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THE
ARTS
An
Epic Return
They came
from Russia, Indonesia, Cambodia. To Khajuraho. Celebrating the universal
reach and appeal of the great Indian masterpiece-the Ramayan.
By
S. Kalidas
As
epics go, it has all the gripping ingr
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| Ram
and Sita receive blessings from King Dashrath and his queen Kaushalya
as they leave for exile as dipicted by the Ranga Sri Little Ballet
Troupe |
edients that
make a saga universal and everlasting. With love, loyalty, seduction and
greed in all their varying shades, with its colourful characters-benign
and evil-few stories have seized human imagination through the millennia
as the story of Ram, the prince of Ayodhya. In India, of course, the Ramayan
continues to evoke reverence and on occasion stir up political passions.
But such is its fascination that its geographical reach spans South-east
Asia, and as we realise now, even Russia; besides Hinduism, it manifests
in Buddhist, Jain and Sikh traditions too.
Surprisingly,
it was not at Ayodhya or Panchvati that people caught up with the many
Rams and Sitas, Lakshmans and Hanumans currently touring India. Coming
from as far as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore and even
Russia, the artistes have been invited by the Indian Council for Cultural
Relations (ICCR) and the Khajuraho Millennium Committee (KMC) to perform
at Delhi, Khajuraho, Varanasi and Chitrakoot.
Today the
legacy of Ram is being sought to be pigeon-holed in one particular Brahminical
canon. This multi-splendoured celebration of the epic comes to reinforce
the fact that to achieve wider, cross-cultural relevance, history has
to become the fodder of legends, and legends need to undergo a metamorphosis
to emerge as quasi-universal myths.
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| Ram
and Sita in the Balinese version |
Ayodhya is,
at its universal best, an island of purity in the minds of countless people
across the world. It is not only the small town on the banks of the Sarayu,
in what we today know as Uttar Pradesh, but also the capital of the kings
of Thailand who even today are given the title of Ram. It is the sacred
space created by the Balinese court dancers practising the Adi Darma (original
faith). Even the vast Hindu relics of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Or more
ironically, a candyfloss set in the studios of the erstwhile Soviet Union
where Gennady Pechnikov has made a career out of playing Ram in films,
television and theatre for over 40 years.
In this
scheme, while the moral and ethical import of the saga remains constant,
the details tend to vary, adapted as they are to specific temporal and
cultural contexts. By trying to concretise these myths into specificities
of history and geography, one only limits their area of influence and
relevance.
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| Russia's
Pechnikov has been portraying Ram for over 40 years |
Khajuraho
celebrates the human spirit in all its sensual and sacred abandon. Its
magnificent 1,000-year-old temples thus served as a magical backdrop last
week to recreate the multiple versions of Ramayan. The open-air stage
in the shadow of the Chitragupta temple became the sacred space where
for each of the seven nights this most complete of human dramas was played
out in different languages, in different costumes by different nationalities.
There was
the Bali Dewata Dance Group from Indonesia, the Ramakien from Thailand,
the Singapore Chinese Opera Ensemble, the Myanmar Ramayan Group, the Royal
Cambodian Ballet Troupe and the one and only Lord Ram of Russia, Pechnikov.
From India two troupes were invited-the Margi Kathakali Troupe from Kerala
and the Ranga Sri Little Ballet Troupe from Bhopal. Jointly organised
by the ICCR, the Madhya Pradesh Kala Parishad and the KMC, the Khajuraho
International Ramayan festival brought to an end the year-long Khajuraho
millennium celebrations.
With Vice-President
Krishna Kant, state Governor Bhai Mahavir and Chief Minister Digvijay
Singh gracing the occasion, the tiny hamlet of Khajuraho was inundated
with securitymen and local bureaucrats. Whether the festival accrues any
benefits to Khajuraho or the tourism industry in Madhya Pradesh is a moot
point. The organisers, however, pledged that an international dance event
would be added to its cultural calendar apart from the regular dance fest
held here. For which the Government needs to make this remote village
more accessible, or it will continue to be a rich tourists' niche that
it is now.
In a festival
of this sort it is understood that only selected episodes from the vast
epic can be enacted. Expectedly, virtually all the troupes chose key episodes
like Sita's abduction from Panchvati, Hanuman's flight across the sea
to Ravan's Lanka to contact Sita imprisoned in Ashok Vatika, the final
battle between Ram, Lakshman and Ravan and their armies, and the heroic
return of the divine couple and their entourage to Ayodhya. Immensely
interesting were the subtle, stylistic details of characterisation, costumes
and presentation.
For almost
half a century now, the Ranga Sri Little Ballet Troupe has been a cause
celebre in the annals of modern Indian theatre. Set up by the late Shanti
Bardhan, a brilliant acolyte of Uday Shankar, in 1952, its novel adaptation
of the Ramayan through the use of masked characters in puppet-like costumes,
was a huge success, winning the first ever Edinburgh Festival Award in
1964 besides many other accolades. Bardhan's wife Gul, in her 70s now,
deserves kudos for not only keeping the show alive despite many hurdles
but also continuing to dance till today.
However,
like many other modern presentations, this one too stereotypes the character
of Ravan by depicting him in a Kathakali type of costume. The not-so-subliminal
message it sends out is that the dark south Indian represents the demon
amongst us. Most latter-day north Indian versions also strait-jacket the
character into an ugly, obsessive, bungling fool, which is far from what
the earlier Sanskrit and Pali texts portray.
Ravan, in
many ways, is actually a far more interesting, complex and complete character
than Ram himself: a master of the shastras (pedagogic texts), a sadhaka
(one who combines meditation with asceticism) capable of moving Lord Shiva
to grant him a boon, a connoisseur of the arts and a musician par excellence,
a poet of repute, a brave man and not insignificantly, a Ram-bhakta (devotee
of Ram) himself. All Ramayan texts state that it was ordained Ram be born
as a human, with all human frailties, to play out the saga of Ramayan,
with Ravan as his adversary. Ravan, it should be remembered, is believed
to have gone to swarga (heaven) after death.
Similarly,
the Cambodian version portrays Hanuman, the monkey God, with intense,
but perhaps misplaced, realism. Here Hanuman is more of a comic monkey-replete
with simian mannerisms like picking out and eating lice-than the son of
Anjana and the wind God, Pawan. In any case, realism was never an ideal
in oriental or Indian art. There always needs to be an element of stylisation
which marks the artistic endeavour from banal reality. The second century
text, Natya Shastra, underlines this vital difference between the dramatic
(natya dharmi) and the commonplace (loka dharmi). So though at one level
the incredibly real antics of the Cambodian Hanuman drew applause, it
did irritate purists like Pechnikov. "Hanuman was not an ordinary
monkey," he complained after the show.
From Bali
to Myanmar, the varied interpretations of the epic are a fascinating pageant
of human endeavour, ambition, frailties and obsessions. In each of these
variations, apart from the plot and storyline, there are several similarities
in the style of dancing and music that underline the Indian influence.
It is remarkable
that India exercised this influence not through the force of the sword
or of colonialism like many other religions of the world but by the power
of ideas and moral strength. Which is precisely the essence of Hindu dharma
as embodied in the multiple versions of the Ramayan.
Top |
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Forget
endology, writes INDIA TODAY Senior Editor S. Prasannarajan. Celebrate
2001, celebrate the future in 
