by Anita Nair
‘If we placed our feet flat on the ground like in bharatanatyam, for instance, the impact would be brutal.’ I stood up and performed a step. Then I turned my feet sideways. ‘The steps in kathakali are vigorous. This is a masculine dance. Even the slowest of compositions has an underlying vigour. Think of the damage it would cause the eyes and spine, the vital organs. With your feet placed sideways, the impact is gentle and it gives the steps a lightness.’
Angela nodded and turned to her book.
Rain fell. The questions didn’t cease. She was like I used to be. A vulture, I thought, picking between the bones of kathakali. How? Why? When?
‘Sometimes you have to forget all the questions and let your mind slip away. Ignore your doubts and become the character. If you let your mind dominate, then you will be Angela playing a character and not the character,’ I said. I was repeating the words with which Aashaan had once chided me. I looked at her bent head. I was once like her. Is that what drew me to her? When I saw her, I saw a reflection of myself. Was this love? To seek in someone a mirror image of one’s own hopes and dreams, one’s own soul?
My head ached. I knew I was unhappy, but I couldn’t understand the desperation I felt.
Rain fell, ushering shadows into the late afternoon. Angela rose and put on the light. The naked bulb glowed. It caught the glint of her gold stud. I felt my breath catch. She lights up my world, I thought.
Karkitakam passed. So did kanni. Two months of knowing Angela, and yet I know nothing of her, I thought. She is the crown I wear as part of a vesham, precious and sacred, inviolable and, despite its beauty, a burden. The weight of this crown will snap my neck. The sanctity of our relationship demands that I keep her at a distance, but how much longer can I restrain myself?
Why did Aashaan do this to me, I asked myself every now and then. And if he knew, he would be furious. I sighed.
Then I sat up with a start. Where was Aashaan? It was almost two months since I had seen him. Every now and then I told myself that I ought to go and visit him at home. But the pace of my routine left me with little time.
This weekend I would go to his house. He was probably lonely …and drunk. I felt guilt coat my tongue. Bitter, acrid guilt.
For the first time I began to understand Aashaan’s anguish. Without a vesham, a kathakali dancer had no place.
Later, and for as long as I lived, I would never forgive myself for abandoning him. ‘It isn’t your fault,’ she told me again and again. ‘It isn’t neglect that did it. He knew. Don’t you see that? He knew that he would never dance again.’
‘But if I had been there, I would have been able to talk him out of it,’ I said.
‘Could you have got him a performance? Even if there was someone willing to listen to you and take the risk of having him play a vesham, do you think his pride would have allowed it? Don’t do this, Koman. Don’t blame yourself. Let him go. It is sad, but you must respect his decision.’ Angela laid her hand on my arm.
I realized that for the first time she had called me by name and not Aashaan.
I covered her hand with mine. I felt the need to cling to someone. I wanted to lay my cheek against her breast and weep. Each time I shut my eyes, on that darkened screen, the image appeared—Aashaan hanging from a beam.
I was in the middle of a class when Gopi, the pettikaaran, came looking for me. ‘There is a man here from Aashaan’s village. He died early this morning,’ Gopi said.
His eyes filled. The pettikaaran and Aashaan had known each other a long time. Gopi had transformed Aashaan into so many characters. He probably knew every wart and wrinkle on Aashaan’s face.
I felt a leaden weight settle on my brow. ‘What happened?’
The boys and Angela paused in the middle of a kalasham. I turned on them furiously. ‘Who asked you to stop? Go on, finish the sequence and then scene three from Uttaraswayamvaram—Gowri, Gowri … I have to go now. I expect you to continue as if I were here. Do you understand?’
Gopi and I walked towards the office room. ‘I am going to see him,’ I said. ‘Will anyone else come?’
Gopi nodded. ‘The principal has called for a taxi. Some others are coming as well. The man said the panchayat president is trying to hush up the whole thing. He was a drunk, but every one respected him. When he was sober, there was no one like him and never will be …’
I stopped mid-stride. ‘What do you mean, hush up?’
Gopi looked away. ‘They found him hanging from a beam in his house. The maid found him, in fact, this morning.’
‘But how? Wasn’t anyone else in his family there?’
‘What family? His wife died some years ago and they had no children,’ Gopi said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
I felt guilt rail its fists against me. I had burdened Aashaan with my worries, real and imaginary. My relations with my family, my dreams, my speculations about characters and interpretations, but I had never once asked Aashaan if he had demons of his own, burdens I could have helped lighten if not alleviate. I had been so wrapped up in myself. If I had known, I would have brought him to my house and looked after him. But Aashaan hadn’t wanted charity. He hadn’t wanted to lose his dignity. It is better to be dead than a veshakaaran without a vesham, he had said again and again. And Aashaan had no vesham left. On stage, or in life.
I watched a distant nephew light the pyre. The flames leapt and burnt. Are you at peace now, Aashaan, I asked.
The flames cackled, hissed and spat in reply. It could have been Aashaan answering me.
In my home by the river, I knew a remorse that tore my soul. No matter how much I tried to rationalize Aashaan’s death, it was hard to not grieve. I sat on the steps leading down to the river and wept.
Angela
I found him there. I looked down at him. He wasn’t even aware of my presence, his isolation was so complete. I wanted to reach out and take him in my arms, comfort him, hold him to my breasts and stroke his brow. I laid my hand on his shoulder.
He turned abruptly at my touch. His eyes sought mine, imploring me to understand. ‘If I had known …’ he said, trying to explain his anguish.
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ I said.
I sat beside him on the step.
‘There is a poem called “Final Act”, by a poet named Rilke.’
The words, in an unfamiliar tongue, seemed to sooth him.
He leaned towards me. ‘What does it mean?’
‘Death is large.
We are the beings
With laughing mouths.
When we think we are in the middle of life
Death dares to cry out
in the middle of us.’
He smiled in the darkness.
He looked at my face. ‘How did you know where I live?’
‘I know everything about you,’ I said. How could I tell him that I had been collecting bits of information about him? ‘Aashaan told me.’
‘He was planning this. He gave you to me.’
‘No one could give me to you. I am not a parcel. I chose you, remember?’
‘I know. But he knew that when he was gone, I would need a diversion.’
‘I don’t like to think I am a mere diversion. But it is true. Aashaan was a wise man.’ I steeled my voice to bear the finality of a goodbye. ‘Was,’ I said.
Tears sprang into his eyes. ‘If I had been less wrapped up in myself,’ he said.
I took his hands in mine. ‘You can’t live another man’s life. It was his decision to die. You must respect that.’
Koman
A few weeks later came another invitation. The second day of Nalacharitam. Would I play Nala? I agreed. It would take my mind off Aashaan and Angela, I told myself.
Two days before the performance, Angela said that she would come to see me play Nala. ‘It will be interesting to see how you transform from the heroic and romantic Nala to an ineffectual and crazed man.’
I flushed. I felt self-conscious. Why couldn’t it be a vesham where I was a truly
heroic being instead of this mortal creature pulled and twisted by destiny’s doings, I asked myself wryly. I would be Nala who was a slave to his senses, doing their bidding, all good sense distanced.
It was only in the first scene that I would be allowed to be Nala, the noble and sensitive man. Suddenly I knew. With that one scene, I would tell her what I was feeling.
After Nala went back to his kingdom with his bride, he discovered yet another impediment to their happiness: Damayanti’s shyness.
‘Kuvalayavilochane bale, bhaimi …My lotus-eyed beauty, my precious girl, my wife, having got this far, don’t you think we are wasting our youth and time? Think of all that we had to go through. Think of the various impediments that came our way. Now it is your shyness that stands between us; it is your bashfulness that is my greatest enemy. Don’t you think it is time you shrugged that away and let me fulfil my desires? bale’
I thought of the scene as I lay on my back. Gopi was working on my face. He knew better than to intrude on my thoughts. Yet, as he drew the rice-paste patterns, he murmured in a hushed voice, ‘Why do I get the feeling that this is you lying here and not Nala? What is wrong?’
I felt a great wave of mortification. What was I thinking? I had no place here. My dreams and desires did not belong here; mine was merely a body for Nala to be. I was Nala. And my love was Damayanti, not a blue-eyed Madaama.
And yet, when the music began and the singers poured forth the longing in Nala’s heart, Kuvalayavilochane bale, bhaimi, I knew that I was incapable of retreating. That it would be I, not Nala, who stood there and wooed her. With this slowest sringaara padam amongst all kathakali padams, I would make my intentions clear. For once, I would use the power of the veshakaaran to beguile the audience into thinking I was Nala. Only she would know better.
Angela
I wasn’t shy, or bashful. Neither was I easily overwhelmed by pretty words or a handsome face. Otherwise, I would have chosen Sundaran to be the object of my desire.
I worried that I would end up a cliché. It had happened before. A blue-eyed foreigner falling for a dark-eyed Indian. I loved India, but I wasn’t here to discover myself or curb my restless spirit. I was here to research and finish my dissertation. I didn’t want a relationship of any sort. Yet, with Koman, I felt the edge of attraction getting sharper and sharper.
I could see that he too felt the pull, but he worked hard at resisting it. I could see that he thought it was wrong to admit his attraction for me. I was his student.
I don’t know when I stopped seeing him as my master and saw the male in him.
Perhaps it was at the exhibition performance of Kuchelavrittam they held at the institute once. I had decided to document every step of the performance. So, as his face was being made up, I sat by his side watching him change. Later I sat in the front row of the audience, waiting for the performance to begin and suddenly, there he was. Krishna.
In him I saw the shaping of my desire. A man who was playful and mischievous, affectionate and teasing, generous and romantic.
My heart stilled. The redness of his eyes drew my gaze. Suddenly his eyes met mine. I let him see the desire in my eyes.
When Krishna threw a handful of thechi flowers at Kuchelan’s feet to welcome the poor brahmin and to show him respect, a flower fell into my lap. It occurred to me that he had intended it to happen. I felt a secret smile tug at my lips. I held the dainty flower between my fingers and slipped it between the leaves of a book. An imprint of his desire, I thought.
The next day in class, I said, ‘I’m going to attend all your performances while I am here.’
He looked up in surprise.
‘It helps me in my research to see as many veshams as possible,’ I said. ‘I know my understanding of kathakali is negligible but when I see a vesham, I come a little closer to understanding it.’
Koman smiled. For a moment, he searched my eyes. I knew he was asking: Is that all you’ve come for?
I could see that some instinct told him there was more.
I met his gaze for an instant and felt my eyes drop in a wave of confusion.
I sat in the front row. The rest of them made way for me. My obvious foreignness invited comment. Everywhere I heard, ‘Madaama is Koman Aashaan’s student.’
And I would smile secretly to myself. I am not just his student, I am more than that. He wants it to be more than that. I felt a flush of power then. This magnificent being was mine. He would like it to be so.
Could this be termed an obsession? I didn’t know. But every role he played, I saw myself as the woman who stood alongside. It didn’t matter who she was, I was her. So I was Urvashi the heavenly nymph, wanton slut, beseeching Arjuna to let her taste the nectar that resided in his lower lip. When she cried, the arch of your brow fills me with a desire that is as painful as a whiplash, I wanted him to cast away the demands of the libretto and pleasure me.
When he was Arjuna disguised as an ascetic, I was Subhadra, the princess, now his handmaiden. I was prepared to forget my loyalty to my brother’s wishes, set aside my modesty and elope with him.
It was pointless and fraught with danger and yet I couldn’t stop myself.
On the second day of Nalacharitam, I watched him carefully. Was this Nala or Koman, I wondered. What did it matter? They were one and the same.
I watched his face, the dancer’s face. He seemed to be addressing me rather than Damayanti. Then he turned and looked at me from the corner of his eyes. I saw a repertoire of glances. Lust. Shyness. Sorrow. Affection. Valour. Respect. Suspicion. With each of these he told me: It is your hesitation, your shyness that is my enemy now. Kalayallo veruthe kaalam ni. Aren’t you wasting time, my precious?
I met his eyes. The desire in his gaze kindled a certainty in me. He is, I thought, a man who knows how to love. A man who knows no mortal limits to love.
Later we quarrelled even about that, hurling accusations, each seeking to blame the other: you seduced me.
But when we resonated with that first wild yearning for each other, who could tell who made the first move? Was it him or me?
A widening of the eye. A touch. An embrace. A love affair begins with all these and more. Who could tell who leaned into whom? When we finally sought each other, it was in a frenzy to satiate suppressed desires. An ashtakalasham of lust and want. The dance of all dances. A complex sequence of steps that was the natural culmination of all those months when we had done nothing but watch each other.
Our days and nights became one. A matrimony of limbs, thoughts and oddments. My suitcase found a place alongside his in the attic and my mirror-work cushions lay scattered on the mattress on his floor. My body lotion stood beside his hair oil and his comb nestled amidst the bristles of my hair brush.
We read poetry together. I read Neruda aloud to him and he fashioned my words into mudras, each gesture pulsing and alive.
I lit incense sticks and let the coil of smoke bind us together. A wedding ring of smoke and fragrance.
He braided my hair and adorned it with flowers. A jasmine star into every twist. He held a mirror for me to admire my hair in. ‘Do you see this?’ he asked.
‘I do, I do,’ I said in amazement that he, godly being, was doing this for me.
He brought leaves of the mailanji plant from a house nearby and ground them into a fine paste. Then he daubed my fingertips with it and forbade me to move or use my hands for the next hour. He pressed down my eyelids and then flicked the dried paste off my fingertips and showed me the colours of the sunset that tinted them. ‘Do you see this?’ he whispered.
‘I do, I do,’ I murmured in wonder.
He laid me on the bed and peeled my clothes away. He dripped oil into the well of my navel and with his fingertips he drew the oil into my skin, anointing me his woman. I lay on my back, a willing supplicant to his administrations.
I do, I do, I cried. What could be more perfect than this? You and me, and our life.
Koman
In the little house by
the river, we found a home for our passion.
A few days later my father came calling. In one glance he took in the changes that affected my home and me. His eyes said it all. That he had heard rumours of his son and the Madaama.
‘You are old enough to know what you are doing,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you marry her? All your life has been wasted on kathakali. Will your art fetch you a glass of water when you are thirsty? Will it lay a wet cloth on your brow when you are burning with fever? Will it hold you up when your legs tremble, or hold your hand when you are lonely? That is why you need a family and a home.’
‘I have a home and a family,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Angela wants to be married now.’
‘Then when?’
‘Maybe later. Maybe never. Angela is my wife. Sometimes relationships don’t need rituals to sanctify them.’ Have you forgotten about you and Saadiya? How can you talk about rituals, I left unsaid. But he understood and didn’t dare say anything more.
When my father left, I went to sit on the steps by the river. Angela and I had been living together for only three months, but already things were not the same. What could have gone wrong, I asked myself again and again. What had begun as the most perfect time of my life had dwindled into a greyness I couldn’t even understand.
I wondered what she would say when I told her about my father’s visit.
We had never discussed marriage, Angela and I. Would she want to? It would be very hard to live here unless we were married. I couldn’t even take her home until then. I knew she felt hurt that, though we lived so close to my family, I hadn’t even introduced her to them. But what could I say? ‘Achan, Babu, meet Angela, my lover!’
I was worried about her. And I worried that she was the way she was because of me.