outright in complete blindness to its strong socio-cultural roots does it a great disservice.
My rational self was continuously seeking to impose limiting frames around the phenomenon I witnessed – catatonic/paranoid schizophrenia, clinical depression being only some of the terms that sprang to mind.
Additionally I was able to see some physical manifestations of the so called 'possessed.' To be frank it felt like being in a mosh-pit full of metal heads except it wasn't an angst-ridden teen band playing but a bunch of Mallu priests working the crowd with drums and conches and the head-banging was being done by a set of wild looking Mallu women in saris. Disregarding the obvious political incorrectness of that insight, I think I am trying to emphasise the overwhelmingly cathartic fervour that was being generated by the ritual.
For me the real terror of the space manifested in the movements of a little boy who seemed to be suffering some kind of motor impairment, perhaps due to a mental illness – especially in his inability to use his fingers properly. He seemed to be unaware of his fingers and toes and was crawling around on his wrists and knees, with his toes pointed unnaturally. And of course the clincher is the tree of nine-inch nails and dolls, which knocks even the most hardened cynic into a state of extreme unease!
My fear is that engaging with this material can so easily degenerate into a freak show of superstition, or even worse a cultural parade of indigenous mumbo-jumbo. It's so easy to take details of this experience and weave a B-Grade tale of dayyalau-bhootalu (er… that's a Telugu colloquialism I can best translate as spooks 'n ghosts) but that's just superficial and small minded. Working this system for spectacle or shock value is cultural prostitution of the worst kind.
What I do find compelling is engaging with an ancient socio-religious knowledge system that anticipates cathartic psychiatric treatment and continues to exist today!
One funny thing about the place though is how they keep setting off fire-crackers unexpectedly. The sudden loud noise really startles you! I would think this is in keeping with the shock-therapy trend established by the space.
The deity herself is fascinating – acknowledged as changing forms depending on the time of day and worshipped as three different manifestations. The theertham is blood red and was flung around quite a bit. (I'm tempted to translate theertham as holy water, but would then be guilty of the same literary dilution that I've been cursing in the translations I've been reading.)
Sadly no photos are allowed inside the temple premises. But I did mange to take a hurried snap on the way out. (My photographic skills are just below zero as is evident.) I can add to the mood of this photo by telling you that my two main thoughts were extreme joy on seeing the exit to the temple and also extreme doubts as to whether I was still in the twenty-first century after all that I had seen.
Heading further south to Varkala however brought me back to the twenty-first century with a jolt. The part of the beach where I was loitering about was full of foreign tourists and I felt like I had walked out of medieval India into modern Frankfurt. It was tough to find a local in the area! Anyway, no findings here except for excellent tandoori marlin and this surreal sign.
Let me enhance the mood of this photo by telling you that I now felt that I had walked out of medieval India into modern Frankfurt and then into some alternate universe where everyone is a little mad. I figured it was time to leave Kerala. :-)
I've also ended up re-reading Yuganta and continue to admire Irawati Karve's slicing insight into the Mahabharata. Her realist, biting and often cynical stance on the characters of this epic is something I'm truly enamoured by. What I admire is her ability to take the given details of a mythological scenario and come up with an extremely believable spin, that cuts through the ornamental elements of the tale and instead lays bare the character motivations that drive the scene – rendering the scene an abstraction of an essential human problem and as a result – relevant!
Point to remember – cut through the jazz of the mythology and find the human problems embedded in the story.
Another stunningly amateur photo of a bastion…
Here I became obsessed with the red laterite stone used at Fort Aguada. And I'm digging around to find out more about it. I wasn't sure what the information was for though, but the texture of the stone is incredible. I wonder if it would be possible to climb a face made out of this kind of rock.
However I think this stone thread will go into a different play. The basic premise of this other play I'm working on is that a single space can conflate multiple discourses – basically I'm exploring multiple stories within a single location across time.
Been a bit of an iffy transient kind of month… Most of my brain time was spent working on this laterite play which is on a tight deadline. More on V&B in due course…
Oh and a random quote to end... It's a lovely line. I'm thinking about it in the V&B context.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
