This chapter attempts to contextualize Kailasam's work within the parameters of his home, his community, his contemporary Kannada theatre and also the Indian nationalist movement. On the basis of our discussion on the subject of myth in general and its use during the nationalist period in particular, we shall hereby look at some of the plays of T.P. Kailasam. The study presupposes that, to a great extent, contexts shape the lives of people, and their works. Kailasam hailed from an orthodox, wellto- do brahmin family, whose ancestors came from Tanjore. His father, Justice Paramashiva Iyer, was a strict disciplinarian and a very loyal citizen of the Mysore state. V.G. Krishnamurthy, a Kannada literary critic, tells us:
It was a common
practice to see him every evening, dressed in white
clothe, a white Gandhian cap, white stockings, white
canvas shoes, and also a white walking stick,
taking a walk through the park
in front of Kannada
Sahitya Parishat, which lay close to his white
house in Bangalore.
(trans. Krishnamurthy
1988, 8)
As long as he lived in
the "white house", Kailasam no doubt had to lead a
correspondingly disciplined life. However, he soon rebelled against
the conservatism of his family. To put it in his own words, he
eventually became the "Black spot in the All references
indicating "trans" suggest that the translation is mine.
White House"
(trans, quoted in Krishnamurthy 1988, 34).
He no longer lived in the
white house but in the out-house in the same yard. That is to say,
Kailasam distanced himself from his conservative background without
leaving it completely. It was a small room which K.V.
Iyer, a friend of Kailasam, describes vividly:
God knows why the room
was so dirty. The only window was shut
tightly. The ventilator above it was covered with a
cardboard. No light was allowed inside the room. On
the floor was a torn mat with a
black hole, probably
caused by carelessly thrown cigarette butts.
Stretched on it was an old thin mattress. The pillow
was soaked in [hair] oil and dirt and had become
'pucca-waterproof'. It felt dirty even to brush it
with one's hands. In one corner was a broom, a
pair of shoes and a single slipper.... Another
corner had a hockey stick and a thick woolen overcoat.
Cigarette ash was strewn all over the room. It
seemed ages since the room had been swept. (trans.
Iyer 1985, 55-56)
In flouting all the
basic criteria of good, clean living which his family and community
had taken for granted, the "room" became the first
symbol of Kailasam's rebellion against his orthodox background.
Kailasam had his own reason for living so. Not only does he
explain this, but he also provides, in his own peculiar phrasing, a
significant justification of his right to live in that manner:
One must become a
gutter-snipe. Then alone he can sit there and gaze at
the sky, and the sun, and the world around him. This
room has the right atmosphere and I can write things
from here. (trans, quoted in Iyer 1985,
94)
Perhaps he was right
to dream of becoming a "gutter-snipe". For 30 the "things"
he was to write in this room were to bring about a revolution in the then
existing Kannada theatre by questioning the presumption of
purity and sanctity in all that his class and caste did. In order to
comprehend this revolution, it is necessary
to understand the
state of Kannada theatre just before and during Kailasam's
time.
In his book
T.P.Kailasam (1984),
L.S. Sheshgiri Rao traces the period and
situation when Kailasam came into Kannada theatre in the
twentieth century. The Kannada theatre at that time was
dominated everywhere by professional troupes who drew their material,
the stories they dramatized, from traditional mythology. The plays
they staged were also didactic in tone and purpose. The main
intention behind these performances (besides providing
entertainment), was to convey or confirm the traditional values of
life. These performances were, towards the
end, considerably
influenced by Parsi theatre groups which toured all over India
during the nineteenth century, and which created appreciable
demand for spectacle and music. Sheshagiri Rao mentions how a
particular theatre group presented "real horses and elephants
on stage" (Rao 1984, 25).
Apparently, the intention of such
presentation was to make the stage realistic. However, such
elaborate stage settings, animals, and conventional melodrama besides a
"failure to recognize the role of the spectator's imagination
in the dramatic experience" (Rao 1984, 25) led to the
downfall of this theatre. Rao traces the birth of 'elitist' Kannada
theatre to this juncture in its history. The birth of the
elitist theatre (around 1925) was due to B.M. Srikantia or
Shri, popularly known as the father of the 31 Renaissance in Kannada
literature. Influenced by English literature, he consciously sought
to modernize Kannada literature.
His translation of
some of the English poems of the Romantic period into Kannada
marked the beginnings of the modern period in Kannada poetry.
Romantic poems seem to have held a special attraction because of
the ideology they represented in terms of the experiences of the
common man, the fierce defense it made for
freedom and
individualism, and the advocacy it gave for the use of common speech.
Shri's dramas also sought to change the structure of Kannada
theatre. Like his predecessors, Shri too went back to mythology
but with a different purpose. Until then, Indian literature had
no tradition of tragedy such as we are
familiar with in
western terms. While discussing the psychology of colonialism in his
book The Intimate Enemy.
Ashis Nandy explains what tragedy meant in
traditional Indian literature:
Tragedy in the Puranas
did not center around a grand final defeat or
death of the hero, or around the final victory of
the ungodly. Tragedy lay in the majestic sweep of
time and in the unavoidable decline or decay that
informed the mightiest and the humblest, the epochal
and the trivial, and the permanent and the
transient. (Nandy 1983, 21)
But now with the
influence of western education (as in the case of Srikantia) ,
the concept of tragedy also changed for the western-educated
Indians. Nandy's analysis of Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Meahnadvadh
Kavya illustrates this change in a retelling of Valmiki's Ramayana.
The play upholds Ravana's son Meghnad as the hero, against the
"weak-kneed, passive-aggressive", and "traditionally
sacred figures" of Rama and Lakshmana (Nandy 32 1983, 19). Nandy
explains that the retelling directly responds to the colonial
situation.
As mentioned in Chapter
1, the British colonizers perceived themselves as adults
and masculine, capable of working towards "the upliftment
of the underprivileged of the world" (Nandy 1983, 14) .
And among
the educated Indians there was a need to reject the
underprivileged status attributed to them in this paradigm. Therefore,
in making Ravana and Meghnad the heroes., writers like Dutt underwrote the
emerging ideology of modernity as well as compatible
concepts of masculinity and adulthood in [their
own] community's world view. What was recessive and
in fetters in traditional Indian masculinity was
now made salient with the help of existing
cultural imagery and myths. (Nandy 1983, 21)
Like Dutt, Shri also
sought to change some mythological "villains"
and marginalized characters into tragic heroes. For instance, Shri's plays
Gadayuddha (1926) and Aswattaman (1929) explicitly show that
Shri's sympathies lie with 'not so good' or marginalized
characters. Gadayuddha presents Duryodana as the
lead character. The
play evokes sympathy for the tragic hero Duryodana, who is
killed by Bheema in the mace fight. Aswattaman is about the tragic
death of Aswattaman, the son of Guru Drona. The play is a
trans-creation of Sophocles' Ajax. Commenting on this aspect of the
play in his essay "A New Look at Aswattaman", G.S.
Amur says that "Srikantia's intention was obviously to induct
the Sophoclean model into the 'Kannada literary experience" (Amur
n.d., 139).
Such a purpose reveals itself in the fact that Shri
made a series of substitutions like Aswattaman for Ajax, Rudra for
Athene, Krishna for Odysseus and so on. Such parallels between
western and eastern characters seem to have been inevitable
for the purpose of retriev ing the Aryan past and subverting the
underprivileged status attributed to Indians by the British. Most
apparent in these works are the standards that the
western-educated Indians set for themselves because of the influence of
western education. Re-structuring the old
texts (like the
Puranas) or re-reading episodes from them as containing tragedy and
re-interpreting them to the extent of reversing the roles of
the characters like Rama and Ravana or Bheema and Duryodana
became a deliberate endeavor. This, therefore, marked a significant
change from the tradition of Kannada theatre.
Yet another distinct
change was brought about in Kannada theatre, this time, by
T.P. Kailasam, a contemporary of Shri. During that time, the
predominant subject used on stage was mythology. He broke
this monotony and near monopoly by introducing social plays into
Kannada drama, where themes and characters
no longer derived from
mythology. Plays now addressed themes of current
social relevance, dealing with contemporary problems like dowry,
and the caste-system.
The plays addressed themselves, moreover,
mainly to the brahmin society from which Kailasam himself hailed.
We do not have to look too hard to notice that most of
his plays are a critique of the conventions
and prejudices of
brahminical society prevailing during his time. Eventually,
after extraordinary success in social theatre, he too turned to
mythology, for he shared the purpose of others working towards
reformation of their own society in the changed modern, colonial
conditions. However, to understand Kailasam's interest in mythology,
we need to first appreciate how according to him, the roots of
everything contemporary needed to be examined. For this purpose let
us briefly look at some of his social
plays. Kailasam's first play
was Tollu-gatti (1923).
Commenting on the play, A.N.
Krishna Rao says, "just as Doll's House brought about a change in the
western theatre, Tollu-gatti revolutionized the Kannada
theatre" (trans. Rao 1971, 69) .
The play is a critique of the hollow
education system then in place in India, which did nothing to
mould the character of a person. Puttu and Madhu are the sons of
a brahmin, Hiriyanna. Puttu, the elder son, has passed the
matriculation examination with a first class, while Madhu has
failed. The father, Hiriyanna, automatically adores Puttu for his
presumed education and is contemptuous of Madhu. But we soon
realize that Madhu is better educated than Puttu in other
important ways. For instance, he has really imbibed the principle
which his mother has taught him that "the only way to pay our
rent to god for living on this earth is by being useful to other
people around us" (trans. Kailasam 1987, 19) .
The play tests
the character of these two youths when one day their house
catches fire. As the fire engulfs the house, Puttu walks out with
his books but Madhu risks his life in his attempt to save the other
members of his family. Finally, it is Madhu who receives our
appreciation and not Puttu, who is selfish and educated in the
narrowest sense of the term.
As in Tollu-gatti.
most characters in Kailasam's social plays are middle class
men and women. For instance, the trilogy comprising
Patu-thourmane (1941), Satu-thourmane (1941), and Yodhruvani (1941)
reflects the pretensions, dilemmas and anxieties of the middle class.
In his "Adhyaksha Bhashana" (Presidential speech, 1945)
delivered at the Kannada Sahitya Sammelan at Madras, Kailasam makes
his intention clear: "I began writing plays not from a
desire to write them! But to reflect the society"
(trans. Kailasam 1987,
598). Further, as a writer,
Kailasam justifies the basis of
criticism of society:
It is natural to me
for I have a peculiar vision. ... In
society, one may observe the pretensions of the rich and
humility of the poor. One may also see a defect
in that which is accepted as faultless. To my eyes
it is so. Society does not have my peculiar
vision. My vision sees a flaw in that which is accepted
as faultless. And sees goodness in that which
is normally accepted as wrong. (trans.
Kailasam 1987, 599)
The keen sense of
criticism which emerges in plays like Nam Brahmanke ("Our
Brahminism") (1929) , Bahishkara ("Ostracization") (1929), Poli-kitti
("Naughty Kitti") (1923) and others is proof of this
'peculiar vision'. Bahishkara. for instance, deals with a poor
brahmin family which is unable to get their daughter married at
the age conventionally appropriate, and hence faces ostracization.
It is a tragic play in which the girl, unable to bear the
misery of her parents, commits suicide. The root cause of all this
misery is dowry'. At the end of the play, the anguished father
asks, "who is to blame for all this?" (trans. Kailasam 1987,
104).
Clearly, identifying evils in our society
and asking this sort of fundamental question constituted the
essence of all reform movements in colonial India. Naturally,
Kailasam's plays did not give a ready-made solution to such
questions but left it to the audience to tackle them. For the
plays mainly hoped to make the audience aware of the problems that
plagued their society. As mentioned earlier, Kailasam specifically
tried to reform brahmin society, against which he had rebelled.
For instance, Nam Brahmanke is a critique of modern brahminism
which follows customs meaninglessly.
The play expresses disgust
over the degeneration of priesthood. It takes place in an
atypical brahmin setting, a lawyer's house where preparations are
being made for the shradda of his deceased wife. Contrary to our
expectations of a brahmin family, the lawyer, his son Kittu
and daughter Saroja, are not hide bound by conventions. They are,
in fact, hardly involved in the rituals of the ceremony. The
lawyer is busy entertaining his friends, while Kittu, Saroja
and her Christian friend Vaidoorya are chatting with each
other.
Their collective
reaction to the ceremony depicts a renewed outlook to brahminism.
In the first scene, Kittu reminds Shastri, the priest conducting
the ritual, that rituals and mantras are far from the
layman's reality. For they are narrated in a language
incomprehensible to the ordinary folk. The criticism comes even more
strongly through Saroja. She tells Vaidoorya that the priesthood is
"mostly ritual and leastly [sic, deliberate
choice by Kailasam]
spiritualoo" (Kailasam 1987, 485).
For her, priesthood represents
nothing more than greed. And her assessment
of orthodoxy comes to
us in an echo of Shakespeare—"Greed! thy name is
'Orthodoxy'" (Kailasam 1987, 486). It is at this point, primed with
these criticisms, that the scene of the actual ceremony is
presented before the audience. As Saroja sums up in a peculiarly
phrased description, the ceremony amounts in fact to a scathing
representation of the degeneration of contemporary
brahminism. She says that the ceremony is a representative of 20th century A.D.
Brahminic activities. Ella [all] a childish pantomimic
re-hash of the genuine rituals of Gods-inspired Hinduism
which took its genesis long before 20th
century B.C.!!; But alas! ... now expounded and
exploited by greed-obsessed professional priests
with no faith in their own preachings which they
do NOT practice! (Kailasam 1987, 490)
It might be
interesting to observe here that the reference, although from a
Kannada play, has been rendered mainly in English with only a few words
in Kannada. Embedded in this dialogue is not merely a need to
prove how ancient Hinduism or Hindu civilization was, but also to
emphasize the fact that the rituals may have been genuinely
meaningful at one time but they have now become degenerate. As
we saw in Chapter 1, this frame of thought had been the reason
for many nationalists' desire to reconstruct the past. They
perceived that Hinduism had been great, but had eventually degenerated
because of evils like the rigid and opportunistic
caste-system. Of
course, sacred scriptures such as the Bhagvad Gita
proclaimed that caste was God's own creation, but the purpose of its
creation was (according to apologists of the caste-system)
misunderstood and grossly mutilated by certain sections of Hindus
over the ages. Therefore, in Nam Brahmanke.when Saroja's
Christian friend Vaidoorya points out that it is India's caste system
which has made Hinduism degenerate, Saroja retorts with "God
made.. .Universal caste organization" but "Man made local, communal,
provincial, Insular Peninsular systems" (Kailasam 1987, 491).
But really, "NO PARTICULAR CASTE IS SUPERIOR TO ANY OTHER
CASTE" (Kailasam 1987, 492). However for generations now, priesthood, turning into
priest-craftoo [sic, Kailasam deliberately pronounces certain
words with a Kannada accent] has dominated
the 92 percent of illiterate Indiansoo to the
extent of giving the lie to Lord Krishna's organisation
by making the small detail
of Location of Birth
in society to determine one's caste, while the LORD
KRISHNA, HIMSELF A NONBRAHMIN BY BIRTH, INSTITUTED
FOR ALL TIME THE TRUE CRITERION FOR REAL
CASTE; NOT THE INTEGRANT INDIVIDUAL'S LOCATION OF BIRTH IN
SOCIETY! BUT HIS
PARTICULAR VOCATION'S
WORTH FOR SOCIETY! NOT ACCIDENTAL BIRTH, BUT INTRINSIC
WORTH [sic]!! (Kailasam 1987, 492)
Then why perform the
hollow rituals of shradda at all? To which the lawyer's answer
is:
ceremonies in
commemoration of the departing of our dearly beloved
forebears ... is not so much in the ritual as the
spiritual, begot of love ruled not by brain or reason but by
beat of heart, which binds Mussalman—a Christian—or
a Hindu! (Kailasam 1987, 502) So ceremonies like
shradda may be important, but not in the
ritualistic sense.
They matter for the sentiments they uphold. From this analysis, we
can perhaps safely conclude that Kailasam was also
participating in the nationalist assumption of a glorious past
that had degenerated over the years, as an explanation of the
condition of contemporary India. That past held important links
with the present in the form of ceremonies like shradda. But the
ritual accompanying these ceremonies had not only become rigid,
fixed, merely conventional; it had also become meaningless for
the general population in the hands of the opportunistic priests
down the long road of Indian history.
Kailasam not only
presents his critique of brahmin society boldly but he also
employs a new dramatic method to do so, which we identified earlier
as the second major change from realistic, or stylized
conventional Kannada drama. His method was 'farce'. In the Presidential
speech he maintains explicitly:
At this juncture, where
we have to reconstruct our nation, some feel that
veera rasa is necessary. Some others feel that
beebatsa and karuna rasas are necessary. Sringara
rasa always has followers to it. As for me, I feel
that the mask of humour is most essential....
Humour is like lightning. It cannot be used as a
light. But it enlightens [even] the blindfolded in a
matter of a second, (trans. emphasis added,
Kailasam 1987, 599-600)
Plays like
Patu-thourmane, Satu-Thourmane, and others are predominantly humorous. At the same
time they reveal the serious dilemmas, anxieties,
frustrations and rigid, discriminating conventionalities of
Kailasam's society. Humour does not remain
only a part of the action of Kailasam's Kannada drama. It
surfaces especially through the language spoken by the
characters in his plays. The language, popularly known as Kannadanglo,
is a compact (even obviously forced) mixture of English and
Kannada. For instance, let us consider Nam Kampini ("Our
Company", 1944), which parodies the stylized performances of the theatre groups
during Kailasam's time. Here is a company staging a
play called Shoorphanakakulavilasa. It is about a childless
King, who is a descendant of Shoorphanaka, sister of Ravana in
the Ramayana, Besides parodying the frivolousness of the contemporary
plays Kailasam also exposes the various odds against
which the companies and actors had to fight for survival. But our
intention at this point is not to interpret these odds but to
comment on the dramatic speech employed in the drama. In Act II,
scene I, the Queen strolls into the garden with her maids, all
belonging to different regions around Karnataka. One among
them is an "Up-to-date saki" (as Kailasam chooses to call her)
who joins the other sakis that is, companions, in appreciating the
scenic beauty around them. Her song goes like this:
Eni garden u bahala
silly
Nodalu not a rose or
lilly!
waste of time in
walking illi
Rotten garden suraly
Follow me maiden
galella flowering viaitige!
Frost and snow and
cold a thadayade fogualli shi
veruva. (Kailasam 1987, 449)
Although there are
many English words in this song, most of them are pronounced
with a Kannada accent. For example, "suraly" is meant to be
"surely". Kailasam does not employ this mixed vocabulary only
because it mimics the 'dialect' spoken frequently by the educated
classes. (One should remember that during Kailasam's time
English had acquired a considerably prestigious status in urban
Kannada society). Since Kailasam was writing about his society as
"he had seen and heard" it (Kailasam 1987, 654) ,
he surely also
found it apt to use the then prevailing language in the urban
English-educated classes as a device to break up both the
possibility of conventional interpretation of his plays and to
introduce outrageously fresh readings of the situations he
presented. Now, in addition to
twenty-one such social plays in Kannada, Kailasam also wrote
five mythological plays in English. The Burden (1933),
Fulfilment (1933) and The Purpose (1944) were published while he was
alive. The Brahmin's Curse and Keechaka were reconstructed and
published after the death of Kailasam in 194 6 by B.S. Rama
Rao, popularly known as the Boswell of Kailasam. As a writer who
consciously wrote numerous social plays in Kannada on themes of
great current relevance, why did Kailasam feel the need to write
mythological plays, that too in English?
In the essay
"Kailasam's quest for greatness", one answer is suggested by G.S.
Amur: While Kailasam
considered his command over Kannada adequate to the
treatment of social themes, he thought, as a man who
had spent quite a few years in England, he could
do justice to the great epic themes only through
the medium of English. (Amur n.d., 164)
Amur's analysis raises
a central question about Kailasam's choice of dramatic speech,
one that concerns his Kannada plays as well. We have already
mentioned that Kailasam's intention in writing dramas pertaining to
social themes such as dowry and the caste system was to make public the
problems plaguing his society. Naturally, he must
have found it not only adequate but also appropriate to employ
Kannada "to the treatment of social themes".
This is not: the case
with Kailasam's mythological dramas. They are written in
English, that too in what may resemble Shakespearean English,
which is far removed from an ordinary educated Indian's
knowledge of the language. Considering Kailasam's supposed intention to
employ Kannada for the social plays, one wonders whether
his English plays merely reflect the thought that "as
a man who spent quite a few years in England, he
could do justice to
the great epic themes only through the medium of English". If
the reasons go beyond this, then what are they?
Kailasam had created a
revolution by using the speech of English- educated ordinary
people in his Kannada dramas. His intention to write mythological
plays in English seems, in fact, to complete the
revolution which began with his social dramas. Until then, speech in
Kannada literature, be it prose or
poetry, was classical.
Kailasam's need to rebel against his society and its many
constructs perhaps instigated him eventually to write in English.
Being the first social dramatist in Kannada, one would probably
expect Kailasam to use the speech of Henrik Ibsen or Oscar
Wilde, whose works had considerably influenced
him while in England.
But the language employed in his tragedies is different
from contemporary English speech. What we find is a blend of
Shakespearean English and a few Sanskrit terms either retained
or translated into English. For example, while words such as
"my liege", "sire" (Kailasam 1987, 670 & 671) ,
or lines such
as "The Royal Patriarch/ Hath ruled that none but fate may
dare/ Condemn thy wishes and commands" (Kailasam 1987, 7 62) bear
striking resemblance to Shakespearean English, terms such as
"Prostrations Achaarya" or "it is CHATHURTHEE today" (Kailasam
1987, 659) are direct importations from Sanskrit- Here is, quite
obviously, an evident attempt to imitate the western mode of
speech and sculpt it to suit the Indian themes. But this does
not explain why Kailasam resorted to dated English. Kailasam was
writing tragedies and in the West tragedy was one of the most
established of forms. Its popularity, especially through Shakespeare's
works, had spread among the English- educated Indians too.
Kailasam's works evidently express the influence of
Shakespearean tragedy. The Brahmin's Curse carries as an epigraph
part of the famous Shakespearean song "Not marble, nor
gilded monuments,..", which helps to emphasize our claim that
Kailasam must have found the western mode of tragedy a suitable
model for constructing tragedies in English and consequently the
language of established tragedy must have seemed to him a
natural choice.
Another reason for
Kailasam's intention to write in English could be sought within
his social context. The social plays had explicit messages for
the audience, hence they were rendered in the language of the
educated people. The mythological plays, however, too had an
implicit message for the audience. They were
aiming to retell a
familiar past from an unfamiliar point of view. Therefore,
Kailasam must have found it appropriate to distance this
retelling from his audience, to render the themes in a completely alien
language, which was not even Kailasam's contemporary English.
In that case, who were the plays addressed to? Kailasam's English
plays involve incidents from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
The protagonist in The Burden is Bharata; in Fulfilment
and The Purpose it is Ekalavya; in The Brahmin's Curse it is
Kama; and finally in Keechaka it is Keechaka. There is a
pattern in the selection of these protagonists. All are 'marginalized'
characters, characters slighted or ill-treated, who have
been only minor figures in the lives of the traditional
heroes of the epics, Rama or the Pandavas, or in others words, they
have not had their due in the epics. This drastic change of
character is probably matched by the language of the plays. These
men are also figures, incidentally, who represent the western
concept of 'masculinity'—a trait involving qualities like
achievement, control, competition and power.
The 'heroes' of T.P.
Kailasam's mythological plays resemble Michael Madhusudan
Dutt's protagonist Megnad. Megnad, as Nandy explains, was
"majestic, masculine ... courageous, proud, achievement-oriented,
competitive, efficient" and "technologically superior" (Nandy
1983, 19).
So were Kailasam's Kama, Keechaka and Ekalavya.
Ekalavya was a self-made archer whose skill had exceeded
that of Arjuna and also Drona. But his skill had been thwarted
first by Arjuna and Drona, and later by Krishna. Kama had mastered the
most powerful weapons but he was a victim of a brahmin's
curse. All these figures had genuine heroic qualities, but
fate' (or deliberate trickery) had brought them only misfortunes
in the end. For the colonizer, who
is an outsider, Kailasam's plays might appear as
challenges against western perception of the Indian heroes. On the
other hand, for an insider, especially an upper caste/class
Hindu, the plays must act as a critique on the then prevalent social
structure. They highlight the exploitation
of the marginalized by
upper caste Hindus. One should remember that during Kailasam's
time, such Hindus were almost the only people to receive
English education. Hence a claim that Kailasam's English plays were
addressed to this class of the colonized and simultaneously
also to the colonizer, ought not to sound far-fetched. Kailasam's
mythological plays not only sought to criticize society but also to
challenge the prevailing mythological framework on the stage. As
against the purely conventional portrayal of mythological
characters by the popular theatre groups, Kailasam's characters are first
of all unexpected choices. And they are all brought out as
human, briefly developing into representative types that make us
feel that they have received 'shabby' treatment in the
'authorized' versions of the epics. In his book The
Oppressive Present. Sudhir Chandra discusses the need felt by
nationalists to create alternatives out of indigenous tradition
in order to reshape Indian society.
To borrow his idea for our
purpose here, the humanization of mythological
characters by Kailasam seems to arise from the need of the moment "to
glean from this [mythological] past the traditional alternatives for
reshaping Indian society" (Sudir Chandra 1992, 70).
Naturally,
it ought to be obvious that the emphasis here is on
'alternatives', new ways of questioning or interpreting an unquestioningly
accepted tradition. The Kannada plays of
Kailasam are popular even to this
day. They are staged
very frequently, especially by school and college students.
Besides, they are also prescribed as texts to be read at the school
and college levels. This is certainly not the case of the
English plays. What could be the reason for this? First of all,
most of them are not full-fledged dramas like Kailasam's
Kannada dramas. The plays briefly explore the psychological depth of
a character's predicament, for instance, Kama in The Brahmin's
Curse or Keechaka in Keechaka. Unlike the Kannada dramas, they
do not capture obviously essential features of the lived
experiences of the audience. Secondly, the English plays employ a
language which is far removed from the English that is commonly
understood and spoken by educated people. It is archaic, and even
awkward, verging on bombast at times. For example:
Bharata: (catching him
[Anga] in his arms) Poor ancient! He will brush
aside his king's behest to forbear from work and
rest his limbs sore tried [sic] in the service
of the Estate. Why, he has fainted dead away! ...
What ho! Without! More light ho! Their gloom is
maddening! (Kailasam 1987, 631)
or Bheeshma: ...
Blessings, my budding bowman! But you will never bloom into
a better until you better the
bearing of your body
whilst at bowcraft. (Kailasam 1987, 665)
or
Raadhaa: But why anon?
Meseems, my child, you're frighted to speak out!
Whom was it that bought your
secret of?
Anga: An ancient dame
that came hither to-night
To caution me 'gainst
FRATRICIDE! (Kailasam 1987, 800)
There are too many
archaic and awkward words here, like 'Without!', 'Avaunt', 'meseems',
etc. This aspect has undoubtedly contributed to the
neglect of Kailasam's English plays. To conclude,
Kailasam's English plays are perhaps experimental, but not practically
structured to meet the demands or the standards of a
popular, action-packed theatre performance; nevertheless they are
definitely works of significance and make
worthy objects of
study- If nothing else, since an otherwise extremely successful
and serious dramatist has ventured to write them. More, however,
because they participate deliberately in the process of nation
building. To appreciate them, it is essential to locate them in
their nationalist context. Therefore, in
the next chapter, we
shall analyze the texts in detail in an attempt at 'locating'
them contextually.
By MR Maithreyi
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFascinating, and filled with insights...a great read.
ReplyDelete