A smooth baton change

ALL THE world may love a play. Not me though. Not if it is a Tamil play. The last few I saw must have been in the Fifties when my friend, YGP, valiantly steered Tamil theatre out of the stagey, strut-about-and-rant tradition on to a natural style with dialogue in the conversational mode. A great change indeed.

What has been happening in the decades between then and now? I had been aware, vaguely, that plays fell broadly into two categories.

First, the ``Social Theme'' plays I stumbled upon when I switched on the T.V., where the authors had been inexorably trapped in a trite round of dowry harassment, tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, young bride managing both career and a home and so on from which they were unable to escape and take a fresh look at the world around.

The other, full-length plays staged outside were of the guaranteed laugh-a-minute variety.

To find out, I stuck a pin into the programme for random choice and went to watch ``Matrum Palar'' with Varadarajan (of TV fame as they say) playing the lead role. He played it amusingly enough, since the play was of the laugh-a-minute variety.

No serious acting is called for in these plays. The lines have to be spoken. Because these deal with the exigencies of day-to-day living, the gossip of the market place, the audience identify with situations familiar to each one of them. They laugh, tensions are released and everyone goes home happy. An example: A conman tries to trap the hero in ``Matrum Palar'' into investing his life savings in a bogus chit fund.

The hero asks ``where is your office, sir? In Alwarpet or Royapettah?''. Cue for laughter. Audience obliges. This well- tried formula has proved hugely successful. The authors and actors in these plays are household names. ``Matrum Palar'' ran true to form. The house was full.

The audience stayed till the end. They laughed every minute. I was clearly the odd man out. There is a message in this somewhere.

My spirits were a trifle low when I walked out. I was not thinking serious theatre, mind you. Not Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, for god's sake, though images kept intruding into one's mind.

I would settle for an intelligent sitcom or two, with some modest acting and a bit of witty dialogue, I told my attendant genie. Not available, he replied, because the audience, his true masters, were willing to settle for less. It was time for a change of venue. I enter the Balamandir German Hall. The place has good proportions and is acoustics-friendly. Unnikrishnan is singing Sahana. The voice does its trick again and my regrets are washed away.

* * *

We have arrived at the last day of the year. The millennium bash of the YACM has crowded out the Academy Hall, spilling over on to chairs in the parking area.

Essentially, it was a tribute by today's young, upwardly mobile musicians to the veterans of yesterday's Establishment, including those who have passed away and those still around.

The programme was presented in a twin-layered fashion with Sudha Raghunathan as overall compere introducing (with lavish tributes) some of the best and brightest of the young musicians who, in turn, presented individual items featuring the veterans of Carnatic music.

Where is the music of yesteryear? One could hear snatches of it from contemporary recordings accompanied by visuals on a large screen.

As one approached the present, this was replaced by live performances: Semmangudi singing a couple of kirtanas, Lalgudi conducting an orchestral ensemble, D. K. Pattammal and K. V. Narayanaswami singing in unison. The zeal of the young organisers paid off and the audience lapped it all up. It was not music but a musical ``happening.''

Was there an underlying theme in all this? Was it a message, respectful but clear, from young talent to the ageing establishment, ``You have been simply great. We have learnt a lot from you. All we know. But now we are grown up. Thank you and goodbye?''

A smooth baton change, if that is what it was. And most gracefully accepted, as I could see, by the veterans around. With surging audience and a widening interest base, Carnatic music has never had it so good as today and is carrying with it a crop of bright, young musicians on a high tide.

``Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven.'' Good luck to them, I say.

* * *

Walking out past the witching hour of midnight, I looked up at the starlit sky, my mind awhirl with music of today mingling with that of long-dead yesterdays, blurring the line between past and present.

But the reflective mood was swept aside by the festive noises all around and by the nation itself in a celebratory mood (ifs and buts notwithstanding). I shouted ``Happy New Year'' to young tearaways on their motorcycles and murmured ``Let joy be unconfined.'' That sounded better. There is no harm in wishing, is there?

* * *

On the evening of New Year Day, all roads, more or less, led to Sri Parthasarathy Swami Sabha celebrating its own centenary at the turn of the year. And Semmangudi, firmly approaching a century himself, had agreed to sing. T. N. Krishnan accompanied him on the violin with Umayalpuram Sivaraman on the mridangam. The G.O.M. sang with a vigour belying his years, which he wears so lightly.

It was a full-length concert in the regular format, and as he sang, to the delight of an admiring audience, his music spoke. Spoke of what? Of courage and integrity, of the triumph of spirit over the flesh, of values that endure and that assurance of continuity amidst change all of us seek. It was music as benison.

N. VAIDYANATHAN

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