The Home-Grown Artists
Even our obscure village had its share of performing
artists. One or two writers too. These people were given special status and
were accommodated in the front row during weddings. The venue would be the bride’s place,
normally. People crammed into the space around the house breathing fresh air
scented with agarbathis, panineer , cigarette-smoke and jasmine flowers. Ladies were keen to border
their hairdo with jasmine flowers. The tang of the back-waters added to this
melee. Then, the hearty smell cooking rice ….like a shaft of sunlight through
early morning mist. It buoyed us up. The artists were quite satisfied with the
adulation they received in such gatherings.
My earliest remembrance is about a couple of Kathakali artists. My grandfather’s younger cousin was a popular artist. He was already past
his prime and had almost retired from active stage when I was still a child. I
had a faint memory of him walking across the audience to reach the stage which
was at the ground level itself. Probably Balivijayam, now I deduct, as it had
heavy fights which scared the hell out of me. Krishnan Kutty, a soft-spoken
villager was another artist who had lesser roles but a regular. I tried to identify him while performing but
always drew a blank. None of my classmates could. So we did the next best thing
to release our frustration; we made a very
poor rendering of alarcha ….."Okya"……whenever
Sivankutty, his son was around. To our dismay,
Sivankutty took our pranks always in his stride.
V.Sambasivan, the man who brought Shakespeare to the
semi-literate coir workers made a cascading effect throughout Onattukara.
Anybody who could memorize a three hour long story and give an output as a
potpourri of music, mono-act and mimicry turned celebrities overnight. A
class-mate of mine, Subhagan and his sister Sudheera, formed a Kathaprasamgam
duo and started giving performances. Unlike Sambasivan who always depended on
well-known literary works, the duo took off-beat themes from the Puranas. My
paternal uncle, Sadanandan developed them, wrote the text and the lyrics. He
was a primary-school teacher preferred to work in the more pristine environs of
punchappaadams of Kuttanaad. The spare time was spent in writing plays,
ballets, kathaprasangam and even Ottanthullal. He wrote “Mahabali Vaikundathil”
exclusively for the duo. The brother –sister duo learnt everything by heart,
the text, expressions and even the gestures. Here is
Mahabali taking a long trip from Paathalam to the abode of Mahavishnu to ask
him a couple of questions. “Thrikkunnappuzha Sadanandan” as my uncle was
popularly known always thought there was more to puraanas than met the eye. He
didn’t make his students uneasy by teaching stories like Mahabali and Ekalavya verbatim.
The Maha Bali he created ventured out from the dungeons to meet the Lord on a
one-to-one basis. The injustice done to him was questioned.
Punnachchirayil Bharathan , yet another villager (and father of Subhagan and Sudheera) vowed to take Mahabali to the stage. Bharathan was not exactly comfortable enough to do so. He had been falsely implicated in
a police-case and was finding it difficult to make both ends meet. In one of
the rarest of rare cases of burglary that happened in our village, the
house-owner said that he heard a voice similar to that of Bharathan. The police
whisked him away in no time and he was at the receiving end of their
hospitality for a while. It took its toll years later when he developed TB, a dreaded
disease in those days. Bharathan looked frail and unhealthy though he smiled
refreshingly always.
So, I placed myself behind the stage when the when the
brother-sister duo was replaying Mahabali Vailkundathil. I had a better idea of
their memory-hardware than their father!
As expected, Subhagan would suddenly draw a blank but his sister
managed. When Sudheera’s chip failed, it
caused a shut-down! The Harmonist could buy time by playing a basic note repeatedly
but there was the limit. Bharathan who handled percussion used to get furious,
giving a strong pinch each time at his daughter’s bottom. Then he prompted the
remaining text.
It was a hilarious sight to me!
I had a personal score to settle with them…While I was about
to take exams in the second standard, combat-ready with my slate and its
compatible pencil, Subhagan came rushing and staked a claim on my pencil. In
fact the slate-pencil was a present from my mother. I treasured it so much that
I used it only for writing exams. When I refused to part with it, Subhagan came
back with his sister and confiscated the writing instrument. She substituted it
with a cheaper one. Surprisingly, the lost property was found in a couple of
hours’ time and I immediately rushed out to prove my innocence. There at the
ferry, I stood standstill …late by a whisker.
Hey Subhagan…Here is your pencil …Now return mine
I yelled.
Sudheera was diplomatic.
Don’t worry; we shall
get a new one for you.
She never did.
Ah yes. Thrikkunnappuzha Sadanandan wrote ballets too. After
the initial run of popular puranic stories, he veered towards the off-beat. He
wrote one with Karnan in the lead. The hero had rebellious elements in him who always argued for his limitations. Naturally nobody was prepared to produce
it and thus he found his own ballet-troup “Kerala Nrtha Kala Kshetram”. Karnan
Ballet was its first production and was inaugurated by writer Kakkanadan.
Karnan Ballet ran into full night and one such programme was enough to keep the
village folk engaged. Armed with the success of his maiden production, my uncle
went on to write “Ravanan Ballet”. Here, Ravanan was not an anti-hero, he was
the real hero. Even managing Rambhapraesham without the guilt element. In the end,
the war seemed unstoppable as Ravana used Chandrahasam to counter Rama’s
missiles. Lord Shiva appeared in the climax scene to declare Ravana couldn’t be
vanquished, making it a win-win situation.
Ravunni Aasan who later enacted Aravindan’s Kummaatti was a
prominent player in all his ballets. Barring a couple of professionals like
him, the rest of the artists were picked up from farmers, fish-mongers and the
like. One had to walk the way to Unneedaparambil, have tea and just ask for a
role. Previous experience or training no bar. The deal was struck minus the
signing amount. The returns would be nil or very nearly equal to that!
Ravanan Ballet costed my uncle dearly. He had to sell off
major chunk of his property to pay off debts. Still he managed to produce more,
till the fag-end of his life.
My own maternal uncle, Vijayappan who joined the movies
after rechristening his name as ‘Thrikkunnappuzha Vijayakumar’ was a writer of
sorts. He never completed matriculation, in fact he got fed up with studies
when he failed to make it at the eighth standard more than once. Even with such
academic credentials, he managed to write a play and got sponsors to stage it
as well. He authored and published a
book “Thyaga Hema”. You guessed it right; Hema is the name of the heroine, an
embodiment of all virtues and qualities of the world! She has been treated very badly by life but
she refuses to give up selflessness. (Hence the prefix!). You guessed it right
again, she is afflicted by TB and dies a tear-jerker death. My uncle wrote
under the pseudo name, K.V.Thoppil , as
it was fashionable to write under such exotic names those days.
The opening lines of his novel went like this…
“Khora khora bhayankaramaya mazhayum pemarium…..”
There weren’t any takers for his novel and the debts were mounting.
The practice of writing-off NPA was not in vogue then. The only
escape-route left was to make a bee-line to Madras city without a train –ticket
and resurface at Kodambakkam. He did all sorts of odd jobs there, slowly
climbing up the ladder. Producing and directing a film was his most cherished
dream. A variant of Thyaga Hema was already in mind. He was sure to script his magnum-opus someday
and had the title ready, “Beena”. Whenever he came home during
breaks between assignments, he worked on the script. There was a friendly
toddy-shop by the river which used to come alive during the evenings and it
doubled as his studio. Obviously he worked during the day-time. Hangers-on
watched him at work were given free welcome-drinks. However, they were in no
mood to desert him and continued to give him company till he called it a day.
He did manage to make the film which had a star-studded cast with Jayabharathi ,Sathar
, Unnimery etc, in leading roles. The
music by Kannur Rajan was excellent. Beena was released in the late seventies
(alongwith a Kamala Haasan movie “Eetta” directed by I.V.Sasi). Yes, Beena
failed miserably at the box-office. All of us expected that he would come back
to our native place as a pauper. It never happened. He had married too, a nice
girl from the tinsel-town, who stood by him through thick and thin. He pulled
on at Madras with his family. Though he quit the film-field, he did odd jobs
again to support his wife and two daughters. He too had a refreshing smile on
his face, always.
I met him recently and I felt happy by his mere presence.
His wife was there too, supplementing to it, gracefully. There wasn’t any need
to talk.
Everything was taken care of.
