Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Enchanted gardens : June 04, 2000

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Timeless charm of Kanva's hermitage

Leela Samson

The author is a dancer based in Delhi.

Lifting his hand up, an ascetic in Kanva's hermitage, restrains the reigning king of the Puru race, Dushyanta, saying: "This is a deer of the hermitage. Never, never discharge that weapon into this soft body like fire into flowers. What has the fragile life of a deer to do with your strong-shafted, sharply falling arrows? At once remove the arrow from your bow. Your weapon is meant to help the weak, not smite the innocent."

T. S. Satyan/Fotomedia

And, in those days of justice and fair play, the king restrains himself and begins to see the beauty of the forest and its inhabitants.

"When looks so rare in palace women
can be found in hermitage dwellers,
Then our cultivated vines, it seems,
Must yield in excellence to the wild woodland kind."

He thus looks upon Shakuntala for the first time - in Kalidasa's most admired play of that name. The brilliant orientalist Sir William Jones was told in no uncertain terms. "Of literary forms drama is the most pleasing. And of dramas, 'Shakuntala'."

But the young Shakuntala has eyes only for her plants - "I love our trees like a sister," she says as she waters them. And, Dushyanta, the king is absorbed in her.

"With its knot drawn tight against the shoulder
That dress of bark hides the roundness of her breasts.
And traps the radiance of her young form
Like sallow leaf imprisoning a bud. And yet Common duckweed can set off the lotus's beauty.
And black specks heighten the loveliness of the moon.
So her dress of bark makes this fair creature still more enchanting:
For what is not an ornament to a graceful form?"

Playing the role of Shakuntala in this drama, is one of my most cherished memories. It opened me up to the beauty of Kalidasa's works, to the beauty of the "word" and to the value of "restraint" in acting the part. To be Shakuntala in Rukmini Devi's production was even more special. She loved nature as the heroine did and shared much of the sentiment of love of the ashram that is described by Kalidasa. Her stage was transformed into an ashram, divested of all doorways and sets associated with her other works. With minimal plants and the simplest of costumes she created one of her most loved dramas - the only all speech movement drama she did. And in original Sanskrit, it was a gem. The reference to nature, to the forest, to flowers and trees, creepers and bees, to deer and their graceful hearted keepers was constant in the first part of the play. Dushyanta's noble attraction is justified. Says he: "Without question she is a proper wife for a warrior. For my heart is noble and yet desires her. The virtuous on those matters which admit of doubt are rightly guided by their inner inclination."

"Her lips are red as the shoots of a vine,
Her arms are as delicate as its tendrils,
And the youthful bloom on her limbs
Is like a mass of blossom"

- so affected is he by this forest of flowers surrounding him.

When she is troubled by a bee, he says to it with longing and some annoyance, very much as Shakespeare deals in Romeo and Juliet.

"You keep touching her trembling eye
As she darts a glance at you,
You murmur softly in her ear as if to whisper secrets,
Though she waves you away you drink a love draught from her lips.
I stop to speculate and lose.
You, bee, are my victorious rival!"

In contrast to this heightened expression of love, is Kalidasa's description of his soldiers invading the peaceful grove in search of him.

"Dust stirred up by his horses' hooves
Is falling over the trees of the hermitage,
Settling on the garments of bark spread out to dry
Like a swarm of locusts, red as the setting sun."
"Here comes an elephant, throwing old ...... children into confusion
With a tree-trunk smashed by a violent blow and caught upon his tusk,
And fetters of uprooted vines dragging at his feet.
Scattering the deer, like an incarnate obstacle to our austerities.
He is destroying the grove in his terror at the sight of the chariots."

For a classical dancer, Kalidasa is a joy! His chosen language of expression hides many layers of sweet meaning, giving the actor a chance at a change of bhava at every turn. In a speech play an actor would perforce have to chose one expression when delivering a particular line of verse. In Shakuntala one used the voice already fraught with emotion. But then could further depict the echoes of that emotion through pure dance and for abhinaya and mudras, saying or suggesting what the poet might have thought but not said and which interpretation suggests itself strongly to you the dancer/actor.

Almost every dialogue is laden with suggestions from nature's codes. For instance, an ascetic at the dawn of a new day, philosophically says:

"The same moon .
That towered above the heights of Meru, greatest of mountains,
And occupied Vishnu's mid-realm, defeating darkness,
Now drops from the sky, its rays grown few and feeble.
No matter how great, too high will mean a fall."

And when Shakuntala is to be dressed for her new role as queen, the ashramites are astonished to see her ornaments taken from the trees of the hermitage.

"One tree displayed a linen wedding dress, pale as the moon.
Another exuded red lac to dye the feet.
From yet others the hands of forest deities, like graceful shoots of leaf,
Emerged up to the wrist and offered us jewellery."

And when Shakuntala is about to leave the hermitage, the reverred Kanva says to the forest,

"O! hear me, trees of the grove that have forest gods within you.
She who would never drink till you yourselves were watered,
Who though she loved ornament could never bear to pluck your blossoms,
Who welcomed with joy the time of your first budding,
She, Shakuntala, is going to her husband's house. all of you, make your farewells."
And others say:
"Fair be her path, with gentle favouring breezes,
In easy stages marked by lakes pink with lotuses,
The sun's hot rays held off by shady trees,
The dust made soft with water-lily pollen."
Nature's sad farewell is described too.
"The grass drops from the doe's mouth,
The peahen gives up dancing,
And as their pale leaves fall away.
The vines seem to be weeping."

Shakuntala herself, overcome with emotion, embraces her sister among the vines, the spring creeper, saying, "Sister, embrace me with your tendrils. From now on, I'll be far away from you." Saying this, she leaves the vine in the care of her friends, Priyamvada and Anusuya.

But a fawn at her heels tugs at her dress as she moves forward and Sage Kanva says,

"It's the little fawn whose mouth you dabbed with oil of ingudi,
To heal it when it was cut by the sharp grass,
And whom you gently fed on handfuls of wild millet,
He is your adopted son, and will not leave you alone."

There was not a creature, nor plant that did not feel the sadness of losing their dearest friend.

"Hidden from her by lotus leaves,
The Sheldrake fails to answer his anxious mate:
With the lotus fibres hanging forgotten from his bill,
His gaze is fixed on you, dear Shakuntala."

Even as she embraces her father, the heroine does not fail to comparing this to the garden she tended saying:

"Torn from my father's breast like a sandalwood vine uprooted from the Malaya Mountain, how can I go on living in strange soil?"

For anyone who has wandered through the enchanted gardens of Kalidasa's poetry and been moved by the visual and emotional extravagance and delicacy of his mind's eye - indeed, how can we exist only in the soil of the languages foreign to us?