A shower of gold

A shower of gold
Renuka Narayanan

Maybe it’s the gift of Uttarayan warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, when the earth begins to tilt away from the Tropic of Capricorn to the Tropic of Cancer. Or maybe it was just a lucky break in ‘‘God’s own country’’, Kerala. For this week, the deep winter gloom of Delhi, the aches and blues of the new year, seem poor, pathetic ghosts and the world seems brimful of hope again. Also, I was truly horrified when two friends (first, writer-diplomat Pavan Varma, and just this Saturday painter-writer Bulbul Sharma) actually told me how depressed they got reading Faithline around end-December, early-January. So I want to apologise for being such a drip!

As if in reproach, such heavenly experiences came my way recently that I was most abashed in the face of kindly fortune. First, I fell violently in love with Kudiyattam. A week at Shri G. Venu’s institute, Natana Kairali, in Irinjalakuda, Thrissur district, opened my eyes to endless subtle possibilities in communicating through the eyes and hands. I got stoned on the mizhavu drums, met lovely people of various nationalities who had gathered in that international laboratory of theatre. I suddenly rediscovered my singing voice, ate vast quantities of local flora, if not fauna, all cooked deliciously with coconut and plunged with more enthusiasm than knowledge into the history of the world’s oldest living theatre tradition, which Unesco may now uphold as an ‘‘intangible world heritage’’.In particular, I was struck by the good nature of a young German twosome, Daniel and Josephine. They are both actors from the same theatre group in Berlin (Josie’s father is in the Footsbarn theatre group that toured India recently). Every day, I noticed that someone had put fresh flowers on the black granite lamp at the entrance. It was Josie. Hardly anybody local made an offering of coconut oil to the Kudiyattam lamp. Daniel did. If there were odd jobs, Venuji later said, Daniel would jump to help. Both of them radiated so much respect for our traditions and such sweetness, I really wondered what made them tick. A bright, friendly Swedish woman suggested that it were as though they carried their own world around. So wherever they were, was the world, and that’s why they did not feel alien or awkward in relating to whoever was around them, not even while eating unfamiliar south Indian food for weeks on end or sitting crosslegged four straight hours for a Kudiyattam performance. Josie dressed modestly insalwar-kameez, she and Daniel did not cling together in public. They often sat at opposite ends of the hall to watch performances. There was something so strong and tranquil in their behaviour that to an observer it seemed that their sthayi, or defining emotion, was a loving peace.

While chatting with a bunch of young Swedish actresses, I hesitantly asked why Scandinavia had the world’s highest suicide rate (Kerala has the highest national average). They thought it was because of loneliness. Someone else said it was also a lack of God. But seeing the cheerful, relaxed behaviour of the Swedish group, I thought they were far closer to the notion of ‘‘realised beings’’ than so many pious but miserable Indians who habitually praise God but gloom out their fellow beings!

They in turn insisted that it was Venuji and his wife Nirmala who were so modest, generous and loving that they themselves could not be otherwise. As for Venuji, he said it was the spirit of Kudiyattam that energised him. Now the spirit of Kudiyattam is one of pure devotion. Would you say that when good feelings are allowed out to circulate, they pick up a velocity and force that we can attribute directly to God-in-us? As though many jivatmas plugged into each other and therefore touched the Paramatma?