Encountering Veenapani

Pondicherry, a peaceful, coastal town in the heart of South India is the home of many creative, original people who contribute significantly to the aesthetic, cultural and physical fabric of India and abroad.Veenapani Chawla born in 1947 in Bombay, India, an innovator of new forms of theatre, founder and artistic Director of Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research, Pondicherry, is one of them. A soft spoken woman with a tranquil smile, exuding quiet authority and dynamism, and Adishakti, a beautiful, green campus dedicated to the performing arts, make up a coherent and artistic whole

 Let us find out more about Veenapani and Adishakti through the author herself.

You were a history student and began your career as a teacher. What made you turn to theatre? Was there any particular play or event?

Yes, I was a history student and  taught history, literature and political science. But I have been  interested in theatre since my childhood and my interest was fuelled after I came to Pondicherry.

How did that happen?

Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, my mentor,  who was one of the earliest disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother told me in 1978 that theatre  was the thing for me . I didn’t know how it was going to happen though. I was already in my late twenties. But when I got back to Bombay things fell into place

Indian families in the 60s, as even now, wanted safe careers or safe matrimony for their daughters and you chose neither. Was your family different, encouraging you in your choices and aspirations?

No, not to begin with. They were quite upset and outraged, especially about marriage. They wanted me to get married. It was only when I came here with the theatre work , and there were material results that they began to be encouraging.

In your previous interviews you say you trained for a long time with great gurus in remote places in India, especially in Kerela, in  classical Sanskrit theatre Koodiyattam and the martial art form Kalariayapettu. Can you tell us what drew you to exploring these forms instead of going through a regular theatre course?

There was no regular theatre course except in the NSD (National School of Drama) and I was already directing by that time. In 1978 Nolini-da  told me, and by 1981 I was already professionally directing big actors like Naseruddin Shah, so the question of doing a course at that time didn’t arise.But what I found was that while I was good with concepts, interpretation, I knew about design, I could tell a professional, trained actor what I wanted from him,  I didn't have the knowledge or the tools required to help a novice with his voice, or bearing. So to meet those needs I went to gurus. I also strongly felt the need for a more physical form of theatre.. I found the theatre that was around me too cerebral, verbal, like in Europe.  It was borrowed from Europe but in India it has always been more than just a verbal or literary piece of work. So for that reason I looked around and  learnt “Chau” from Orissa, then in various festivals I saw kalaripayettu  from Kerala and was very keen to learn it.  I also had to train the actor  to use his voice, so that’s how the decision to go to Kerela for Kudiyattam as well,  came about.

Did you envisage  fusing elements from these forms in your plays?

I had the desire to create a new aesthetic form, for our times where the aesthetics would marry historical India with what we are today, which is a result of various influences from different parts of the world. And this meant a journey into historical India. If I learnt these forms it was not to perform them but to evolve something which is representative of our time.I found that these forms had a lot of knowledge but that they were obscured by formulae, and I had to strip them of these formulae and go back to the real purpose.

And I discovered that unlike the West where they began psychologically, we began from getting into the physical structure first, getting into stances, and then accessing the psychological spaces through them. You see in tantra the centres are located in different points of the body and if you position your body in a particular way, you access one or two centres and then the emotions and then the state of mind. So from the physical we went into the psychological unlike in the West where from the psychological they went into the physical.

Koodiyattam was performed originally in  temple precincts and both men and women participated but wasn’t Kalariyapettu an exclusive male bastion?

Originally Koodiyattam was performed in the open, then it was taken into the temple but   gradually women lost all the major roles to men . Many plays got lost because women were predominant in it. Now it’s come out of the temple again and women are trying to reclaim their roles. And Kalaripayettu was originally learnt by both men and women. There are many known female warriors who did Kalaripayettu. But then it was completely shut off to women.

Did you as a woman from the other end of India have to overcome barriers before being accepted as a disciple?

Actually it was easier because I was regarded as a foreigner, so they  were lenient, thinking I was learning it as a hobby.  I was also introduced by a very well known writer and playwright called G. Shankar Pillai and because they respected him so much they accepted me. If I had gone on my own, v anonymously, they would not have accepted me. But for example if you had periods  you were not allowed to enter the “Kalari” ( the ring where kalaripayettu is practiced)  because you were considered impure, so you had to miss classes.

When and why did you start Adishakti?

I started Adishakti in 1981. It was a kind of banner under which performers would come together produce a play, break up and maybe come back again for another play . I was the only constant factor. 

Why the name Adishakti? What is the significance?

The primordial energy, the divine mother.

You said you started Adishakti as a banner but as of today what is Adishakti’s purpose?

Today Adishakti is very different. When I came to Pondicherry and  started work again, it was very different from what I used to do before. I had time, space and  the possibilities to do what I wanted. There was no intention of showing. There was just the intention of work. It was a creative process. I started writing my own script, doing research and focusing on the exploration of creating a new craft… . It led to a performance . Then we were invited to stage it because I was known outside. That’s how it got catapulted.  Later we started having performances of other groups, training workshops, seminars, discussions.

Doesn’t Adishakti also carry out, encourage and research traditional knowledges in theatre,  dance, music, movement, puppet and craft forms?

We have worked with with traditional percussions, dance, shadow puppetry. We have  also created instruments, resurrected the five faced Mizhavu (a big copper drum played as an accompanying percussion instrument in Koodiyattam), for Koodiyattam performers who have only a one faced Mizhavu.

What sources did  you look into when you started scripting your plays? 
The script is much like a film script and there is  considerable research which goes into writing  it. I can never enter a work unless I prepare.  For example for the the play ‘Brhanalla’, I  researched into new physics, the space time continuum, the ‘Ardhanarishwara’ half man-half woman concept, brain lateralization theory, the folklore of the region where they talk about the Draupadi cult and relate Shiva to Arjuna. And all this would be filtered down to just one line  which would contain these ideas and be figured through an image or music. So for each play I do a lot of reading, research and this is in the background  when a play is created. But you don’t explicate it, you layer it.

Can you give us an example.

Well, to continue with Brihanalla, you see the protagonist playing cricket in slow motion. Brihanalla in Mahabharata is Ardhanarishwara (half man, half woman) and for me cricket because of its rational rules  is male , so that is the male part. The scene between Shiva and Arjuna is a combination of flowing movements and staccato movements, the male and the female, and finally you discover when you look at the middle ground that it is one seamless loop.  I had to reflect these two categories visually through light, through music, through movement and then to show how the flowing movement acquires a rhythm and goes into  rhythmic polarity. 

Compared to the music, the drumming, mime, the script in your plays is often minimal..

Well, it is a kind of oral image which is supposed to have an impact on you. Now cinema which is the art of the times does the same thing It creates a montage, a visual and you have different signifiers like the text,  picture, sound, music. In one moment you are being fed so many types of information that  you absorb on a non- rational, non- analytical level.

I am not interested in the technology of cinema. I am interested in how by honouring the strength of theatre, which is the live performer, you can do something similar, in principle though not in effect. In cinema you get the effect of realism. In theatre you get the opposite of realism. The reality in theatre is the actor and what is it that an actor cannot do?  He can seduce you! And physically that seduction is possible only   in theatre, in that presence which is there, now.

You know what you want to say but what percent of the audience perceive that, because understanding your plays requires an intellectual sophistication and wide cultural knowledge.

There are people who do . The plays have sparked off discussions, queries. The audience makes connections. But  you can also see and enjoy the plays at face value, at the narrative level. One doesn’t have to intellectually apprehend everything. When you go to see a painting and you are moved, the significance does not strike you first. It is the visual impact and something other. We are made up of  many other elements than  the mind.

Arunima Choudhury

Naga-Mandala by Girish Karnad

Naga Mandala is a play within a play. The curtain lifts upon a failed playwright in a broken down temple who’s trying his hardest to stay awake, because he has been cursed with death if he’s unable to keep awake one whole night in the month, lamp flames which have been extinguished in the village and who have gathered at the temple to spend the rest of the night gossiping about the juicy happenings in their respective homes, and an untold story which has escaped its creator in the shape of a young woman. Voilà the stage is set, there is a story to be told, there is an audience on stage eager to be entertained, and an audience off stage equally eager to step into another world.

And when the story begins her tale we understand why it was suppressed for so long. She narrates a secret,  passionate  love affair between Rani a young, married woman in the village, and Naga (a king Cobra). Appana ,the newly-wed Rani’s husband is a brute. Day after day he locks up his bride at home and goes to meet his mistress. He only comes home for lunch when he orders her roughly to serve him food. Rani is on the point of going mad when an old village woman who was Appana’s mother’s friend gives her some roots, asks her to cook them and serve him. She assures Rani that Appana will not leave her side for an instant after having consumed them.  Rani follows her advice, but at the last moment petrified by the blood-red colour of the brew throws it into an ant-hill in front of her house, or down the throat of Naga, because it is where it/he lives.  The root does it trick, the infatuation is immediate. When darkness cloaks the earth and Appana is busy with his concubine, assured that his wife is locked up at home out of any man or woman’s reach, Naga slips into the house in Appana’s guise. Rani is nonplussed  and hopeful at his unexpected appearance. But the change in Appana’s personality, his loving words, his gentle teasing, his admiration of her beauty,  his passion for her makes her believe that she has indeed gone mad, that she is dreaming, hallucinating. The day time Appana only enforces the conviction that the night’s happenings were a dream. The night visitations continue though and Rani reconciles herself with the irreconcilable personalities of her night-time husband and her day-time husband; two different people having the same body.

Doesn’t Rani know the real nature of her nocturnal husband. She tells Naga,” Father says, ‘If a bird so much as looks at a cobra, the cobra looks into the bird’s eye with its own sight. The bird stares-and stares-unable to move its eye. It doesn’t feel any fear either. It stands fascinated watching the changing colours in the eyes of the cobra.’ But Rani’s knowledge of Naga like his visits is secret, subterranean. We have glimpses of it through certain words, sentences she says, otherwise she continues to speak to him as if he were her husband and Naga continues to pretend as if he were Appana. Their relationship is possible only in such a framework.

The play is taut with the tension created between knowing and not knowing, the uncanny and the ordinary, the day and the night. The conversations between Naga and Rani are  playful, passionate, terse, poetic, fraught with love and mystery. The climax is reached when the two worlds Rani inhabits are forced into a confrontation because of Rani’s pregnancy. Naga Mandala is wonderfully subversive. Rani unlike many Indian heroines of mythology who are virtuous till their tragic end, steps out of the framework of patriarchy, commits adultery , has to face the consequence of her actions, and finally contrary to all precedents triumphs over the system. The king cobra in India is an object of veneration and terror. It is perhaps the same ambivalence that the patriarchy feels about feminine desire and sexuality

Girish Karnad writes in the preface that the play is based on a folk tale recounted to him by K. Ramanujan. I have read Ramanujan’s collection of folk tales gathered from different corners of India. Some of them are extremely naughty, challenging the often highly moralistic and  stereotyped  images of  female sexuality, and  man woman relationships presented to us since our childhood.  

Arunima Choudhury 

Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

I usually don’t write book reviews because at the very outset I am stumped by this feeling, “Why would anyone want to read my impressions or critique of a book when he or she can access the real stuff?” But recently I read a book which I liked hugely and came across a blog called At Pemberley Life Between Pages where because of book reviews I’ve been introduced to books I’ve added to my reading list. And the combination of both makes me want to present to you Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s a book I relished because Jhumpa Lahiri’s writing is limpid, light and poignant, because Lowland like all her other work moves back and forth between different continents and cultures , though ultimately the movement is away from India and towards the  United States, and because I find in her characters reflections of my own upbringing, experiences and conflicts. And when I say I, I am just one amongst many Indians or citizens of today’s world, whose identities are the result of moving away from one’s country to another,  of growing up with diverse cultural inputs, of speaking one language at home and another with the world, of experiencing  solitude and nostalgia for a country left behind, of adapting, making space for the alien and eventually of coming to terms with the multi-faceted nature of one’s being.   

In Lowland we get to know two brothers with about a year of age difference, growing up in Calcutta. They are very close to each other and can be mistaken as twins. They do everything together. The younger brother Udayan is more daring, impulsive while the older Subhash is more cautious and patient. Their ways start diverging during their college days.  In 1967 tribal peasants in Naxalbari, a village in the north of West Bengal revolted against the feudal system of wealthy landlords who forcefully evicted them from the fields they cultivated, thus cutting them from their only source of subsistence and revenue. Their armed uprising was brutally suppressed . Udayan deeply upset and enraged by this turn of events joins the Naxalite movement which sought to empower tribals and peasants,The movement eventually turned extremely violent. People who were considered to represent the state and consequently oppressors were ruthlessly assasinated. The government's retort was equally if not more ruthless.   It was greatly influenced by the ideology of Mao Zedong.  Subhash is sceptical about its success of this movement and  would like to go the United States to continue his studies. So their ways part.  Subhash goes to a university in Rhode Island in the States and Udayan stays back in Calcutta. Udayan gets married to Gauri, a girl of his choice and Subhash has affair with an American woman separated from her husband,with always the thought that his parents would never approve of a liaison with a foreigner. And three years after Subhash’s stay in the States he receives a telegram: Udayan Killed. Come if you can.  I feel tempted to tell more but that would be like my aunt who always told me the ending of a film when curtains went up.  

One of the strongest points of this novel is that it doesn’t cease to surprise you and yet the surprise is never forced. The unfolding of the plot seems a natural outcome of the evolution of the characters.  

 The different geographical, cultural and emotional spaces the characters inhabit , constitute the depth and breadth of the novel. Through Subhash’s and Udayan’s childhood and parents, through Udayan’s activities and his relationship with Gauri, we live through a tumultuous period in Bengal. Along with Subhash and Gauri  we move from Calcutta to the States and have the first generation immigrant’s experience.  And finally through their children we are at home in America. It’s a long journey; nobody is spared from separation, disillusionment, heartbreak, and death. It’s a journey I felt completely involved in. And the end is graceful, holding the promise of reconciliation, appeasement, and the beginning of other stories.  

The only critique I have after reading the story a second time is that Subhash seems lacking in some vital element. We don’t witness his torments, the battles he wages with himself. His character in my opinion would be more real if he had more rough edges.

Arunima Choudhury