The Maverick Tamed

Lately there has been a great deal of interest in the ‘changing face of Calcutta’. The impression has got around, nationally and internationally, that Calcutta is becoming a modern city at last, that the Nightmare City, the Dying City of the 70s and 80s is slowly coming back to life, that the black sheep of urban India is finally coming back to the fold. The middle class is heaving a sigh of relief that the pall of radicalism, Communism and worse that has been hanging over the city for so long is finally lifting. I am at College Street Coffee House after a long, long time. Calling it the centre of the city’s intellectual life would be an exaggeration now, but it certainly was that till, say, 2 decades ago. College Street is home to the University and Presidency College campuses. Other well- known colleges are not that far away. A lot of us spent more time here, in the hotbed of radical politics, than in class in days gone by. You could catch a glimpse of everybody who was somebody- or nobody- in the arts, cinema, theatre and politics in its high- ceilinged, smoke- blue interior. New movements in both poetry and politics have been launched from here. Coffee House conversations from 40 years ago would probably provide an authentic account of the Naxalite movement. I am relieved to see that Coffee House has remained much the same. The walls as you go up the stairs are still plastered with posters of protest and of upcoming leftwing student rallies. The charged buzz of intense debate, the acrid smell of cheap tobacco and the soothing aroma of freshly brewed coffee comfort your senses as you enter the main hall. The walls, and some of the waiters, show signs of age, but it would otherwise not be difficult for a Coffee House regular to return from hibernation after 4 decades or so and resume a conversation without missing a beat. The hotbed of radical politics, happily, is still quite warm. One Sunday morning, taking a stroll down memory lane along paths that once led to school, I wander into yet another shrine- Central Avenue Coffee House. This is where the likes of Satyajit Ray, Utpal Dutt and Chidananda Dasgupta (list obviously not exhaustive) gathered. The place is closed for renovation but the manager shows me around. My memory of the place is green and gloomy- the green of glass- topped tables and the gloom of small windows and tobacco smoke. That’s all gone now, replaced by gleaming standing- only counters, cheerful colours, air- conditioning and, of course, no smoking. Not wanting my worst fears to be confirmed, I don’t ask if there’s going to be piped music as well. ‘No more loitering’ the manager informs me quite severely, ‘no more sitting for hours over a cup of coffee’. That seems to be the driving principle of the interior design. No more lengthy discussions about cinema, theatre and the state of the world either, I think to myself. The needs of busy office workers and the splintered bursts of mobile phone conversations have taken over. The Tale of Two Coffee Houses is an apt metaphor for change in Calcutta. The Second City of Empire was perfectly content to bask in its colonial glory until change was forced upon it by the famine and the communal riots of the mid 1940-s. It had hardly settled down when another wave of migration hit during the early 70s, after the creation of Bangladesh. The city has never been entirely in charge of its own fortunes or future, for when you speak of Calcutta, you speak of much more than its physical confines. You speak of the whole of Bengal. Indeed, you speak of all the eastern States and of neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal. Streams of migrants have converged on Calcutta for refuge and livelihood and their narratives have shaped the story of the city. Unintended cities (I am grateful to a social scientist friend for the phrase) have been seeded, taken root and thrived in bewildering variety. In fact, it would be difficult to talk of Calcutta in purely urban terms for it carries within it the memory of so many villages left behind. If it is at all possible to capture the elusive essence of Calcutta, that essence can only be called diversity. Diversity, as we all know, is never easy to manage. It can be unruly, messy, contradictory. At the same time, it can be rich, life- giving and participatory. The rule book of globalisation and free market capitalism, however, prescribes homogeneity rather than diversity. For all its talk of democracy and free choice, capitalism is acutely uncomfortable with anything that disturbs its well- oiled mechanism and disrupts its universal edicts. It abhors mavericks who play outside the rules. And that is perhaps the biggest change (or threat, depending on your point of view) that confronts Calcutta today. Plans are afoot to make it fall in line, join the mainstream, become nice and homogeneous. West Bengal has reaped all the benefits of land reforms and agricultural productivity, goes the official argument, and it’s now time for a change in paradigm, time for rapid, and if necessary, forced private sector led industrialisation. And Calcutta must become the beacon that heralds the brave new age, aglitter with flyovers, night clubs and shopping malls,. Calcutta has become Kolkata not, paradoxically enough, to become more indigenous but more ‘global’. The massive satellite township taking shape on its eastern fringe is a dreary, faceless, uncompromisingly ‘modern’ collection of vertical towers. It is called, perhaps prophetically, New Town and draws its inspiration from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. The advertisements for these developments proudly announce that all you have to do to go shopping in Singapore is to go down to your basement store. In time, this is the only face of Kolkata that the visitor might see as she comes in from the airport. Will she be reassured by its bland upper class functionality or dismayed that the legend of the city and its reality just do not match? So, yes, Kolkata is changing its face. But appearances, as they say, can be deceptive. The ongoing turmoil in Singur and Nandigram is a landmark phenomenon in the social and political history of West Bengal, every bit as significant as the Naxalite movement 4 decades ago. The agriculture- industry debate comes into sharp focus, communities stand up and say ‘no’ to a Government that has become used to having its own way. The protests become an example of resistance to neo- liberal industrialisation elsewhere in the country. A well- known theatre group presents a version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and gets veiled threats of being shut down. Prominent personalities resign from Government sponsored institutions. Even in the Calcutta Club, as venerable and colonial an institution as you could hope to set foot in (provided you’re wearing the right shoes), voices are raised in genteel dismay at the way the Government is behaving. Last Christmas, I join a candlelight vigil at the centre of Kolkata’s arts district. Theatre goers and holidaying passersby gather and in no time a lively debate gets going. The road gets jammed but nobody seems to mind. The Maverick City, it appears, will not be that easy to tame. Kolkata’s face may be changing, but its heart still seems to be in the right place.

Just a few days in Jaffna

DHRITIMAN CHATERJI

COMMENT (18)  ·   PRINT   ·   T  T  

inShare

13

• 
  Elephant Pass: The landscape is stark, spirit level flat and bleached in the glare of the sun. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji
• 
  Memories haunt. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji
• 
  Inside Jaffna Fort. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji
• 
  Point Pedro. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji
• 
  Landscape. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji
• 
  War Memorial, Kilinochchi. Photo: Dhritiman Chaterji

TOPICS

lifestyle and leisure

travel and commuting

social issue

unrest, conflicts and war

armed conflict

civil war

crisis

massacre

Dhritiman Chaterji visits the island nation and sees how things have changed

I remember a time, not that long ago, when getting around in the Lankan capital was an obstacle race from one checkpoint to another. Out of town, one carried one’s ID at all times, was polite to the Police and Army boys when one was waved down and, if one ventured northeast to Trincomalee, one was advised to drive down the middle of the road because you never knew what dangers might lurk on the sides. To the North, the Jaffna Peninsula was an absolute no- go for individual travellers unless your suicidal tendencies were dangerously acute. All that has changed quite dramatically. The roads are first rate and the checkpoints have gone.

We whiz along the familiar Colombo- Kandy road, climbing gently, veer east to Kurunegala and then northwest again towards Dambulla to pick up the iconic A9 Kandy- Jaffna highway as we enter the flat Vanni country of the North Central Province near historic Anuradhapura. It’s hot in the Vanni and tourists are thin on the ground in Anuradhapura but lunch at the old and sprawling Tissa Wewa guest house is as graceful and relaxing as always. The terrain becomes tabletop flat as the A9 pierces due north to Vavuniya, a name familiar only from war dispatches.

Soon enough, we’re in Killinochchi. As we approach the town through lawns being swept spotlessly clean on either side, the War Memorial looms- a massive, modernistic concrete cube with a bullet embedded in it and a flower blossoming from the fissure in the concrete. Interpret the symbolism as you will. Killinochchi slumbers in the afternoon heat and looks for all the world like any provincial Lankan town. As we stop for tea at a wayside shop, evoking mild curiosity as I suppose any visitor from India, especially Tamilnadu, would, it is difficult to imagine the turbulence of the town’s recent past. Seized by the LTTE in 1990, re- taken by the Sri Lanka Army in 1996 and wrested again by the LTTE in 1998, Killinochchi became the de facto administrative headquarters of the Tigers for 11 years before falling finally to the Army in 2009, with the LTTE retreating eastwards towards the coastal town of Mullaitivu.

A BBC report from 2009 describes the devastation: ‘In Kilinochchi there was hardly a building with a roof. Shops were in ruins or pockmarked with bullets, a huge water tower was lying on its side.’ The water tower still lies on its side, memorialised as a kind of bizarre installation.

And so on to Elephant Pass, that finger of land lying across the Indian Ocean to the east and the Jaffna Lagoon to the West, joining the mainland to the Jaffna Peninsula. The landscape is stark, spirit level flat and bleached in the glare of the sun. Memories of troubled times linger in a checkpost, a diversion and a desultory checking of our driver’s papers. Memories linger on both sides of the highway too- pitted walls, blasted buildings and signs warning of landmines. More settlements show themselves and soon we enter Jaffna town. This is when we realise that our driver has no Tamil and doesn’t have a clue about Jaffna. We know that we’re in for interesting times!

One of my favourite Lankan writers, Romesh Gunasekera, says wryly in a recent story that, given its recent past, it’s not surprising that most northern towns have a Hospital Road. Sure enough, Hospital Road in Jaffna is where the action is and we look for someone who can guide us to Vaddukoddai, where we’re going to be staying. Needless to say, neither we nor our driver have the slightest idea about where it might be. A trishaw driver leads us part of the way and points us in the right direction to Vaddukoddai, about 15 kms northwest of Jaffna town.

Through flat, arid land on one side and the gentle ripples of the lagoon on the other, we end up, finally, at a sprawling old bungalow in the quiet village, right opposite the wall of Jaffna College. Are the pockmarks we see on the college wall the ravages of nature or the signs of a more recent conflict?

It turns out that Vaddukoddai is important to the academic history of the Peninsula, the Batticotta Seminary having been established in 1827 by American missionaries. In 1867, it became the secular Jaffna College. As we lick ice cream from a cart one afternoon outside the College and look on at the boys and girls playing on the grounds inside, we have to remind ourselves that things were not always so normal.

The old lady who cooks the most delicious meals for us and the young man who looks after our every need at our quiet, secluded hideaway are delighted to chat to Tamil- speaking ‘outsiders’ but don’t really want to talk about what things were like during ‘those times’. The times were bad, a lot of people fled the village and the Peninsula and the gracious mansion needed a lot of repairs after peace came back. This is all we are able to get out of them.

The June heat is overpowering and we venture out into Jaffna town only in the early evening. The city centre is busy and bustling, the markets are full, a spanking new shopping mall has just opened. Jaffna is trying very hard to present a business- as- usual face to the world. But many of the buildings look old and tired. Shops are shuttered. Facades crumble. The signs of neglect and trouble are hard to escape.

Families stroll on the freshly laid seafront promenade. The Provincial Council chambers and other Government buildings look bright and new and the low- slung Jaffna Fort oversees it all. Built originally by the Portuguese in 1618, demolished and rebuilt by the Dutch in 1658, wrested later by the British and, in more recent times, tossed between the Army and the LTTE, the Fort has been battered and bruised by history. Inside, wide open grounds, stacked rubble and the skeletons of buildings tell the by now familiar story of conflict and destruction. On the battlements overlooking the ocean, young couples lurk, seeking whatever privacy they can find.

Early one morning, we head northeast from Jaffna to Point Pedro. The name and the history of the place evoke a sense of adventure. But the journey itself is short, uneventful and quite prosaic. A very good road speeds past neat little towns.

The vegetation here is more lush than further south. And soon, we are at land’s end where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean. Fishermen’s dwellings, fishing boats on the beach- it’s all quite undramatic here at the northernmost tip of the Island. It strikes us again what an accessible place Sri Lanka is. We could set out from here and get to Dondra Head, the southernmost tip, which we’ve visited earlier, in no more than, say, 9 hours.

The ease and pace of travel in this beautiful country never ceases to amaze us, used as we are to covering vast distances over many days in India.

We head due west along the coast, the road narrower and bumpier now. We’re going nowhere in particular, but in the general direction of the major port of Kankesanthurai. We stop by the roadside to explore an ancient brickwork temple we’ve just spotted, fronted by a colourful new one. Temple renovation is very much a part of the northern landscape, as much a sign of optimism and hope, we sense, as of faith.

A man sitting under a tree comes up to talk. We won’t get to KKS, he tells us, it’s still out of bounds, but, by the way, and only if we’re interested, we’re at the birthplace of Prabhakaran. And if we care to step off the road, we can see the piece of land where his ancestral home once stood. We are interested and we do step off the road to stand on an overgrown plot surrounded by neat village homes. Just another quiet afternoon in a nondescript village. But we can at least boast that we’ve been to Velvettithurai, unlike most travellers. We curve back northwards through inner roads. We are looking for Swami Gauribala Giri’s Ashram. We’ve heard of the German Swami from friends who knew him and others who knew of him. And the stories tell of a colourful, cult like, hyper hippy figure. Born Peter Schoenfeldt, Gauribala set up the ashram, built around a small Murugan temple, in 1945. The Ashram feeds 40- 50 people every day and more than a thousand on Fridays. Funded by well- wishers in the Island as well as from abroad, the ashram tries to fund students and provide things like bicycles and reading glasses to those in need. In the counterculture days of the 1960- s and 70- s, the Ashram and the Swami gave refuge to people we know who were seeking solace and, who knows, salvation. Finding one’s way around in the inner parts of the Peninsula is not as easy as on the mainland. The roads are not as well signposted and people tend to give you directions with reference to landmarks which, of course, are unfamiliar to you. But we get to Thondaimanaru eventually. A freshwater aru flows into the sea here and the village, dating back to the Chola period, is dominated by the imposing and brightly painted Selva Sannidhi Murugan temple. We walk down to Gauribala’s Ashram and are received warmly by the assistant secretary, a retired postmaster, who seems to be pleased that we’ve taken the trouble

to make this journey. We spend an interesting couple of hours chatting and are treated to a delicious Jaffna Tamil lunch served in the traditional way. Our Sinhalese driver is clearly not used to eating seated cross- legged on the floor but is soon devouring his rasam sadam heartily.

For the first time on this trip, we talk politics and current affairs, hesitantly at first, more fluently later on. Of the postmaster’s 4 sons, one joined the LTTE and died. Another went missing. He and his family left the Peninsula during the troubles. The Northern Provincial Council is hobbled by lack of

resources and of power. Work opportunities for the young are few. There is sadness and a barely expressed bitterness about the past and a lack of optimism about the future. What surprises us is the hope, the certainty almost, that India will help bring better days to the Peninsula.

We leave the Ashram in the late afternoon and head southeast, looking for the mini desert of Manalkadu. Our progress is hesitant as always, with people we ask being unsure about where exactly we want to go and why exactly we want to go there. But with faith in our hearts and Google Maps on our phone, we find ourselves off the beaten track amidst looming sand dunes. This extraordinary and incongruous landscape has been home to small, isolated communities for a long time. We climb one particularly high dune and find ourselves in a small cemetery, with the ocean stretching away down below. Next to the deserted coastline, we see a new settlement of neatly laid out red- roofed homes.

Back to Jaffna, our rural refuge and the generous hospitality of our cook and caretaker. Our time in Jaffna is almost over.

In the meantime, we have made a quick trip to Kayts, one of the many islands that ring the Peninsula. That story must wait for another time and another trip to explore the islands properly. For now, we must go back to the mainland- not another country but certainly a different reality. We have seen a land upon which lies an uneasy peace. We have seen people on whose faces smiles are struggling to break through once more, but only just.

The Name Game

Wanting to change the name of a State because it comes low down in the alphabetical order has to be reasoning of the most bizarre, not to say, insensitive kind. You almost expect a Committee to be set up to correlate ‘Quantum of Central Government Grants with Alphabetical Position of States’; final report to be presented in the Winter session of the Assembly, accompanied by full scale walkouts, dislocation of furniture, etc.

I mean, Tamilnadu is just 3 steps up the ladder, and doing quite well, thank you. And not just for alphabetical reasons.

No wonder politicians aren’t exactly the flavour of the season, you tell yourself. But West Bengal (ooops!) is luxuriating in the sweet rain of change and perhaps something surprisingly creative will come out of all this, you console yourself.

And then, in the papers, one cloudy morning not so long ago…Paschim Banga. Paschim of what? Bangladesh. But why should we locate ourselves with relation to another country? Because a historical marker is important. Says who? The 12 or 13 Wise Ones of the All Party Committee of Legislators. They were all quite convinced about this, were they? Well, not really. Some thought this, and some thought that and some, as usual, thought nothing but they took a ‘unanimous’ decision…and they did it- reportedly- in 10 minutes. How’s that for quick decision making?

Consider this. Non- Bengalis (whom a Bengali friend wickedly terms ‘not-Bengali’) have a tough time with ‘Kolkata’ and it saddens you no end to hear the name of your very own city being distorted in the most peculiar ways. What, oh, what will they do with Paschim/ Pashchim Banga/ Bango/ Bongo (except a lot of byango, that is?) Did the Wise Ones think of this? They had no problems at all pronouncing it, but it is true that they were all Bengalis. But aren’t we a multilingual, multicultural State and don’t we take pride in our inclusiveness? That’s all very well, but it was a unanimous decision taken by 13 people, never mind that they didn’t all think alike and never mind how the dictionary defines ‘unanimous’. And, remember, the decision took just 10 minutes.

So why waste ‘West Bengal’ when Paschim Banga is so much of a muchness? Not to mention that it’s unnecessarily nostalgic and a linguistical nightmare for most other Indians? Here’s the reason. ‘We cannot have an English name for our State. We must shake off the colonial yoke’.

But haven’t we demonstrated once and for all (with distinguished Bengali writers doing a lot of the demonstrating) that English is by now an ‘Indian’ language? Remember a man called Tagore and the Prize that he got called the Nobel? In more recent times, remember the prose of Amartya Sen and Amitav Ghosh? And in any case, if the yoke had to be shaken (and not stirred), did we have to make such a scrambled egg out of it? Could we not have waited, invited opinions, encouraged discussion, weighed countless aspects of what is surely a crucial decision in the cultural life, in the very identity of a State? Ten minutes is all it takes these days, we are given to understand.

What culture, what identity, you might ask. Here’s the answer, you are told. It is a political decision. Your elected representatives have taken it according to their party diktats. And as we all know, parties are more important than people. Now go and live with it for the rest of your life.

No, wait. If the ‘Quantum of Central Government Grants to Alphabetical Position’ graph doesn’t climb, we might consider another nudge up the alphabetical ladder next year.

The Ocean in His Backyard

Chennai, which was formerly known as Madras, is southern India’s premier city. Take the spanking new East Coast Road going south and you whiz along to the historic temple town of Mahabalipuram, a must-see for tourists. Farmhouses, resorts and entertainment centres pop up on both sides of the highway, growing at the rate of about two a week. The southern coastal region is fast becoming the playground of the city’s affluent middleclass.

Barely a kilometre to the east of the highway, the coastline is dotted with fishing villages. There is electricity but no running water and few toilets. There is alcoholism among the men and a reluctance to go to school among the children.

Balan came to the village of Injambakkam with his family about 3 years ago from his hometown of Kumbakonam. He is a mason, an expert roof layer, but even with the spate of construction going on all around, he cannot get regular work. He finds it difficult to put together the initial capital of $100 or so to, as he says, ‘launch himself’. $100 is rather less than the average family from the city spends on a weekend bash at one of the nearby resorts. Balan is taciturn, dignified and is in a way exceptional for he does not drink and does not indulge in the nightly ritual of wife beating.

Balan’s wife Sulochana looks much older than her 40 odd years. She usually wears an oddly blank expression, as if her mind has caved in under her load of worries. The older son drives a trishaw and considers himself the main provider. This gives him the right to beat his mother, since his father won’t. Somebody has to keep the women in their place. The younger son’s eyes are bright with intelligence but all efforts to send him to school have failed. He is Balan’s apprentice and a television addict. Illiteracy has already defined his future.

The older daughter, together with her mentally retarded child, has been deserted by her husband. She has come back to live with her parents. She is ‘family’ and it would be unthinkable to ask her to fend for herself. In any case, fending for herself could only mean working as domestic help, with probably a little bit of prostitution, brewing illicit liquor or drug dealing on the side. The younger daughter, Nagu, is just into her 20-s and unmarried.

The apple of the family’s eye is Goutam, Nagu’s 6-month old son. Getting Nagu’s pregnancy confirmed was difficult enough – being made to run from pillar to post at Government hospitals, having to borrow money for the tests and so on. The family was aghast and the truth had to be beaten out of Nagu, quite literally. Another daughter had been married to Govindan, who had children by her. Then she died. The family believes that she was killed by Govindan and his family for dowry she could not bring. It did not even occur to them to go to the police, for they knew they did not have the money to buy justice. Govindan had been demanding that Nagu now be given to him to bring up the children. The family had refused but Govindan hung around. And then one day, claims Nagu, he had waylaid her by the community toilet, tied her down and had sex with her.

Abortion was out of the question, especially as far as Sulochana was concerned. A grandchild was coming and had to be welcomed, regardless of marriage or social approval. And so here’s Goutam, a strong, happy infant, ready to break out into a smile at the slightest excuse. Everybody in the family adores him. The neighbours have accepted him as just another kid who will grow up in Injambakkam along with a swarm of others. In time, he will find his place in the almost inevitable cycle of poverty, lack of education, lack of self-esteem, struggling to find work, struggling to raise a family, struggling with alcoholism… struggle, struggle and yet more mind-deadening struggle.

The families that drive down to the beach in their shiny new Korean model cars (Chennai is being billed as the Detroit of India) would not approve of this state of affairs. They would see no courage, no compassion, no dignity in the decision the family took. “This is the way all these poor people behave”, they would say. “And besides, the child is illegitimate.”

Quite right. He is illegitimate not only because his mother is not married but because the resurgent new India has no place for him. As his inquisitive little head jerks from side to side, the blue of the ocean in his backyard shines in his bright little eyes.

Half A Century Ago

The Sixties

No sentiment is more dangerous, they say, than nostalgia. The past is another country, another reality. But the past is also history. And without a sense of history, it is scarcely possible to begin to understand the present…or the future.

I remember the sixties mainly as a period when the Nehruvian vision of society was still alive. It was honourable to be poor or moderately comfortable financially. It was bad to be rich and absolutely unspeakable to flaunt wealth. One depended implicitly on the State for education, health and a host of other services. Inefficiency and corruption were bemoaned but the public sector was seen as something that needed to be improved, not discarded.

And aah!...the arts, the arts. You went to a host of all- night music festivals and discussed the performances, bleary eyed, in the college canteen or nearby coffee house the following day. That, in any case, was where most of the teaching and learning took place, not in the classroom.

You thronged to film festivals. Cinema seemed to have been re-discovered as the new medium after Pather Panchali. (The re- discovery of Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt came much more recently- whereby hangs another interesting tale). There was no question that cinema had a social purpose (though Cesare Zavattini, Italian Communist Party member, Neo- realism ideologue and De Sica’s contemporary, had said long ago that cinema changed nothing).

The first New Wave package of films came from France around 1963, and we were agog. Soon after, Mrinal Sen made Aakaash Kusum, complete with freezes and jump cuts, which we had not seen till then.

There was a sense that something was about to happen, although that is probably being wise after the fact. Look at the late 60-s and early 70-s and see what did happen – Ray’s Kolkata films, Sen’s Bhuvan Shome and Kolkata films, Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s best work, Ritwick Ghatak, Aravindan…quite apart, of course, from the tremendous things that were happening in Europe…

Only Plays or Some Theatre Too?

The Hindu Theatre Fest, Chennai, August 2007

It has been nice to have something to genuinely look forward to for so many evenings in a row. It was nice to know that a few hundred people were heading for a hall with a common purpose. Nothing compared to the thousands who head for cinema halls to see The Boss, but still…

The challenge of open spaces

What theatre workers and theatregoers have been doing over these 11 days is sharing an open space created by the Metro Plus Theatre Fest, a kind of Theatre Commons. The organisers deserve our thanks. We have to remember, though, that a common space has to be looked after, tended and even expanded by all who use it. Space, whether physical, intellectual or artistic, is a scarce resource and one has to be prepared to share it. Otherwise it loses that very special quality of openness. The wonderful thing about being in a space over a period of time is that its contours and its uses become sharper and thoughts and questions arise about how to nurture it and use it better. Here, for what it’s worth, are some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

A particularly enterprising film society in Kolkata started its own international film festival a few years ago. The event took root, grew popular and soon became the official Kolkata International Film Festival. So sharing has its rewards. Who is to say that the Metro Theatre Fest will not become the Chennai International Theatre Festival? And what can the stakeholders do to prepare the ground, as it were?

Without meaning the slightest disrespect to those who take responsibility for it now, does it make sense to appoint a Festival Director to design the event, choose the plays and mount other related activities? It needn’t be the same person every year, needless to say. It’s futile to try to put together a list of the year’s ‘best’ plays. No such list can ever be possible. So why not let the audience share one knowledgeable, sensitive, committed person’s vision instead? Would it help to organise the programme under broad themes- say 12 plays, 3 themes?

A launch party is all very well. Everybody loves a Big Bash. But does it say ‘5 Star Entertainment for the Chennai Elite’ too loudly? Would a daylong seminar with well- prepared papers set a more appropriate tone? Surely there’s a whole host of issues theatre workers should be discussing. And what better occasion than this? Can discussions, exhibitions, film shows be facilitated during the course of the Fest with the help of other organisations such as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the Alliance Francaise, the British Council, the Goethe Institut? In other words, can the Fest be about more than just putting on and watching plays? Over time, can it ground itself in the larger context of theatre?

And then, of course, there’s the seemingly intractable question of representation. The Fest is about theatre in English, even though it doesn’t say so explicitly. Is there a special reason for foregrounding this segment? Is it truly representative of theatre in Chennai or in Tamil Nadu? And are English plays from Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai truly representative of theatre practice in these centres? Would the inclusion of Indian language plays (yes, yes I know that we think of English as an Indian language too!) spread over a larger number of venues broaden enthusiasm and participation? Or would it just compound the logistical problems? Is it possible to learn from the experience of multilingual festivals elsewhere in the country?

Theatre as process

Speaking of the larger context, one question that has puzzled me for a long time is: What constitutes an English theatre group in this city? Is it commitment to a certain ideology, a certain process, a certain way of doing theatre? No offence meant, but I haven’t seen a great deal of evidence of this. Or is a group defined by a particular person- a director, a producer or a writer- with actors flitting about from group to group like honeybees in a field of flowers? It is true that individuals of extraordinary stature have invested groups with unique significance. Utpal Dutt, Habib Tanvir and Badal Sarkar come to mind, as does Arianne Mnouchkine, from very different fields of theatre practice. But, seriously, is English theatre in Chennai ready for this?

Unless theatre workers reflect on the meaning and integrity of groups, shall we be able to move up from merely putting up plays to doing theatre? Do we tend to use the ‘amateur’ status of English theatre as an excuse? Amateur is not the same as amateur-ish and the difference between amateur and professional is often in the mind, in the attitude and understanding, not in the money available.

Do we understand that theatre is anchored in a continuum? Do we ignore the importance of learning- of theories, traditions and texts? Does the energy we devote to theatre as process match the enthusiasm that we have for turning out a product, for staging a play? Above all, can we replace the notion of theatre as entertainment with the notion of theatre as engagement? Entertainment is such a tiresome, one- sided concept. Engagement is so much more exciting. It means that you see the audience as partners in the experience, that you involve, mystify and provoke it.

Enter the Audience

That the audience is willing to be engaged was demonstrated by the Stages Theatre Group’s forum experiment. There is a notion that the English theatre audience is affluent, elite, interested only in a good evening’s entertainment. Changing one’s class character is not easy and you can’t really be expected to carry a copy of your Income Tax returns when you buy a ticket. But the contribution of the audience is vitally necessary to push the boundaries of the Theatre Commons. There seems to be one good place to start: demand more, not in quantity but in quality, relevance, innovation, experiment. Do not be passive or polite in your criticism. Be willing to see theatre in basic, even uncomfortable spaces, so that you can relieve theatre groups of the burden of finding money to hire luxurious, air- conditioned halls. Without the audience as enthusiastic participant, there will be no worthwhile theatre.

Curtains

That’s about it then. There’s neither time nor space to discuss individual plays…but there will always be a next time. Suffice it to say that I value whatever friendships I have in theatre more than any foolhardy notions of frank and fearless theatre criticism.

Whatever else the audience may or may not take away from this Festival, one thing is certain. The vital statistics of a particular brand of car will be scored indelibly in their collective memory. Is there any truth in the rumour that, at the next Festival, we shall have the privilege of actually seeing this car, or its successor, on stage, embedded skillfully in various scripts?

The Water Sutra

The Water Sutra

Chandralekha phoned to invite me to a talk she was giving that evening, not so many evenings ago.

‘On what?’ I asked.

‘Oh, some gibberish’ she said. And then the laughter, more a self-deprecating, musical giggle, tinkled. It was a melody I’d heard many times, on the phone and sitting face to face, on the floor, at her home and ours, chatting. Chatting about gardens, traditional Indian board games, graphics and posters, common friends, the state of the beach in Chennai…about everything except dance. For I know nothing of dance.

So what am I doing writing about her?

In a week from now, she gets the Kalidas Samman in Bhopal, one of the most venerated peer-awarded honours in this country. In a career spanning 5 decades and more, Chandra has not exactly been inundated with accolades and, as she tells the gathering that evening, the Kalidas Samman means ‘a hell of a lot’ to her. Not perhaps the most demure choice of words, but then, that’s Chandra.

Her work is not really about dance. That’s why I can try writing about her. It is about…well…water. Water. Something that I love. Something that none of us can do without. Something that, sadly, is becoming scarcer and more polluted.

That evening, she talked about her work as being an exploration of the body, and the space in which the body lives. About the rigours of that exploration, the energy that goes into it and, at the same time, radiates from it. She talked about how, after a performance, the body welcomes water – how delicious it is to drink, how refreshing it is to bathe in. On an earlier occasion, some of us had got together to listen to her recite an Elegy to Water, a long dirge that bemoaned the confiscation of water and, with it, the loss of nature and of rights: the right to livelihood, civil, gender and political rights. Most of us in that gathering were performers of one kind or another (there were no politicians, though) and she had wondered whether the Elegy could become a performance. Some day, Chandra, some day, when the time is right.

Water as primal element, as life force, water as metaphor. I know Chandra by a laughter that tinkles gently like the clear waters of the Alakananda gliding over smooth stone; and by a shock of white hair that gushes gracefully forth like the surge of the Bhagirathi. I think of a confluence, of Devaprayag. Could that be the title of her next piece? Sharira, Shloka, Raga. And 6 pieces before that in the last 18 years. All taking place at the confluence where raging body meets serene space. Engaging it, extending into it, shaping it, sculpting it over time. Becoming part of it.

If this is the quest, it goes much beyond the classical tradition of dance as we know it, dance as devotion, as narrative and as virtuosity of performance. It becomes philosophical investigation and political action. By fusing body and space, it reclaims the advaita principle. By contextualising the ever-changing uses and abuses of the body, it proclaims resistance to the status quo.

I think of another wise, white haired woman who is ever so contemporary, yet ever so classical. Accepting the Friedenspreis Peace Prize at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair (on which occasion the US Ambassador was not present, for how could he be seen in the company of a humanist when his Government was engaged in a war against humanity?), Susan Sontag said: “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not being corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding. One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness.” Replace writer and literature with performer and performance, and you have Chandra and her work.

I wish I could be present at Bharat Bhavan next Saturday to see who’s present and who’s not and to hear Chandra’s acceptance speech. I wonder what inspired gibberish I’ll be missing.

(Chandralekha is a wondrous dancer based in Chennai, India)