Gender Contexts in Folk Performances: A Study of the Female Performers of Nautanki / Gauri Nilakantan Mehta

 

Sage Viswamitra succumbs to the charms of Menaka

Source: Exotic India Art

 

Any context that involves control and exclusion, of the master subject, or the dominant individual or group of the situation, manifests itself through its exclusive performance or by giving high status to them. This can be seen in artistic folk theatre genres.  In most situations of aesthetic authority, we can see that the exclusion or low status of one gender, mostly of females, is to establish a total power of the males.  My paper will attempt to illustrate this sometimes exclusion and low status of the female performers in folk theatre genres of North India and Pakistan.  It proposes to study and analyze the gender contexts of female performers in Nautanki within Uttar Pradesh andPunjab with a special reference to her status in society. Women have been performers since antiquity and many gender stereotypes have been attributed to her.  Before we analyze the gender contexts in Nautanki let us briefly elaborate on the historical and social conditions of female performers in folk theatrical forms in India & Pakistan.

 

Historical and Social Conditions of Female Performers

Women have always been performers in India and Pakistan since the ancient times.  The antecedents to dancing girls and courtesans go back to early ages.  Statues of theIndus Valley civilization (3000-1500 B.C.) show strong associations with music and dance.  A bronze figurine of a dancing girl was unearthed in the ruins of Mohenjadaro, inPakistan, that shows the popularity of performing arts in the Indus Valley amongst females.  The figurine has been found in association with a large number of statues of goddesses that indicates that dancing and music must have had close associations with worship and therefore making it popular among women.   Although, female worship was considered pure and divine during the Indus Valley Civilization, we have to keep in mind the paradoxical situation of female performers in later ages from fifth or sixth century B.C. onwards.

Women became the sites of orthodoxy as they were seen to be the essential carriers of tradition.   According to Mandakranta Bose,

The burden of maintaining order within a family and within society as a whole fell on women…But this was a responsibility within which women quickly became imprisoned by the needs of conserving tradition.  Instead of embodying positions of decision -making power and defining order, women became vehicles of orthodoxy. (Bose 4)

 By looking at archeological evidences as in sculptural depictions in temples, paintings and early dramatic literature like the Kamasutra (800 A.D.), a treatise on the art of love and lovemaking, many scholars tend to believe that the female performers had a high social standing in ancient Indian society (3000 B.C. to 1200 A.D.).  Many literary texts make references to Apasaras or heavenly maidens, also accomplished performers and dancers.   They lured heroes and sages from their path of duty, for eg.  Sage Viswamitra succumbed to the charms of Menaka.  Seduction and allurement hence is an essential characteristic of these courtesans.  Dancing and performing hence had strong sensual connotations.  Many of the courtesans such as Rambha, Tillotama and Manorama were widely respected and had a high social standing.

However, the relation between these respectable representations and its extension to “real” women can be argued.  For e.g. the famous Khajurao caves of Orissa of Eastern India (800 A.D. to 1200 A. D.) depict females playing percussive instruments that later remained in the exclusive domains of the men.  We can argue that perhaps these female performers (as shown in the statues) were courtesans, and it was their profession that allowed them to have access to display certain creative skills.  The Kamasutra, written by Vatsayana, describes the skills of the courtesan, who was to be well versed in the act of love making but also needed to be equally well versed in music, dance, drama, and painting besides giving them sexual pleasure, in order to please her patrons.  Respect given to these courtesans hence had sexual connotations.  The paradoxes that are created between real and representations of women has been understood and defined by Dhruvrajan.  According to him,

The female principle is worshipped, yet in daily life flesh and blood females are secondary citizens, humiliated depersonalized.  The more a woman lowers herself the more she is praised. (Dhruvrajan 100)

          This paradox can be seen in other areas of worship as well, despite the fact that female worship is an essential part of the religion of India; females are still in some isolated cases “dedicated to temples” that are called the devdasis. These devdasistraditionally were the courtesans and the dancing girls. These women had a low social status and became victims of prostitution. Devadasis, or servant of god, are ceremoniously married to the gods by the symbolic tying of the necklace around their necks.  As they are “married to the gods” they have a social sanction to keep sexual contact with men.  The honor of helping with temple shrines such as cleaning devotional vessels and decorating shrines belonged to the devdasis.  More significantly, following the heavenly nymph prototype, they worshiped, propitiated and entertained the deities (embodied in images) with dancing.  Hueing Tsang, a Chinese visitor to India in the 8thcentury testifies to this well established institution of temple dancers, an Arabian traveler, Al Beruni remarked that about 500 dancers were dedicated in the Somanth temple.

Stigmas have been associated with female performers both historically and socially.  For example, as discussed earlier female performers in the past belonged to a set class, the devdasis who were married to the gods.  The devdasis who often had to “entertain” men through music and dance and sex thus had some sort of socio- religious- legal sanction because of this “marriage” to the gods.  The links between marriage and performance also takes on different levels of meanings as many women performers in India also discontinue their profession after their marriages to men.  As tradition places high emphasis on modesty and virtue, many women do not continue with public performances after their marriages, since they would come under the public view and scrutiny.  This shows the ambivalence that is maintained towards the female performers in society. Many female performers of Nautanki are married but they belong to certain sects & caste that allows them to perform. They primarily belong to lower caste or lower strata of the society. Thus, there is direct connection between economic status, lower position, marriage & profession that women choose.

With the advent of the Mughals in India we can see the tradition of dancing girls in courts.  Performance reached the courts from the sacred shrines of temples.  Amir Khusrau, a famous writer in the 12th century A.D. recorded his praise for dancing girls. He also invited them to dance and sing in the marriage of his son.  The professional performers were called nutwah, bhugleye, anjari, nat.  The actors in Nautanki are also called the nats and the female performers are the natis. Traditionally the only women who acted and performed along with the male counterparts in Nautanki were these devdasis.

          The connections between the royalty and performing arts are also a part ofIndia’s cultural history.  Often in the past, the court dancers were considered the courtesans, or the nautch girls, and sometimes the performances were performed in the brothels, which were frequented by high-ranking officers of the court and warriors.  Wade points to this and argues that the courtesan dancers were considered nautch girls when these performances were relegated to the brothels[1] (126).

          A few more examples can make the connections between the royalty and the female performers clear.  Grace Thompson Seton, a British woman, who traveled in Indiaduring the early 19th century remarks on the life of “natuch” girls,

I entered the dancing girl quarter, which looked like any other middle class street and good fortune!  One of the dancing girls was standing in a doorway, arrayed in white trousers and long yellow diaphanous sari.  Her middle and feet and arms were bare.  She was not young, nor to my mind, good looking, but she had well developed muscles and supported the entire family on her earnings.

                   I was told that if I would stay a few days longer, H.H. would arrange a Nautch, but that his best dancer, Moti Jan, was away, having been loaned to a neighboring Raja for a wedding festivity.  The maharaja subsides all the dancing girls and therefore controls their actions. (Seton 67)

Written in the early 19th century, this quote shows that dancing was relegated to low class women, wearing “diaphanous clothes”, supporting their families through their incomes from prostitution or “entertaining” the high ranking officials of the court, their actions being controlled by the kings (Maharaja).  The king clearly treated the women as possessions since these women were “loaned”.  The connection between royalty and dramatic forms therefore seems to have had a long historical connection.

Amorous songs and dances were rendered by these nautch girls.   The Calcutta Gazette, a newspaper of 9th June1808 carries one version,

O says what present from your hand

Has reached me save caresses bland

And oh! Was present e’er so dear

As love soft whispers to my ear

Mar in affliction‘s sad decay

How this poor frame wastes fast away

I languish, faint from eve to morn

Nor taste of food one barley corn (Paul, 85).

However, some low class women traditionally performed classical theatrical forms, for example Bhartanatyam and Kuchipudi, two major southern Indian dance dramas.  Their primary duty was to perform in the temples as dancing girls, but they could also supplement their family income by serving as prostitutes.  Many folk dramatic forms have had the traditional exclusion of females, and only few forms like the Lavani and Tamasha of Western India have included women.  These dramatic forms often use camaraderie and sexual innuendoes; therefore, the female performers of such forms do not have high social standing.  Therefore, these performances are often “popular entertainment” and quite often-religious themes are not depicted.

 Thus, with very few exceptions women were effectively banned from theatrical stage, whether rural or urban, folk or classical.  A striking instance of the extensiveness of this ban can be seen in Kathakali, an all male form folk dance drama of south India.  Wade observes,

Kathakali was developed in Kerala, on the southwestern edges of the subcontinent, in a region that is traditionally matriarchal and in which women have influential in public affairs and have a reputation for considerable degrees of freedom in society in general. Yet even in this area, so deeply had the ban on women penetrated that Kathakali had been, and remains, an all male form.

(Wade 129)

But, historically & by large it is the female performers who have always dominated the performing art tradition in India and one such form is the Nautanki.  Females play a very important role in the Nautanki performances.  The next section will analyze the tradition of Nautanki in northern India & Pakistan with detailed references to its gender contexts.

 

Gender Contexts in Nautanki

Nautanki, a secular semi operatic folk theatrical form of Northern India (Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan) and Pakistan (Punjab region) developed from swangand naqqal.  Performed in large open spaces and erected platforms, the performance starts with an invocation to the gods or the mangalcharan, accompanied by beating of the drums or the nagaras. The acts have strong and powerful story lines with tales are taken from epics, legends, and important events.  The languages employed are common spoken language of the people and the texts are written in Urdu, Braj, Punjabi and Rajasthani.  Dances, songs and comic acts make the routine.  In the early ages most of the men acted as women in Nautanki, however from the 1930s we see that females performing.

Nautanki is a folk form that has several hidden gender contexts within it.  The role of the females, both as an actor and within in the script is intricately weaved in relations to the set historical and social conditions of women.  According to Katherine Hansen,

Nautanki theatre as well as  myth, epic and popular cinema do not reflect actual social relations, gender differences, and power alignments but rather produce and perpetuate them.  They frame paradigms of gendered conduct that assist both women and men in defining their identities, inculcating values to the young, and judging the action of others.  (7)

Thus, Nautanki is not  only a result but a cause of a particular social gender formation and vice versa.   Nautanki plays a very important role in understanding the cultural and social formations of India and helps us to establish the notions of womanhood, & further elaborate gender relations between men and women. Gender roles are also conditioned by the cultural, psychological and social correlates of a society and it clearly defines the rules and expectations to being male or female.  Gender roles are thus environmentally conditioned and theatre can play an important part in creation and maintenance of  such cultural stereotypes.

 The very origin of Nautanki has strong gender connotations.  Nautanki, originated in the theatrical play about Shahzadi Nautanki, depicting a woman who was flower light weighing only about 36 gms. Both fair and lovely she was the beloved of Phul Singh.  The name of the play is associated with a desirable woman whose hands one could not win. Phul Singh is rebuked by his sister- in- law and he decides to win his pure love despite reproaches. Finally with the help of garderener or malin he gets disguised as his daughter- in- law and he meets his beloved Nautanki and unites with her.  The princess here is desirable, bewitching, and a physical need and love for the man.  Gender stereotypes can be clearly seen in this play as princess Nautanki is a light weighed virgin woman, untouched and a delicate beauty and Phul Singh`s manhood is rebuked.  Heterosexual love between man and woman on both literal and metaphorical levels are emphasized and opposing characteristics between men and woman are thus exalted.

Sexuality is one of the dominant themes that occur in most Sangit texts or the dramatic texts.  According to Hansen, incidents (ibid within the performance), images, and characters repeatedly focus awareness on the pleasures and pitfalls of sexuality. (27)  The recent sangit text Udal ka Byah (the marriage of Udal), the hero Udal meets his beloved Phulva and wants to marry her and his attempts are thwarted by Narpati Singh and his son, who are Phulva‘s father and brother. Phulva is described to be a lissome, beautiful princess.

The Sangit texts or the play scripts of Nautanki are replete with the female stereotypes. Women in the Sangit texts range from seductresses to honorable virtuous women upholding their womanhood and marriages.  In the text Lucknow Ka Lootera  (The Dacoits of Lucknow) the protagonist Hamid goes to plunder a rich merchant, whose wife falls at his feet and begs for his life to be spared and when Hamid makes overtures at her, she describes herself as a ‘pativrata’ one who is vowed to her husband.  She remarks at his attempts,

 

Door se baat kar paas mere na aa, yesi kalma mujhe mat sunao. Shok se loot dhan mera le jaiye, ek pativrata ka sat digao nahi

(Talk to me from afar, and don’t say such things to me. You are free to plunder but do not let me break my vow of marriage Akeel, 6)

The female character is rarely seen alone and she is always in connection with the man. The patriarchal society of northern India and Pakistan defines this position of the woman in the texts.     At the same time we also see Hamid frequenting a prostitute’s, Chameli Jaan’s “Kotha” or house, who is clearly a seductress and vamp.  According to Hansen,

 

Nautanki poets delight in describing women as murderers, lustful vamps, warring goddesses, and potent sorceresses.  Yet they expound an ideology of female chastity and subservience that belies the powerful posture of so many women in their stories.  (171, Hansen)

Love, romance, wooing and winning are some of the common themes in the Sangit texts.  In the play Siyah Posh, the daughter of the Wazir of Syria falls in love with Gabru.  One day while trying to meet Jamal his lover he gets caught and his execution is ordered.  The king in his daily rounds hears their love for each other and forgives Gabru who is united with Jamal.

The men in the sangit texts have an exalted position for example in RajaHarischandra, the king bequeaths everything and has to leave the kingdom.  He has to earn his living by working in the crematoriums while his wife works as a servant.  One day his son dies while playing and Harischandra refuses to cremate his own son as his wife cannot afford the fees.  While his unrighteousness is upheld while his queen Taramati often breaks into seductive gestures like swaying her hips and kicking her heels. Hence there are different value additions for males and females.

Many of the acts of the female performers are seductive and amorous songs dances and comic routines make the story go further along. In the play, Lucknow keLootera, a song and dance sequence is enacted between the dacoit Hamid and the seductress and prostitute Chameli.  Chameli Jaan sings out loud,

 

Kya haalat banayi mere gulhjaara

Kyu utra hai chera batao tumhara

Hamid

Na khuch haal pooch meri maahepaara

Is wakt aaya musibat ka maara

(Oh my beloved why do you look so unhappy, don’t ask me why my sweet heart I am in trouble, 15)

     Since the performance takes place at 11 pm and continues till the wee hours of the morning, sex and sexuality are recurrent themes.  Women performers are often seen in their erotic persona, clearly to please the men and allure their audiences.  They hence create as well as fulfill the need “to be looked at.”  Mulvey describes this “looked at ness” as seen in many traditional performances,

In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can connote to be looked at ness. (145)

It is this “looked at ness” of the female performers in Nautanki that delegates to her an inferior position as compared to men.  Irigaray, the leading French feminist comments on this fact,

Investment in the look is not privileged in women as in men.  More than the other senses, the eye objectifies and masters.  It sets at a distance, maintains that distance.  In our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch and hearing has brought about an impoverishment of bodily relations.  The moment the look dominates, the body looses its materiality.[2] (70)

In modern days, Nautanki is characterized by lusty singing, dancing and women often performing to the tunes of popular film songs and mimic erotic dances.  The main objective of the performance is to entertain and delight their audiences.  A kind of liaison is thus created and developed.  There is hence an exchange of desire, a kind of courtship between the audiences and the performer that is born.  The dancing and singing of submissive females appeal to the masculinity of the audiences.  Therefore the performances of Nautanki, creates an imbalance for the female performer, negating her position and demeaning her persona and establishing the total power nexus of the males.

To conclude, the Nautanki performance creates different values for men and women, and makes a comment on existing socio- economic & political situation of female performers.  Nautanki thus creates many contradictions and conflicts for the female performer however one cannot negate or undermine its creative values and inputs into the rich cultural tradition of India and Pakistan.  Nautanki despite its strong gender biases is one of the leading folk theatrical forms that have lent its hand into many other popular mediums of communication such as films and songs.  This form thus needs to be studied and understood in all aspects of its rich diversity in terms of its acting style, rich sangit texts, music and costume.

Readings:

  1. Nevile, Pran. Nautch girls of India: Dancers, Singers Playmates Ravi Kumar Publishers: New Delhi, 1996
  2.  Prakash, Sinha.  Lorang: Uttar Pradesh. Hindi Sansthan: Lucknow, 1990
  3. Hanna, Judith Lynne. Dance Sex Gender: Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance and Desire  Chicago UP: Chicago, 1988
  4. Thomas, Helen ed. Dance Gender and Culture McMillan Press: London, 1993
  5. Gargi, Balwant. Folk Theatre of India Rupa and Co.: Delhi, 1991
  6. Vatsyayan, Kapila. Traditional Indian Theatre National Book Trust: Delhi, 2005
  7. Hansen, Katherine. Grounds For Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India Manohar Publications: Delhi,1992
  8. Ghadially. Women in Indian Society Sage publication: New Delhi, 1988
  9. Dhruvrajan.  Hindu Women and the Power of Ideology Bergin and Garvey: Mass, 1989
  10. I C Owens. Feminist and Postmodernism. Pluto press: London, 1985
  11. Mulvey. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen vol. 16 no. 3 1975
  12. Wade, Bonnie. The Status of Women in the Performing Arts of India and Iberia: Cross-Cultural Perspectives from Historical Accounts and Field Reports. Blacking, John. Ed. The Performing Arts: Music and Dance. Hague: Mouton, 1979
  13. Seton, Grace. Yes, Lady Saheb” A Woman’s Adventuring with Mysterious India. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1925.
  14. Painter, Akeel. Lucknow Ka Lootera Mumbai publications: Allahabad (sangit text)
  15. Painter, Akeel. Udal ka Byah Mumbai publications: Allahabad (sangit text)

[1] The British described these courtesans or the dancing girls as natuch or dancing girls.  Nautch is derived from the hindi word Natch.

[2]  Irigaray cited from I C Owens Feminist and Postmodernism. Pluto press: London 1985




Let your child be what he wants to be this summer / Gouri Nilakantan

 

 

 

Platform for Action in Creative Theatre(PACT) and KINDERPLUME has initiated a new summer theatre workshop, Abhivyakti in the regions of Delhi and NCR.  It is uniquely designed theatre workshop as it involves all the aspects of theatre namely creative writing, puppetry, face painting, theatre craft acting and improvisation and poetry reading and recitation.  According to Neeraj Kumar Mehta, the business head of PACT, a child becomes truly empowered through theatre as Abhivyakti is not a forced activity by parents who just want to get rid of their children during summer.  Abhivyakti truly believes in free expression and that is being done through the powerful medium of theatre.

Many theatre workshops are going on in the capital but Abhivyakti does not believe in flocking the children like sheep in a class so the class sizes are not more than 13 children in each batch.  Many parents of the Abhivyakti children are well informed and wish to continue with these classes beyond the summer which is a heartening start.  No activity is repeated more than thrice and the children’s consent is taken by instructors from time to time.  Sheel Kalia a regular instructor at Abhivyakti has himself undergone an intensive theatre workshop and certification program.  Pact believes that all instructors teaching the skill of theatre need to be not only well equipped but equipped way beyond ordinary expectations.  As the children have a strong voice they should be heard by the teacher who should be capable of making quick changes in his approach if his activity is not liked for any reason.

The course has been designed in two folds, namely both the process and the product of theatre are given equal importance.  Many theatre companies emphasize only on the product or the final performance is given upmost importance while others totally neglect the product and only pay attention to the process.  Here at Abhivyakti both the process and the product are given significant amount of attention.  Out of the 24 sessions 12 sessions involve the process while the rest of the 12 pay attention to the product.

By the end of the workshop a feeling of comradeship, confidence and enhancement of the communication skill is hoped to be achieved in the children.   The program has been designed in such manner that the age difference between the children does not impede the classes in any manner.  A child as small as 4 fit in well with a 12 year old!  It is surprising to see how well a small kindergarten child enjoys himself along with a 12 year old.  PACT and KINDERPLUME has truly designed an innovative and path changing program in the area of theatre workshops.  One hopes to continue with such further activities in the times to come.




Theatre Review: Pagla Ghoda by Gouri Nilakantan

 

 

A scene from the play

 

Pagla Ghoda of Badal Sircar was performed by a newly formed amateur group of Gurgaon AAKUTAM directed by Mahesh Prasad at Epicenter on the 17th of April 2011.  Pagla Ghoda cleverly uses contemporary situations and social problems to life in death attitude of modern life.  The play sees four drunk young men in the cremation grounds talking about the love in their lives.  They keep themelves entertained through stories about these women that they have loved and lost in their own manner.  The anguish in the characters has been beautifully crafted by Badal Sircar that has strong social moorings.  While the play at one level speaks on psychological and social problems with the images of a badly bruised Malati or a crying Laxmi it also speaks of the four men and their deep relationship with the women.

While Mahesh Prasad has clearly made an honest interpretation of the play the hidden problems lying within the play and subtext could not reach out to the audiences.  The actors were too deeply involved in speaking their lines with clarity and focus loosing sight of their characterization.  The female actors struggled to keep pace with the better counterparts, the men.  The female actors often broke into hysteria, sobs and tears and thus giving a single dimension to their acting style.  At one level the play is also about the residue of the middle class to have failed to adjust and align and ceases to aspire amongst the intellectually alive urban middle class.  These social adjustments were lacking in the play as the acting appeared tired and fatigue seems to have hit both the audiences and the actors as the play over ran its time limit by a good half an hour.

The lighting of the play was extremely well designed and significantly added value to the mood of the play.  The quiet introspection and the inner contemplation of the characters were used imaginatively by the choice of dim lights and blue overtones.  The set design also needs special mention as was well crafted and the use of the space provided was covered excellently with good preferences of fabric material and wood.

Pagla Ghoda is about the guilt of men in personal and social relations with a continuation of the conventional mode of living.  The acting of the character Laxmi must be mentioned as it was genuine and spoke well.   Perhaps Sircar wants each of his characters to suffer from the awareness of their social responsibility.  It is important for the director to read that sense of guilt, responsibility and social problems so that it can further enhance the acting style, convention and speech patterns used in the production.

As the body of the actor and its relation on stage is one of the immediate concerns of Badal Sircar the director has correctly used breakdown of the conventions of theatrical time and space.   The production would have been even more interesting if the simultaneous action of the play had been broken down by using the female actors as the focal points of entry an exit and also if non sequential modes of narration had been used more often.   Overall the play could not speak well enough despite the technical excellence as it requires more dramaturgical analysis and theatrical inputs.




Final Solutions: Untold Stories of Religious Freedom and Resentment from the Eyes of a Female / Gouri Nilakantan

 

Above: A poster of Dattani’s play

 

A paper  read by Gouri Nilakantan Mehta at the North American Conference of Social Philosophy at Marquette University, USA

Nothing can be more painful than carrying an unseen tale desiring religious freedom within one self.  Often we come across extreme situations in our lives whereby these concealed stories expressing both religious freedom and resentment expression. Often a paradox, such occurrences while rekindling our tolerance exposes hidden resentments and bitterness towards religion that lie dormant within us.  Mahesh Dattani, one of India’s leading playwrights, cleverly portrays these strong emotions by using the lens of his characters, particularly females in his play Final Solutions.  Dattani uses the eyes of his female characters to display their inner secretive narratives of freedom at the same time rendering the religious antipathy held by them.

 

Mahesh Dattani was born on 7th August 1958, eleven years after the independence of India in 1947, and studied in the elite St. Joseph’s college at Bangalore. He worked primarily as a copywriter and formed his theatre Playpen in 1984.  In 1986, he wrote his first full-length play, Where There’s a Will, and  in 1986 and he won the Sahitya award from the Government of India, for his book Final Solutions and Other Plays.  He presently resides in Bangalore, a large metropolitan, popularly called the Silicon Valley of the East, with its “high tech, state of the art” buildings and it having own popular culture.  The plays of Mahesh Dattani, hence are largely seen as being “elitist” and is often met with open hostilities in parochial universities.  As Final Solutions primarily focuses on religious relationships between both the Hindus and Muslims it challenged by many.

Dattani himself declares,

I love it when I am confronted with remarks such as ‘Your plays are  preaching to the converted. You should do final solutions in the     villages.’  Such prejudice! How can anyone be blind to their own             remarks?  Assumptions galore that citified English-speaking people are  all liberal minded and villagers are communal and bigoted.

(Dattani, Collected Plays, xi)

 

Dattani is thus well aware about the repercussions that his plays carry.  He has displayed his immense dramatic vision and skill in his play Final Solutions.  This play centrally focuses on communal tensions particularly religious anxiety set within complex human relationships and emotions. The hidden religious anger in the characters are exposed through unknown stories expressing intense freedom.

 

Right in the onset of the play Dattani makes a comment of freedom as expressed by Daksha, one of the central female characters. We see young Daksha, a newly married girl of fifteen writing her dairy reflecting her yearning of self will.  She writes, “Dear Diary, today is the first time I have dared to put my thoughts on your pages (Dattani, 165).  Daksha is thus aware that these feelings of independence might cause anxiety as she declares that ‘maybe it isn’t fair to trouble you with my sadness.’ (166)  Dattani hence propels the audiences to ponder and reflect on her condition of limited sovereignty.  The fact that she can no longer sing and is married to Hari at such a young age denies her existence of freedom so much so that  that Daksha’s being is merged into that of Hari’s as the newly born Hardika and she is rechristened.

 

While Daksha subsumes in her apparent reality, she emerges time to time again in the play, not forgetting her free will, confronting Hardika and wanting her self to rise like a phoenix from the ashes.  We see this especially in times of crisis; when Hardika is confronted with apparent fear and danger from the malicious and dangerous mob outside her house, Daksha comes forward from her soul.  It is cleverly written by Dattani as questions of Hardika which Daksha answers.

HARDIKA. Why did he do it?

DAKSHA. Oh God! Why do I have to suffer?

HARDIKA.  Didn’t he have any feelings for me?

DAKSHA.  I just wanted them to be my friends!

HARDIKA. How could be let these people into my house?

DAKSHA. Oh! I hate this world!

HARDIKA. They killed his grandfather! (Dattani, 179)

 

Religion plays a central role in the play and Hardika’s position as a Hindu woman is constantly reiterated.  Thus in one way her “class consciousness” is maintained throughout the play as being a “chaste Hindu woman.  Her husband, Hari and Father in law, Wagh, the family, whom she must respect and obey impose these conditions on her and any disobedience to them is met with severely.  Female freedom is thus being thwarted by so called religious sanction.  According to Lyn Spillman,

 

Closer to a class unconscious than to a “ class consciousness” in the  marxist sense, the sense of the position one occupies in the social space  (what goffman calls the ‘sense of ones place) is the practical mastery  of the social structure as a whole which reveals itself through the sense  of the position occupied in that structure.  The categories of perception  of the social world are essentially the product of the incorporation of  the objective structures of the social space.  Consequently they incline  agents to accept the social world as it is, to take for granted, rather than  to rebel against it, to put forward opposed and even antagonistic  possibilities.  The sense of one s place, as the sense of what one can or  cannot ‘allow oneself’, implies a tacit acceptance of one’ s position, a  sense of limits (“ that’s not meant for us) or what amounts the same  thing-  sense of distances, to be marked and maintained, respected, and  expected of others.  (Spillman,70)

 

Daksha’/Hardika’s religious and gender position is strictly maintained and her limit as a female is demarcated by the men of her household.  This is further seen    when she questions Hari about his reluctance in offering a job to Zarine’s father (her Muslim friend’s father) he gets angry with her.

 

The reason why Hari was looking at me so strangely was because I just  asked him why we couldn’t give Zarune’s father a loan or something to  start his business again…Then why did he come to our mill I         questioned Hari.  This is when for the first time Hari became angry  with me.  I never expected him so.  He shouted so loudly, he sounded  just like Wagh.  And he called me names.  Names that are too shameful  to mention to you.  My cheeks went red. (Dattani, 216)

 

Her resentment towards her husband and her agony becomes well known to the audiences as she unburdens her feelings. “He beckoned me to lie with him on the bed. And I did. And my cheeks went red again. Not with shame but with anger at myself.”  Mahesh Dattani frequently takes as his subjects, within the complicated dynamics of the modern urban family. His characters struggle for some kind of freedom and happiness, under the weight of tradition, cultural constructions of gender and repressed desire. His dramas are often played out on multi level-layers where interior and exterior identities of human subjects, especially the females, sometimes become one to defy and challenge cultural locations of India, typically seen through the collapse of religious structures.

 

In the play Final Solutions Dattani is challenging the construction of religion and its inner tension.  He is questioning the fundamentals of religion and he uses the female protagonists of the play Smita and Daksha as the focal points.  Both Smita and Daksha in their way challenge the overriding authority of religion and create a new dimension to being female and give a new meaning to female autonomy.  The actions of Daksha visiting the house of Zarine or Smita questioning her mother’s religious beliefs can be seen as creating a new aspect of tolerance.  Smita while confronting and challenging her mother asks her,

 

SMITA.  How can you expect me to be proud of something which stifles everything around it?  It stifles me! Yes! Maybe I am prejudiced  because I do not belong.  But not belonging makes things so clear.  I  can see so clearly how wrong you are.  You accuse me of running away from my religion.  Maybe I am …embarrassed mummy.  Yes  maybe I shouldn’t be.  What if I did what you do?  Praying and fasting  and…purifying myself all day.  Would you have listened to me if I told  you were wrong?  You will say yes, because you are certain I  wouldn’t say that then.  All right both are prejudiced, so what do you  want to do?  Shall we go back to sleep?

ARUNA. You said it stifles you?

SMITA. What?

ARUNA. Does being a Hindu stifle you?

SMITA. No living with one does. (Dattani, 211)

 

Dattani, through Smita creates a new category of being female and its autonomy, one who defies and tries to understand traditions in her own context.  She is one way refusing to accept a category, of being woman that her mother wants her to fit into.  Smita thus creates a new identity for herself that expresses strong freedom.  This female freedom has been well explained by Judith Butler creating new identity politics.

The premature insistence on a stable subject of feminism, understood  as a seamless category of women, inevitably generates multiple  refusals to accept the category. These domains of exclusion reveal the  coercive and regulatory consequences of that construction, even when  the construction has been elaborated for emancipatory purposes.  Indeed, the fragmentation within feminism and the paradoxical          opposition to feminism from “women” whom feminism claims to  represent suggest the necessary limits of identity politics.

(Butler 1990: 4)

 

Aruna, Smita’s mother projects the other end of the spectrum as she laments this condition of her daughter and blurts out,

 

ARUNA.  I never felt like that.  I have always taken pride in my religion.  I never felt my mother was stifling me.  I was so happy   knowing that I was protected.  I grew up listening to the stories of our   gods and how they slew the demons to protect the good people of their   land.  And I was thankful to my mother for showing me the path of   truth.  I was happy.  (Dattani, 211)

 

Anita thus represents the other spectrum of religious tolerance.  Dattani clearly shows some condescension in the representation of this character. She is seen picking up the glasses of water cautiously drunk by Javed and Bobby , the two Muslim boys who have taken refuge in her house against the marauding mob, keeping them far away from her “pure” glasses.  Dattani is well aware of the religious implications such acts carry and he declares,

 

It’s to do with my perceptions. I don’t mean to say that this is a   definitive view of life. But several of the images that we carry  around in our minds are politically generated images and we   accept them to be as true. However I don’t think so and my  characters are simply a personification of my perceptions.

                                (Nair, The Invisible Observer)  

 

Each character in the play Final Solutions carries a hidden tale within their heart that carries their religious prejudices or tolerance forward.  Ramnik, the father, of Smita, in his tolerance and sympathy for the two Muslim men wants in one way to amend his hidden past.  This concealed history of religious intolerance and violence is hoped to be altered in the present by Ramnik   He also seeks freedom from his guilt and he finally tells his mother Hardika,

 

RAMNIK (looks at her with pity) It’s their shop.  It’s the same burnt- up shop we bought from them, at half its value.

(Pause.)  And we burnt it.  Your husband.  My father.  And his father.   They had burnt it in the name of communal hatred, because we wanted  a shop.  Also they learnt that…those people were planning to start a  mill like our own.  I can’t take it any longer.  I don’t think I will be  able to step into that shop again…when those boys came here, I thought I would…I hoped I would be able to…set things right.  I-I wanted to tell them that they are not the only ones who have destroyed.   I just couldn’t.  I don’t think I have the face to tell anyone.

(Pause.)  So, it wasn’t that those people hated you.  It wasn’t false   arrogance. (A Noor Jehan song can be heard very faintly.)  It was anger.  (Dattani, 226)

 

Ramnik clearly seeks atonement to his guilty past and his tolerance of the two intruders is an amendment to the faults of his forefathers.  He hence carries this untold burdening story yearning freedom from guilt and hoping to find relief in his actions.  He thus offers Javed a job in the very shop that his father had burnt- “It will be my pleasure to give you that job.  That shop, it used to be (pause.)  Take that job please.”

 

Smita the daughter on the other hand can’t cope with her hidden love for Babban or Bobby.  Smita by this further strengthens her religious sympathies and tolerance.

 

JAVED.  So, I just wanted to ask you whether there is anything between you and Bobby –still.

SMITA.  No.  I am not making any sacrifices.  There’s nothing between us anymore.  It was just a…There  wasn’t much between us.

(ibid)

SMITA.  Oh no! Please.  Don’t say that, I won’t be able to take that kind of guilt.  But…just now you said that you loved her too.

BOBBY.  Yes, I do.  But I would be lying if…I said I had completely forgotten you.  (Dattani, 217)

 

Even though Smita suppresses her own desires one realizes that she does carry the hidden feelings of love that emerge in her interaction with Babban.  One wonders whether her tolerance and her resentment to her mother religious views stems out of this hidden love.

 

As a paradox to Daksha, Hardika’s violent bitterness to the outsiders residing in her house, encounters with her childhood friend Zarine.  As the young Daksha writes in her dairy that her visit to Zarine’s house made her anger grow towards her.  She writes,

 

Later I learnt from Kanta that Wagh and Hari had felt sorry for them  and had even offered to help them by buying their burnt up little shop.   Zarine’s father wanted much more so the resentment.  What wretched  people.  All this fuss over such a small matter.  I hate people with false  pride.  As if it is their birthright to ask for more than they deserve. Such wretched people! Horrible people!

 

Little does Daksha know the whole truth? When the reality about the fact that the shop was burnt by her father in law and husband is dawned on her, all her concealed rage is nullified.  She knows that she will live in the same guilt and shame as Ramnik’s.  This silent story that she carries hence will burden her forever, finding no release.

 

Dattani uses the female characters to emphasize the prejudice (as shown in the anger of Hardika) and the tolerance (as shown in the love of Smita) that leads to religious resentment.  He uses the female protagonists to mirror the views of society and uses their feelings and yearnings of religious freedom to reflect upon the issues of communal hatred and violence.  One is forced to ponder whether such religious resentments are baseless and whether they have any validity.  Dattani hence realizes his audiences well and establishes the whole concern of communalism in a unique way by ingeniously using the eyes of the female protagonists.

 

Readings

Dattani, Mahesh.  Collected Plays.  Penguin Books: New Delhi, 2000.

 Mahesh Dattani: The Invisible Observor“. Gentleman, May, 2001. 19th April,2004. < http://www.anitanair.net/pages/profiles-md.htm>.

 

Spillman, Lyn., Cultural Sociology NY: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Butler, J., Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, NY: Routledge, 1990.




A Comparative Study of Chhau Masks of Eastern India and Ancient Greek Masks / Gouri Nilakantan

 

 

 

  Purulia Chhau Mask                                Greek Theatre mask                               Saraikela Chhau Mask 

pics courtesy : 4to40.com / classicalwainui.wordpress.com

Theatre is a powerful means of communication; it essentially is a transformation that allows both the spectators and performers to come into contact with one another.  The actors are thus able to play the role of another fictional persona.  This is created with the aid of theatrical devices and objects.  The mask is one such tool that helps the performer to alter his personality and thus recreate a totally new one.  Most theatrical traditions of the East, in particularly, India, employ the powerful use of masks and they are essential to many ritual customs.  Chhau, a major theatrical folk form of easternIndia namely Purulia (Bengal state) and Seraikela (Jharkhand) makes use of highly stylized masks to dramatize narratives.  The antecedents of this masked folk form resound with ancient theatrical practices of the west.  Chhau bears close semblance to the ancient Greek theatre and its origins may lie in the ancient tradition of Greece.  My paper will closely examine these cross connections between Chhau and Greek theatre with special reference to the usage of masks.

Both Chhau and the Dionysiac religion were from the beginning inclined towards transformation.  The individual persona in Chhau and Greek drama alters into a higher human being.  According to Rajkumar Suvendra, an ace Chhau performer,

When I put on the mask I become impersonal.  It is easier to slip into the body of another character.  It passes its function to the body.  Expression does not follow from my face to my body, but is transmitted from my body to my face. (53, Deo)

  The best aid in both the theatrical forms would be hence costume and the masks.  The generic words of both Chhau and tragedy in Greek drama give us important clues to this alteration of character.  The Greek word tragos, from which tragedy is arrived also, means one who dresses up and performs.  Tragedy is song in honor of the Greek gods. Komos the word from which comedy is arrived is where the members of the Greek drama when dressed up as animals take part in a happy parade.  Thus this cult contains all the elements which are necessary for the development of a serious drama or gay comedy by disguised human beings.

Greek drama essentially developed as a mark to celebrate the god Dionysus.  This fertility god is associated with both birth and death.  He is the only god whose parents were not divine.  He was twice born, his mother Semele died before he was born and his father Zeus removed him and deposited him in his thigh allowing the development of the offspring to emerge and develop later.  Dithyramb (double birth) is a religious hymn that is sung and danced by a chorus to honor the god, a precursor to tragic drama.

Double-ness plays an important role here that emphasizes the imagery and myth.  Dionysus was also the god of wine that elevated the followers into an ecstatic religious rapture.  This gives them an exalted condition and the singing and dancing changed them into satyrs or sacrificial goat.  They in the bliss is said to have direct effect and union with the gods.  Humans therefore could become god like.  Tragedy as mentioned before is also derived from the word tragoidia or goat song.  The tragedy drama developed out of the Dithyramb which was a song of rejoicing and the chorus led the dance in honor of the Dionysus. This was originally performed by men in disguise of the demonic followers of god; they were the satyrs who had equine ears and tails as depicted in the vases.  It was from this satyr the final form of drama developed.

The transformed individual thus required some façade or disguise.  The significance thus of masking arises. The very act of wearing a mask and transformation into another character is a form of worship in itself.  This double-ness, masked transformed individual in worship can be seen in the origin of Chhau.  Scholars are divided in their opinion about the etymology of the word Chhau.  Some researchers say that the word chhau is derived from the word Chhauni that means military camp. As this form involves the use of vigorous martial art techniques the form is said to have militaristic fervor.  However one can also opine that the word Chhau is derived from the Sanskrit word Chhadma (Shadow) or hindi word Chhaya.  This word clearly resounds to the mask or the disguise which is a sort of shadow that is created.  In the eastern state of Assam masks are also called Chhon that bear a close resemblance to Chhau.

Both Chhau and the Greek theatre are closely related to ritual festivals.  Greek theatre developed when the city of Dionysia celebrated the worshipping of the fertility God Dionysus.  The city Dionysia lasted for about week not only celebrated the religious and the artistic achievements but display of wealth, power and public spirit.  The tragedies were the center piece of the festival.  They were performed on the fourth, fifth and sixth day of the festival week, each day devoted to a single playwright.

It is interesting to observe that Chhau is celebrated during the spring festival or the Chaitra parva in March- April.  The festival lasts for about 13 days and Chhau is also the focal point of the festival.  Chhau folk dance drama, similar to the Greek counterpart is not a part of the religious festivity but is purely for the entertainment of the people.  This dance drama is also not performed everyday but is performed on the first, third and forth day.

  While the rituals of the Chaitra Parva take place every year, the dances take place for a few days.  13 days of the rituals are performed by 13 people of different castes, who perform the customs daily.  These people are called the bhagats who perform the ceremonies.  Quite similar to the Greek festivals in which the people are transformed into satyrs the Bhagats also are transformed to gods during the festival.  They gather around the Shiva temple and are given a sacred thread.  By wearing that they hence become shiva gotra, belonging to the same caste as Shiva and they alter their caste and thus getting some socio-legal sanction to perform the rituals.

The bhaghats start the procession from the majna ghat or the bathing ghat with the accompaniment of music and dance.  A flag staff is held by the man who is leading the festival called the Jarjar.  They have a dip in the river and proceed to the temple and to the palace where the flag is kept all the time. On the first day they also visit the performance area to purify it. This ceremony is called the Akhada mada. The next day the jatra ghata takes place that is followed by the Chhau.  The following evening is a ceremony called Brindabani in which god hanuman, the monkey god is prayed to. On the third night takes place the Garai bhar in which an episode relating to Krishna and the milkmaids is depicted.  The god Krisna is depicted as stealing the clothes of the milkmaids who have gone to take a bath in the pond.  A Chhau performance takes place in the evening.  Chhau is not performed on the fifth night and it can be done only if a small fee is paid to the Shiva temple in the form of a fine.

The dances that take place are uniquely artistic and not ritualistic.  There are no direct links between the festival and the dances and they provide entertainment for the people.  The complex relationships developed among mythological narratives, social circumstances and theatrical displays are evident in the masked variants of Chhau.  This grew out of tributes to Shakti or the primordial energy associated with exorcist practices developed during the Chaitra parva under different systems of patronage.  Interestingly, Shakti like the god Dionysus is also worshipped widely as goddess of fertility in many parts of India.

In India many fertility festivals are often associated with wine and dance.  During the spring time another major festival takes place in India called the Holi where by merry making, wine drinking and playing with colors is popular.  Incidentally the God Shiva, who is worshipped in Chhau is also said to be fond of wine or Bhang, a heady drink made of milk, almonds and cannabis, which bears close resemblance to Dionysus the god of wine.  During the Siva Ratri or the festival that honors the god Shiva many devotees indulge in drinking of Bhang.

Both Chhau and the Greek theatre have a participatory flavor.  In Greece it was said to be the civic duty to perform in the festival, and nearly 500 citizens performed.  Chhau too is based on cooperation amongst the people and it is also considered to be a public participation.  The mask hence gives both Chhau and Greek theatre a corporate personality. It gives the actor the actor contact with god and removes him from everyday mundane existence.

Both chhau and Greek theatre developed under royal patronage.  The wealthy Athenian citizens were obliged among their aristocratic duties to sponsor a play.  This way they made their way to public education. The Athenian government officially sanctioned and gave support to a theatre festival for the best tragedy written.  The government has made a record of these events.  The dramatic festivals took place once a year and three writers were presented to for three continuous days.  A separate day five comical writers were also presented.

Both in Seraikela and Purulia Chhau was fostered under royal patronage.  In Seraikela the kings were not only patrons but are dancers as well, both Aditya Pratap Deo and princes Suvendra and Brojendra are quite famous and well known.  Similar to the Greek theatre an annual competition is held between the various dancing groups.  The maharaja or the king gives the annual prize.  The whole town is divided into groups or akharas in which the dramatic form is developed.  The town is divided into eight akharas the Bajar Sahi, Mera khodara Sahi, Brahman sahi, hunja sahi, kansari sahi, khodara sahi beribahu, uttar sahi and dakshin sahi.  Chhau in Purulia is supported through households and there are also active competitions supported by rival political parties.

In Greece, famed actors were held in great honor and were even selected for diplomatic embassies.  They were granted special privileges and received help and protection of sovereigns and leading personalities of the state.  Aristodemus was invited to the court of Philip of Macedon and Thettalus to the court of Alexander the great, they were sent on important political missions.  They belonged to certain guilds along with the stage managers, costumers, dancers and musicians.  They produced epic, dramatic and lyrical plays old as well as new tragedies and comedies.

Chhau on the other hand is also organized into troupes that are under a leader or a guru.  Instrumentalists, stage managers, directors and actors all form the essential part of the troupe.  Chhau artists are given much social respect and honor. Many Chhau performances were taken abroad and Haren Ghosh, a troupe leader took Chhau toEurope as early as 1937-38.

Unlike Greek theatre there is no spoken word in Chhau and there are no dialogues.  Conflicting emotions are concealed and they mainly focus on the mood or the theme of the drama.  The whole body therefore has to give totality to expression and hence the actor liberates himself from the body through masks. By Angikabhinaya or expression through body the actor explores the dominant bhava or emotions.

Mask helps to express the bhava or the mood and the aesthetic sentiment or the rasa.  This helps the shirobheda, the head movements and the girvabhed the neck movements, as it emits glances.  Skill becomes the only determining factor as the age and the sex of the dancer is concealed through masks.  It resounds to the lord of the world Shiva as the cosmic lord is Shiva and the whole universe is nothing but postures and postures and Shiva both sustains the life force as well as destroys it.  Masks hence become the main aspect of this life force and it helps in the open acceptance of all and is in unison with nature and the universe.

Harmonies, movements and rhythms express the basic ideas of Chhau narratives.  The basic movements are based on the parikhanda or the exercise of the shield and sword; they are a set of Chalis or movements that are performed from back to front in single duple and quadruple tempo.  The movements are based on the daily activities and are therefore close to nature.  For example gaits of animals are incorporated like bagh chali crane walk, goumutra chali the walk of a cow after passing urine and harin dain the jumping of deer.  The activities of human beings, animals and birds are the inspiration behind the movements.

 

In Greek theatre it is said that Thespis or the first actor stepped away from the chorus and began to speak his own dialogue.  He invented the first actor as he is said to have put a hypocrites, i.e. an answer and response giver, the opposite being exarchos.  The leader and the chorus wore different costumes.  Thepsis is said to have treated the face of his actors with white lead, then covered with cinnabar and rubbed it with wine lees and finally introduced masks of unpainted linen.  Choerilus the successor of Thepsis made further experiments with masks and Phrynichus introduced the woman’s masks.  Aeschylus introduced the second actor; dialogue thus could develop more freely and had greater dramatic significance.  Aeschylus introduced new things to improve the fixed conventions in theatre.  He introduced novelty in costume by giving the players sleeves, increased their height and introduced dignified masks.  Greek tragedy was always a sacred ceremony in honor of the god and therefore the sacred robe, masks stayed as a symbol of god.  In the later periods masks became larger and had more exaggerated features, but in the 5th century, as told by scholars, neither size nor shaper were overtly large and that the mask covered the entire head, included the appropriate hairstyle, beard, ornaments and other features as well.

Quite similar to Chhau, in the given  structure of Greek theater, acting was close to dancing in which broad gestures and body posture and movements were very important. And of course the actors had to have excellent voices, with clear articulation and good breath control. Although much of the actor’s performance was spoken dialogue, he sometimes sung lyric solos.  The mask served as a device to help make the actors voice be heard and it is said that something was constructed in the mouth of the mask so that the voice could be raised and heard.  The mask made the actions more clear and the spectators would therefore be able to pay more attention to the actor’s movements rather then his appearances.

Both Chhau and Greek theatre’s performance space is outdoors.  In Chhau, the acting area is circular and a wooden platform is erected to one side. The musicians sit on one side of the open area of about 20 feet.  Performances take place in the night at about 10p.m. and goes on till sunrise.  Drummers prelude the performances and display their talent. The show starts with the entry of the elephant god Ganesha and dramatic access of new characters. The audience yells intermittently and gives encouragement to the presentation. Initially lighting was with kerosene oil and now electrical lights are used for illumination.  The mask thus provides the audiences with the much needed relief and help in the total involvement of the display.

In Greek theatres the performance took place outdoors in large amphitheatres.  The city was well evolved and developed and nearly about 5000-20,000 people were participants. Therefore a large open space was needed for viewing, thus the amphitheatre developed by the end of the 5the century B.C.  Audiences were seated in a semi circle and there were wooden bleachers for them to sit on.  The enlarged and exaggerated expressions of the masks made it possible for the audiences to see the faces of the actors.  The movements and gestures of the actors were very expressive and physical movements enabled the audiences to view them and these complementing the large masked face.

In Chhau each character is studied well and represented.  Chhau masks can be divided into five categories, gods, goddesses, kings and queens, common men, demons and animals.  The mask had both the facial portion and the head region. The demons had the extended eye, big lips, prominent chin shapely ears, moustaches, whiskers and eyebrows.  They are painted in rich vibrant colors such as green, brown or deep purple.  The gods are in softer pastel colors and the images are in the classical style so that they do not hurt the sentiment of the people.   The head portion of the mask is highly decorated with golden and silvery paper, flowers, glass beads and nylon strings are used for hair.

Similarly masks of the Greek world were portrait masks as they depicted a particular character.  The birds, frogs and the clouds the chorus represents the titles of the comedy masks.  These masks had exaggerated features long beards, baldness or ugly noses. Comic masks less morphological elements and are asymmetrical features they also express strong emotion such as weeping, anger and acquiescence, agreement.  Characters were easily identifiable and from every day life, they could be easily satire Socrates in Aristophanes Clouds and God Dionysus in the frogs they resembled the main characteristics and helped in creating a humorous ambience.

   The masks covered the entire head and depicted hairstyle, facial features, beard and decorations.  They were made up of perishable material and specific masks were created for each character. For instance, the chorus members in the tragedyl wore same masks so that one could clearly identify them as a group.  The chorus   in the Agamemnon was old men, too old to take part in the Trojan War.  They would have hence been probably been bearded old and shriveled.  The chorus would all thus appear to be similar, a notion widely held, if they all wore the same mask. The idea of having a group of individuals appear the same would be very hard unless masks were used.

The masks worn had the same effect as the costumes as they were personalized for each character. Special emotions were expressed on the mask, so the audience knew if a character was happy, upset, tired, or scared. Since the masks could be seen even in the last rows, the audience could hence tell how the character was feeling.   For instance, Oedipus, or other royal figures, might have a higher forehead or crown on his head to signify his rank, whereas a comic slave might have large eyes and a huge mouth to show that he is observant and not unwilling to gossip. These physical characteristics of the mask made it easier to tell who was who onstage.   The masks had to represent the outstanding features of the personality of the character.

Mask was a representation of the dramatist’s vision.  Many Princes in Chhau wee also skilled mask makers and Rajkumar Aditya Pratap Deo personally supervised the making of masks.  There are some special masks that represent two characters both in Chhau and Greek theatre.  In Greek theatre it is believed that different masks were used for a powerful king who became blind.  Helen was also represented in two different ways as she cut her hair and had a different spectacle.  Each half of the mask represents a different expression and the performer performs laterally and suddenly turns showing the different face.  Versatility of the actor was thus possible and it was easy for him to switch roles.

In Chhau the two faces of Shiva or the Ardhanariswara is represented in a unique way. It is shown in one mask itself and not by the usual division of the mask. The half male and female energy is shown by a three pronged mark on the forehead that shows the male energy and the lips curl into a small pout expressing affection.  By thus tilting the mask one can get a different perspective and each half character is well studied and represented.

It is interesting to note that in both Chhau and Greek theatre women did not participate.   Actor did not have specific characters but archetypes to represent them.  The personality of the actors is hence lost and the main characteristic of the theatrical role is bought into prominence.  The actor also has to perform many roles the mask helps him take up different personae and also in impersonating the female roles.  The actor could be adaptable and change his personality and mood of the different characters that he was playing and his mask helps him make the transition into female parts.

In Greek theatre theatrical masks were constructed by linen cloth and then fortified by plaster by flour glue and fish glue and then it was painted.  Male masks were more intense and female paler.  They also covered the head with hair and the head was covered with a helmet and wool was attached to the head and then styled as hair.  The mouth was left open in the tragedy masks and as the expressions showed more perturbation and passion and the opening became bigger.

The history of masks in India dates back t the Mesolithic periods.  Excavations have revealed small hollow masks in the Indus Valley Civilization (2500 B.C. – 1200 B.C.  At Chirand in Bihar, a northern state of India, a terracotta mask belonging to the fourth century was unearthed.  The Natyasastra (8th century B.C.), a treatise on music and drama mentions masks or Partishirsa which seems to be very similar to the Greek counterparts.  According to the text,

Different masks (pratshirsa) are to be used for men and gods according to their habitation, birth age…ashes or husks of paddy mixed with the paste of leaves of the bilva tree.  This should be applied on the cloth.  After the cloth dries one should pierce holes in it.  These holes should be made after dividing the cloth into two equal halves.

Initial masks of Chhau were made of wood and earth that was heavy and made breathing very difficult.  It passed down from cruder forms and became slowly sophisticated.  Many techniques were introduced in the mask making process.  The chhau mask is first made up of the clay that is found on the banks of the KharakeiRiver.  The artist fixes the clay and lets it cool down to harden on a plank.  This process is called the Mati gada or making of the clay.  Then muslin gauze is pasted on it with two or three players giving it thick coating or paper, which is called kagaz chitano.  The mask is then scrubbed off with the help of a sharp instrument called karni and it is polished.  It is then painted in flat pastel colors the stylization being given on the eyebrows and mouth.  This process is called Kabij lepa or painting.  The flat pastel colors give it frankness, simplicity and boldness.  The mask maker avoids realistic identification and the Mask of birds and animals such as deer (harin) or the prajapati (butterfly) is well stylized.

Mask making is a traditional occupation passed from father to son. The mask makers of Chhau live in Chorida village in Bengal and come from a set class and they bear the surname of Sutradhar or Das.  The mask is made from February to June as it does not rain and in other seasons the artisans are engaged in carpentry and image making.    Masks are rather frail they cannot stand the stress and strain of the performance.  As it does not last for more than a year, it is always in high demand.

Masks therefore have been a part of the integral world of theatre rituals both in the eastern and western parts.  The use and meaning behind the masks has evolved in many ways since the 5th century B.C.  The dramatized rituals of India are very close in their resemblance to the ancient Greek ones. As correctly pointed out by Turner, rituals often use symbols such as objects, words relationships, events, gestures, or spatial units (19).  Chhau is one such popular ritual folk drama of Eastern India (Mayurbhanj, Seraikela and Purulia) that uses such symbols i.e. elaborate and highly decorated masks.  The masks used in the Chhau folk drama not only reveal crucial social and religious values that transform human attitude and behavior but also disclose influences of other ancient civilizations.   Mask are thus a signifying object, it provided the much needed experience to both the actor and the spectators.  Chhau masks hold our fascination and we can say that so much its history has its roots in ancient Greece that is evident in it.

 

This article was a paper that Gouri had read in a conference held at Waseda University in Japan, 2008 on Masks.




The Poetry Page / Alessio Zaneli

 

 

Who Cares?

Anyone who believes exponential growth
can go forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist.

                            —KENNETH E. BOULDING

 

Scientists hold

the age of the Earth

is about 4.5 billion years.

Human civilization

hasn’t yet entered its tenth millennium

but has already fucked up the whole of it.

Who cares

the generations to come,

the preservation of life,

the health of the planet?

To put it bluntly:

who cares about the future?

All that occupies our mind is today,

tomorrow morning at most.

Who bloody cares

the species reduced to extinction,

the savage deforestation,

the toxic air we breathe,

the sea reduced to a dump?

All we want to be concerned about

is the latest in next-generation mobiles.

To hell with all the rest!

Why should we care?

Why us and why now?

It’s our turn to spoil the world!

All in all the Earth is only a fleck of dust

revolving around a gigantic furnace

and liable to incineration any moment.

Who fucking cares

this doggone solar fart we inhabit?

previously unpublished

 

A Dispute On Modern Physics

Fairy hands at work—

unwavering realm of perfection

claiming room, bliss is what it brings.

Blank night, after the journey, the price

to be paid. And the trivial stands as high

as the peaks of thought. The yardstick’s

different, as is what’s sought, restyled,

displayed on stage. The mundane.

Invisible divide. Cosmology.

The key to cognizance,

to all that out of darkness

can’t be accessed. Light appeared

over one life ago and you’re still blind,

no … deprived of eyes! More snow collecting

on glacial basins, new ice forming, but you don’t

belong to ecstasy. The realm has plenty of time, if

not enough to rescue you from the platitudes of

certainty. So—Boltzmann, Maxwell, Planck,

Einstein, Dirac. Their true identity and

what their blood was really about

I strive to grasp, wasting ink

and hours away. I won’t

succeed and—I believe—neither

will fairies ever speak to me. Yet what

about your grounds? Is there a point of yours

or anything consistent beyond what little I can see?

Indeed, anything you trust in or your erratic soul is after?

previously unpublished

 

Abscent

She has fled.

Gone like morning breeze

suddenly dying out

at the rising of the disk

above the horizon.

All she has left

are fragrant silences,

a speckled looking glass

and a vintage bottle of champagne

forgotten in the fridge.

What is taking her place

is faint light,

soaked in mugginess,

barely filtering

through the shutters ajar.

And heavy air,

smelling of heated water

exhaling from the scorching tar.

Her killing scent

killed by the miasmas

of the mushy streets,

and by sugary forgetfulness.

first published in Main Street Rag (NC)

 

Fall

After one has walked in the sky

higher than the highest clouds

glorified in the purest light,

it’s hard to find oneself squashed on the ground,

floundering about through soggy black earth,

groping in the dark in search of a way,

whatever way away from shame.

Now that such glare has been your undoing,

you clumsy beastie puffed up with pride,

don’t swear at the soil you’re worming on!

That which is sticking to your hair,

lodging under your nails,

slipping into your eyes,

well—that’s no filth at all,

but your only possible salvation.

So don’t despise what may appear the direst place,

indeed the nastiest one for you to fall onto,

as from such empty height

there’s nowhere else where you could stop.

And from the earthworms you touch

feeling around enshrouded in blackness,

from the tacky grains teeming with secret life

that cover your body throughout

have yourself obtain your nourishment.

Now you have to place your trust

in your most pristine senses and basest instincts.

And be sure,

once you and this mold are one,

you’ll no longer wish to bask in that infinite light.

Nevermore—in the misleading purity of heady altitude.

Here you landed, here you belong.

So weak, so blind, so lost,

and yet—you still don’t know—

so unprecedentedly strong.

First published in Chitron Review




The Poetry Page / Donia Gobar

 

As I Watch

Presenter’s power point scans, spans
As moments un-peel time
And the words,
bold and blank,
bleed
Slipping in ribbons of
silence
Around dark bodies in gray places,
Tongue-tied brick walls,
Faces, gazes…
Around foggy features
And thousand-tongue frozen gestures.
As blank words scream in soft silence
As faded wounds
bleed
in dark silence
Through the valleys of the past
Through the allies of the cast…

As I watch
Oh, as I watch in darkness…

Copyright © Donia Gobar




The Poetry Page / Pallavi Mishra

 

 

 

No Retakes!

 

“It tricks, it teases
It smiles, it ceases

It hurts, its insane
But they say no pain, no gain

It is love, it is compassion
It is Jealousy, it is full of passion

It never fails to surprise
What if at times I pay heavy price

Love the way it unfolds its mystery
Rest everything is captured in memory called history

Although in this life there are no retakes
I am profoundly proud of my mistakes!”




The Poetry Page / Ute Margaret Saine

Water

Water on Water

water paints waves
of water on water
loops of light spread
over the gently
rolling surface
trembling air
stirs gentle motions
threads of luminous
brilliance collect
in rainbow colors
from a distant sun
to weave a lucid web
over the blue

bounty and beauty
water ever alive
there and always there
at the edges of the seen

Bodies

the wisdom to forestall
the shattering of bones
shadows on an X-ray

the naked body
lying on a vacant shore
lying on inland soils
tenderly overgrown
with apples and grass

the flight of nightbirds
of seabirds soaring
over the waters

the wisdom to forestall
the shattering of bones

The Dimension of Desire

To hold you tight
finally
to hold you

with half closed eyes
scrutinizing the future
searching for hope
always searching

Internet and Handy
as Dimensions
of hope

To observe
always more keenly
disappear
farther and farther away
till I reach the land
following you
the land of desire
always following you

Pray to some wise god
whoever s/he may be
hidden from us
and equal for all

and to the angel
who appears out of focus
on all the picture
who mocks me
hanging from the cornice
above which there are
only stares of cold stars

To hold you tight
finally
but where are you?

Forgetting

How easy it is
to forget you
your hands your lips
on my body

How easy it is
to get lost
in the daily chaos
that separates us
and each from himself

stuck
in a grey world
submerged
in ugliness

A world that knows not
the trembling
of glowing bodies

A world
without an instrument
to measure the vibration
of a kiss on my breast

that burns on me today
with your absence

I want a Date

I want a date with your mind
want to sing on the roving sands
where thoughts run rampant
with desire in a high tide of fun
spun surf spraying threads of sun

I want a date with your mind
to laugh at the day’s dismays
indulge in ‘come what mays’
and chant to the sinking sun
the cradle songs of yesterday

I want a date with our bodies
till sleep will separate all
but our thirsty revolving skins
embracing love-crazy planets
in dreams uniting us
again and again

Red Carpet – A Haiku Cycle

The dreams you told me
I embroider in secret
I stitch them in sleep

I stitch them in sleep
in the middle of a room
dreams hard to come by

Dreams hard to come by
since I live you by dreaming
I crave every word

I crave every word
and every secret nuance
a verse from the heart

A verse from the heart
now a calm reassurance
the world has vanished

The world has vanished
I, the magic carpet and
the dreams you told me

The Hourglass Moment

This is the moment to
turn the hourglass around
time had run through

it had almost run its course
now we’ve found each other

round the bend lies the new

life made from of the same
trickling grains of sand
that viewed from upside down

seem more magnificent


As from a kaleidoscope
shaken again and again
emerges beauty and order

unforeseen just like you
and yet seen as the light
in your eyes

I will only smile
and abide by this light
between us that shines
at a might of hunger and love

This is moment
time has been found
a time that was run through
this is our moment
to turn the hourglass around

Afternoon

The sun puts the clouds
on the table
between the glasses
and the crackers
a piece of luminous sky
between floating smiles

bits of today’s heaven
come down to us
as a light
right here looking into
each other’s eyes

Fingering

What I had under my fingers
Third down over the thumb
Though it didn’t at first make sense
Is still under my fingers
Decades later as I listen to
Glenn Gould playing
Bach’s Italian Concerto

My fingers remember
The lonely contemplative
Voice of the second movement
Ranging is small second steps
And big sixth or seventh jumps
With my fingers not jumbled
But behaving sagaciously
As though the music
Had been written for them

And it was

How Animals Move

Placid or doomed
nervously pacing the fence line
swishing their tails
the chewers the sighers the scratchers
those who bicker and fuss
and those who just stare
those who roll in the grass
those who cry out curdling the air
who seem to lug their bodies
home to nowhere
all the way home

And some
who in their strange tongue
call out to me

Going South

Do I know the way home
when the way home for me
is to go far out
into the world

of summers and springs
holding onto a suitcase

I carry all that’s mine with me
says the philosopher
and it means
carry very little, only

for the humblest needs
of body and mind

Mining the world
with mine eyes and ears
and other given senses

Mining friends’ eyes and brows
the knowledge of their town
their laughs
and meeting their friends

Mining the world
maybe
with a sixth sense
and maybe even going south

Haiku

the morning rising
on the edges of the seen
asks us for the dream

~~~

I write always write
I’m writing to remember
writing to forget

if it flies, let it
sing in rain and shine, let it
fly out of your hands

you see some red leaves
and you think of fall before
summer ever came

small world an absurd
cage of words, my rattling bones
haunted by desire

we are like mayflies
like insects caught in amber
happy one moment

your shadow when you
arise dances on my walls:
the house is happy

~~~

we can’t see the moon
it has not reached us yet
and would be useless




The Poetry Page / Laxmi Shanker Bajpai

 

 

Those People

Those were the people who
with tiny boxes filled with fine sugar
would go in search of anthills
They would scatter seeds on terraces
for birds to feed on.

They would get troughs of water
made outside their houses for
thirsty animals passing by.

and before eating their own meal
They would set aside a portion for cows and
other creatures.

They wouldn’t let anyone pluck a single leaf from the trees
after sunset
lest the resting trees be disturbed.

They would start conversations on their own
and ask strangers for introductions
They would heartily help those in need

and if someone asked them for directions
they would gladly
escort the person to his destination.

and if at some odd hour a lost traveler
happened to come to their
door they would provide him with
food and a place to rest

maybe such a species does still exist
in some remote village or hamlet
I wish it were possible to create a museum for them
So that generations to come would learn that
This too was a way of living.

 

Quelle Persone

Italian Translation of L.S. Bajpai’s poem by an Italian Poet: Antonio Blunda

 

Quelle erano le persone
che con minuscoli cassetti
colmi di zucchero a velo
andrebbero in cerca di formicai 

spargerebbero i semi su terrazze
per nutrire gli uccelli.

metterebbero trogoli di acqua
costruiti fuori dalle loro case
per gli animali assetati che transitano.

e prima di mangiare il loro pasto
metterebbero da parte una porzione
per le vacche
ed altre creature.

Non lascerebbero che nessuno
cogliesse una singola foglia dagli alberi
dopo il tramonto
affinchè il riposo degli alberi
non fosse disturbato.

Inizierebbero le proprie conversazioni
chiedendo a stranieri di presentarli

Aiuterebbero di cuore coloro che lo necessitano

e se qualcuno chiedesse loro di guidarli
essi lo farebbero volentieri
conducendo la persona a destinazione.

e se all’ora più casuale
ad un viaggiatore disperso
capitasse di giungere alla loro porta
essi offrirebbero cibo
ed un posto per riposare

Forse una tal specie ancora esiste
in qualche remoto villaggio o borgo

Vorrei che fosse possibile creare un museo per loro
così che le generazioni venissero ad imparare
che anche questo
era un modo di vivere.

(Traduzione in italiano: Antonio Blunda)