kathakali

its on the concept of dance and the very beauty of our ancestors and
thier traditions:

would like to state my background first:: had watched vanaprastham
movie( its a malyalam movie on life of a kathakali dnacer). and i must
admit it was beautiful. it was hauntignly silent and the dance
performed touched every part of my soul. the more you listen and the
more you stare at the dance the more your body aches to take that
shape. one finds that meanibg or that eternla soul that one keeps
looking in god. this idea of dance where one beocmes one with one's
own wsoul. where the music engulfs the body and one beocmes the unity
with the universe. there is nothing in kathakli , its story and
expression through faces and one needs to master one's body and soul
to get this story right. not everyone can enact it, there has to be
shudhi( purity) of soul. somehow english word would not have got that
feeling right. there is this mythical story that one needs to enact
and the audinece has to feel the pain that protagnists suffer in the
myth.

i would like to recite the story that was enacted in the movie : it is
the story of the love between arjuna and subhadra ( i can see the
differnce in me , i typed arjuna and not arjun, that very conceot
shows the difference in my attitude, dnt wanna dwell into polictical
statements now) . thus there is this kathakali dancer so this dancer
enactes various forms of mahabharatha and one of his acts are based on
arjuna. he is called to performed in front of raja and he performs.
here he is seen by the daughter in law ( subhadhra this was enacted by
suhasini, am guessing you would know her, she is wife of mani
ratnam)of raja who is an avid reader of lietrature and who knows every
script of that act.

about kathakali :now remember this act is done in parts : it has dnace
, it has music, dance , music and script. this script basically is in
the form of dialouges taht need to expressed in the form of dance.
kathakali is predominatly about expressions where the face along with
soft movements of the body. one does nort move much from the place and
every act is heavily based on the expressions and beautiful lyrics
that are sung.
so in this movie : he meets her , here she requests him to read her
work and she keeps a track of his performances. behind all this he has
a wife and a girl child. he keeps peforming and over the time period
his enactment of arjuna becomes an obsession. here the woman asks him
to enact an act which is her interprestation of love between arjuna
and subhadhra . he does performa nd after the act she requests that
just for a day she would like to live the life of taht subhadra who
was in love with that arjuna. she had always dreamt of that character
arjuna whom she had sketched through her act and just for the day she
would like to live like her and feel that deviotion and love.

they conjugate while he is still in his costume of kathakali dancer
and after that he leaves. she comes back one day in between the
performance and she tells him taht abhimanyu ( son of arjuna and
subhadra ) will be born soon . after this she says that she want her
son to be son of her husband and not the kathakali dancer.its her son
and not his son as she had made love to the character and not the
person.after this the dancer refuses to enact arjuna ever again and
only performs the krodha role .

for years she refuses to let the father meet the son , and thus this
kathakail dancer as a last dance does an ode to this woman. he
performs the same act one last time nad this time his own daughter
acts as the subhdra and he acts it and subhadhra comes to watch the
performance. during those days it was an incest for a father to
serenade his own daughther for a performance, but his daughter
understands the plight his father is going through and agrees to do
her first and last performance. he dies after ther performace.
it was so powerful . am so proud of my malyalam lineage. the language
and the usage is so strong and beautiful . i did not understand the
major part of the movie. maybe i was unaware of the mythology and was
trying to sense out the feelings that these characters felt. i so
would like to dnce like them or atlesat read one of these texts and
perform it once. there was some really good shots and some powerful
acting done.

this strong potrayal of woman character, i would have to say woman, as
refusal to give parenthood to a father is something unheard by me,
such powerful expression. the very fact that a married woman dared to
fall in love with a character and she dedicates this devotion of her
through her own way of exoressing love to this mythology character.
she creates her won anchor even when she was fully aware of having a
husband who needed to be made a father. it wa stoo strong. the way she
enjoyed his performance and they way corrected the mstakes in every
script that he enacted. is really good.
this kathakali dancer, who dedicates his life for the continuyance of
dying art : who performs every part of with full dedication : shudhi :
he undersatnds every part and enacts the characters but not acting but
by living them .his love for the fan who undersatnds his devotion is
cultivated in the form of conjugation of dance and sex which results
in abhimanyu who is denied to him. he is entrapped in the fanatsy of
someone else and he keeps living that dream until he slowly starts
loosing his sanity. refusal of his father to acknowledge him as his
son and refusal of his son to acknowldge him as father is a very
strong theme that runs through the movie. his ;last ode to the only
true love other dance was performed by his very own daughter who was
ready to act the part of his lover just to perform his last rites in
the form of dance and give him moksha. she did what was expected of a
son . she performed his last rites.
it was BEAUTIFUL and very POWERFUL.
most of the writing is affected by the solitude i have enforced on
myslef in kerala, its a month in kerala since i have been in kerala
with chachi and i will say, am falling in love with my roots. my state
, my language or my ancestors. my history , my past. thus this concept
of dance and classical music gives me more scope to be near to my
past.