Arghya

by Aparna Sachin Pendse

  Even today, Kavita felt that Aajoba should not have said this. Her Baba was depressed; he had failed, so he was angry. In spite of going bankrupt Aajoba had memories, memories of success, memories of fame and money, memories of the footlights. What did Baba have? He was a simple middle-class gentleman with a respectable job and a decent family to call his own. Baba had lost his job and was just worried about his family.

  Baba charged at Aajoba in blind fury, shouting, “Throw away those costumes, burn those manuscripts.” But Aajoba moved swiftly defying his age and stopped him. Baba went down like a pack of cards. That day her father suffered stroke. He became paralytic.

  Aajoba gave away all the old records, photos, paper clippings to government archives. He auctioned old costumes, a few manuscripts and invested that money for Kavita’s and Sarita’s education. But Aajoba stopped smiling. He even stopped going to meet his friends. Joy had said goodbye to their home.

  Kavita saved two of her favourite manuscripts. After school, she learned typing and basic computer skills and began working. She also enrolled for a graduate course. There was no course offering a degree in theatre in Mumbai, so she majored in English literature, and completed her master’s degree. She even bagged a gold medal. But she was not able to get admission in any of the universities abroad that taught theatre. There were no scholarships available and she did not have the money to pay an initial fee before applying for a grant.

  She had studied a lot about Sanskrit plays and Prakrit plays and hundreds of year old theatre traditions in Madhya Pradesh and in South India. But no success was seen on the horizon.

  The grandfather clock struck nine, and Kavita was jolted back to the present. She realized she was hungry and it was late. She looked around; the clock must’ve been a 100 years old, like everything else in this house. The wooden pillars, the arches and built-in cupboards, the open bathroom with a washing stone and the windows you could sit beside, everything was old. Her grandfather’s house in the village was like this. When they sold it, he lovingly brought a big wooden swing with brass kadis to their two-room house. That swing in the central courtyard had become the property of all children of all ages in their building. Even now, Kavita smiled at the memory.

  She gingerly made it down the ancient stairs flanked by thick stone walls.

  Pragya bhabhi smiled and ushered her to the traditional wooden Pat (a traditional, wooden, very low platform that people sit on while having a meal) to sit and have their dinner. This too brought back memories, but Kavita was careful to not get lost in them.

  Kavita began dinner and loved it. “Wah, Bhabhi you really are an amazing cook. It’s as if Annapurna herself cooks through your hands.”

  “Before I light my chulha (stove) my dear, I fold my hands in front of God, and pray, let my hands cook wholesome food. Let everyone who eats it be satiated.”

  “I am convinced that the Goddess herself is feeding everyone through your hands.”

  “Umm Bhabhi, do you know anything about plays? I mean the drama written by Janaki Trivedi?” Kavita asked.

  Pragya bhabhi became visibly upset, “Baba re Baba, something bizarre happened to her. She died of typhoid but that play of hers… that brought a lot of bad luck.”

  Kavita continued soothingly, “So she did write a play hmm…. First ever play in a modern Indian language by a woman.”

  “Yes, she wrote in Hindi, or rather an older version of Hindi. Today, no one knows what the play is about, but she had insisted that the play should be performed. When the production began, it brought an evil eye on the prosperous Trivedi clan and their plays. The elder Trivedi Baba dumped all copies of the script in the waters of Narmada Maiyya but still, the curse on the family stayed.”

  “Curse? What curse?” Kavita had not heard of any of this before.

  “No one in our generation knows, but the family and the plays were doomed. Why are you asking about it now? After a 100 years? “

  “I… I have not come here to study theatre tradition based on the Mahabharata.” Kavita hesitated a bit.

  “I have come here to study Janaki Trivedi’s play.”

  Now Pragya bhabhi was truly scared, “But who will you ask about it? Even fifty years back, very little was known about her life and her plays.”

  “Let’s see.” Kavita said.

  Pragya bhabhi looked at her with an expression of fear and awe. Then, she shrugged and began eating without a word. Kavita was surprised at Pragya bhabhi’s fear. What was she afraid of? Whatever it was, it happened over a 100 years ago. So obviously, she herself didn’t know the specifics, but she had blind faith in whatever the earlier generation told her. Well, even that generation did not know the specifics.

  Kavita remembered the day she came across the name Janaki Trivedi.

  She had received a job offer from a university in the US to teach Natya Shastra the ancient Indian Treatise about theatre written by Bharat Muni. Upon confirmation, she would get a full-time teaching job, with a small accommodation on campus. She would get her monthly salary on time. In Mumbai that was a distant dream. She had smiled that day after a very long time.

  The only pre-condition was that she had to complete her doctorate within three years. But the grant she received was far higher than her salary in Mumbai. A tiny student accommodation was far better than her dingy two-room house.

  She was sure that her doctorate would be on one of the Indian theatre traditions. While browsing through the books on traditions, she came across a very slim book in English. It was published some time in 1912 or 1913, and written by an Alex Fitzgerald. She was intrigued, as she had never heard of this man. The book itself was tiny, maybe a hundred pages. It was about playwrights who wrote between 1856 and 1900.

  Most of the writers he had written about were known to Kavita. She knew about Girish Chandra Ghosh and his mythological writings. She was always a fan and follower of Annasaheb Kirloskar and his fresh take on Mahabharata. She was also in awe of Amrit Nayak who dared to write about flaws of Indian Education system almost a100 years ago. Most of these writers had a huge repertoire and mostly were associated with drama companies. But Janaki Trivedi, she had written only one play. It was in Hindustani, an older version of Hindi. Kavita found it weird that she herself had never heard about this lady. Just out of curiosity, she began searching for references about this woman writer. While browsing through the literature written before and after Janaki’s writing period, she realized that Janaki was the first woman writer to write a play in modern times, in a contemporary language.

  What started as simple curiosity, soon turned into an obsession. She decided that her doctorate would be on this play – the first modern Indian play by a woman. Janaki became her passion and the university too confirmed her grant for this subject.

  There was simple explanation to her obsession. If you looked at the time period when Janaki walked this planet, you would know. That generation of women had just begun getting educated. Still it was confined to learning languages, basic maths and a bit of history etc. The first woman doctor was still twenty years away and the first Sanskrit Pandita to conduct debates and offer discourses was seventeen or eighteen years away. If women even wrote anything, they preferred Poetry Traditional Rhythmic poetry. It was very rare for a woman to write a play and expect it to be performed. What kind of passion was this that drove Janaki to do something so unusual? That was the true mystery that lent Janaki a certain aura.

  The script of her original play was available nowhere. Even references about her were few and far apart. Even in the available material, the storyline was barely touched upon.

  The fact that so little was known about Janaki, in spite of her being the only daughter of the family that had kept a 1000-year-old theatre tradition alive, was intriguing. Her play was ignored by scholars and performers alike in spite of plays being their life, was fascinating.

  Janaki’s theme was leaning towards the occult. It was closer to storylines of western occult writers than Indians.
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  Though India is the land of Tantra,

  Though even in the twenty-first century, you could hear unspeakable things happening,

  On the holy side, it is the land of Yoga and Meditation.

  In spite of all this, Kavita had never come across occult in plays. Traditional or modern, it rarely entered murky subjects. How did this eighteen-year-old girl write in the tradition of mystery religions?

  Kavita finished her dinner and went upto her room. Though she was tired and sleepy, she decided to go through her notes once. She took her file and sat by the window. In the moonlight, she could clearly see the scenery outside.

  She could see the backyard with its flowering shrubs and vines. The moonlight made beautiful white Parijatak flowers (a small jasmine that is white but has a saffron backside) sparkle like stars. A dirt road beyond the backyard and far ahead of it was a deep and mysterious flow of the Narmada Maiyya.

  Narmada Maiyya? Where did such a strange expression come from? Mother Narmada instead of River Narmada?

  She looked up at the arch above the window. The arch looked very familiar. A scene, as if a dream sequence, began unfolding in front of her eyes.

  It was close to sunrise. The first rays of the sun made sure that the Narmada’s water sparkled. A young woman was offering prayers to the sun, standing in the Narmada. Her long hair cascaded down her back and her bindi was big and thick. Slowly, she finished Anjoli offerings and folded her hands. She turned, gracefully tied her hair in a bun resting loosely on her neck. As she began coming out of the water, a very fair elderly man with a straight nose and bright eyes came and stood next to her. It felt as if they were father and daughter.

  Am I hallucinating? – she thought. Kavita shook her head; she needed to get some sleep. However, she suddenly found an answer to the simple question that had bothered her since childhood. Why didn’t she like modern and post-modern plays?

  Traditional musicals had a touch of the divine. While watching Manapaman, even the poorest soul could forget his day to day hardships – from ordinary to sublime.

  This touch of the divine was felt through the Dashavatari performance in her village, the dance of Vaghya Muralias well as Yakshagana and Thiyyam. She even felt divine in Bolshoi ballet Giselle that she had watched after saving money for a year.

  While drifting off to sleep, one last thought crossed her mind; she should meet Niranjan Trivedi.

  In the early hours of the morning, a cool breeze woke Kavita up. It was a beautiful way to wake up, she felt fresh and joyous. Not like waking up in Mumbai, to the noise of honking cars or some neighbour singing loudly. After she took a bath, and came to the window, it felt as if the Narmada was calling her. On an impulse, she took a decision to visit the river ghat.

  It was still early, and very few people were at the ghat. They observed her curiously but no one disturbed her. She folded her hands in the direction of the rising sun and sat on the ghat. It felt so peaceful. After that encounter between her parents and her grandfather, as her Aajoba lost his smile, she drifted away from her parents. Though her rational self knew her parents were not at fault, something still snapped somewhere.

  After seeing her household, she completely lost interest in getting married and having children. Mating and reproducing even cockroaches did. All animals multiply without the awareness of the presence of God within them. What was she going to do by adding new human beings on planet earth? And only keep replacing one worry with another.

  This was surely not the destiny of human beings.

  But now, in a warm embrace of the Narmada Maiyya under clear light, she felt all her knots opening. She felt peaceful, her loneliness vanished. It was as if she was the clear sky and the air around, and she was not alone.

  Kavita opened her eyes. This was a very special experience. It calmed her. Her tortured soul was finally healing. She stood up slowly, and walked back to her hotel calmly. Her lack of money, the deadline for her doctorate, nothing bothered her.

  “Where did you go so early, Kavita?” Pragya babhi asked. “Breakfast is ready.”

  “I visited the river ghat. It felt so peaceful, and now I am very much ready for breakfast.”

  “You are looking very fresh. Here, begin.”

  Bajri ki roti and homemade white butter was served on a copper plate. Kavita felt like she had eaten breakfast this way many times. But when and where? She could not remember. She decided to quietly finish her breakfast. After that, she would visit Niranjan Trivedi.

  The village she had seen last night looked very different in the daylight. She felt a strange familiarity with this place. She headed north away from the river. Why? She didn’t know. After passing the main Panchayat gathering place, the road grew wider. To her right, she felt like she had been in a couple of houses before. One house with a large front yard, anda small Tulsi temple seemed very familiar. For some strange reason, she knew this was home to the village astrologer.

  As she went closer to the front door and huge wall, she peered at the board on the wall. The nameplate said village astrologer. But how did she know?

  Preoccupied with these thoughts, she didn’t realize she was finally standing in front of the Trivedi family’s haveli. How did she reach this place without even asking for directions? It was as if her feet knew the road beneath them. The haveli itself was in a dilapidated shape, but its structure was intact; it wasn’t falling apart. The huge metal door with a smaller door carved out on its left side demonstrated its good days and past grandeur.

  She knocked as loudly as she could.

  “Who is it?” a voice asked. It was most probably Niranjan’s. She heard the big horizontal bar that secured the bigger door move and later the door opened slowly, making a few noises in protest.

  “I am Kavita. I have come here to study theatre.”

  “Oh yes, yes! I am aware. Come on inside, let us sit on the outer verandah. She looked inside the house through the door to find a large aangan (courtyard) and traditional Tulsi temple. The owari (traditional outer verandah) in front boasted of a traditional, large, wooden swing. Niranjan directed her towards the swing, and he went in to bring water for her.

  In the wall behind the swing, there was a small slit, a traditional Konada or carved hole where you could store small things of daily use. She smiled at the sight of these wardrobes carved out of walls. There were round pegs fitted everywhere, and now a small hole to store smaller things of daily use. This village had taken her to another time. (It needed a comma old houses always had three things in common round pegs or Khunti, Wardrobes carved out of wall or Fadtal and third small slit in wall as storage or Konada)

  She felt like it housed Baba’s Geeta. The hole or Konada housed Baba’s Geeta. Baba’s Geeta? What am I thinking, Kavita was dazed. Niranjan stopped near the door. When he came back with water, Kavita was standing next to the Konada. There was a dusty bundle in her hand that looked like a traditional scripture.

  “This is Geeta, your Bade Baba’s personal copy.” said Kavita.

  “Yes true.” a stunned Niranjan said. “But how did you know?”

  “It has been there from the time Bade Baba was no more, no one touched it after the tragedy.” Niranjan actually looked baffled as he said this.

  “I… I don’t know.” Kavita stammered clearly embarrassed. “I felt it must be there, and it was.”

  “Actually, this haveli has not been looked after since my father’s time. I too work in the city for Bharat Bhawan, but I keep coming back as I understand the need to conserve this tradition. I have been trying to salvage and digitize as much old material as possible. Honestly, it looks like a mammoth task. My job at Bharat Bhawan helps.”

  “Is anyone trying to actually stage produce these plays now?” Kavita asked.

  “One theatre group from Delhi, and some government organizations are trying. They have held readings of Vastraharan and Geetarahasya. But I don’t think they can do it. There has been a gap of a100 years. Now to replicate the music and the lang
uage is difficult. I feel this Mahabharata tradition will remain a subject of study and nothing else.”

  “You are right.” said Kavita thoughtfully. “It has been too long. Today’s generation will not like a Sutradhar coming in between two scenes and narrating the story. Even the music with the heavy use of the organ is not suitable for today’s generation of fusion music and EDM. They will hate it.”

  “Okay, I will show you some old black and white photos and documents. As far as manuscripts are concerned they are right here. Please sit here and study. Though the performances stopped a hundred years back, the scripts are much older. The paper has worn thin and it may just get destroyed.”

  Kavita nodded and opened the first script tied in a muslin cloth. The moment she read the name of the play, the entire script came alive in front of her eyes.

  Shrikrishna is going to meet Duryodhana. He wants to hold peace talks, and wants to avoid war if possible. Though in his personal life, Duryodhana is considered evil, he is a very good king and his countrymen respect him as a leader. Shrikrishna is aware of this and respects Duryodhana for his good governance. But in the last minute, Draupadi reminds Shrikrishna of the humiliation she was subjected to in the court of this very Duryodhana. Shrikrishna changes his mind and the talks remain just a ritual. He knows war is inevitable.

  How did I remember the entire manuscript? – Kavita was dazed. Her mind stopped working. But she cleared away the cobwebs in her brain and began taking notes from various commentaries written by performers and musicians at the end of the script. How many hours had passed? She had lost track of time.

  When the evening shadows grew longer at twilight, Niranjan brought her a cup of tea.

  “Thank you so much. Wow! I needed this.”

  “Is the material useful?” Niranjan asked.

  “Yes, very much. This material has depth. I may not be able to collate the entire information, but it is enough to finish my doctorate.”

  “Good, may be your doctorate will bring international attention to this. Maybe the government will increase the grant to preserve this.”