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Literary Review
Journey to the limelight
C.S. LAKSHMI
K.R. Ambika
A FEW years ago Mangai, the well-known director of the Voicing Silence theatre group in Chennai, had organised a play and a meeting with women theatre performers. It was a lively evening where they spoke about their life and theatre work and their struggles. Later, a small booklet was brought out giving details of their life, based on interviews with them. Two months ago I met in Karur, K.R. Ambika, a much-respected theatre artiste and she spoke to me about her life and theatre work. I was amazed that she could speak about the travails of her life and shed tears and at the same time speak about theatre and mythological plays with such passion and joy. She remembered all the dialogues, songs, and the acting techniques of various other actors. I saw before me a woman who loved her theatre work and a woman who had held her head high at all times.
K.R. Ambika's actor identity card describes her as a raja nadikai. I had seen other such cards where the description given was sthri part. I asked her why there was a need for such a description. She explained to me that she had done mainly male roles in her career and such a description clearly stated her capacity as an actor. I found out that there are many reasons why a woman theatre performer chooses to do male roles. And there are not many who make such a choice. One main reason is their acting prowess, which gets better utilised in male roles. In mythological dramas there are long dialogues and also extempore arguments that can go on for hours depending on the knowledge and abilities of the actor. A well-read and spontaneous woman theatre performer is a challenge to the male performer and she may find that there are not many actors willing to act with her. Doing male roles gives her several advantages. One is that she can come out best in the argument episodes and the other is that she wields a different kind of power on the stage and off the stage, when she chooses to do the male roles. In the case of K.R. Ambika, she began to act in male roles as a child and this continued even later. She has done female characters also but her forte is doing male roles. She has acted as Madurai Veeran, Velan-Vedan etc. She told me that the only male role that she wants to do but has not been able to, is that of Arichchandiran.
As a child, K.R. Ambika realised that her father was a great actor and a great teacher referred to as nataka vaathiyaar. But he was a genius who was also a drunkard. Her mother, who had married him of her own choice because she admired him, found that living with him was not easy. Drunken scenes at home were everyday happenings. But there were those moments of brilliance when the crowd cheered her father as an actor and Ambika has not forgotten them. May be her mother described those events to her.
She said that her father used to be so drunk that the other actors would take the best roles in "Alli-Arjuna" or "Pavalakkodi". Her father would be lying drunk in a corner partitioned as the green room. Suddenly he would hear the crowd calling out to him. He would wake up and fold the sleeves of his jibba to make it look like a blouse and pull out one of the saris spread on the ground in place of mats. He would wear the sari and quickly tie up his long hair into a bun and appear on the stage in a drunken stupor. Often, it would be the scene where the senior wives of Arjuna are fighting over Arjuna in what was referred to as sakkalathi chandai. This was a much-awaited scene by the audience. There Ambika's father would appear declaring himself as one of the minor wives and the arguments would go on and on through the night. As the time passed he would slowly come out of his drunken state and get more and more angry that his students had taken the main roles away. The main wives of Arjuna will not only face his wrath as an actor but will also find it difficult to keep up the argument with an unyielding minor wife! Ambika narrated this with a lot of mirth and joy. But as a young child she could not forgive her father for making her mother and herself live a miserable life.
Ambika's father died when she was a small girl and her mother took her to a village called Lakshmampatti where the people had been kind to them earlier. The people also knew her father as the vaathiyaar. The village literally adopted the mother and the daughter and gave them a parapet to reside in. Mother and daughter worked in the fields and the village gave them food and took care of them. Ambika's mother's family was also in theatre and later Ambika began to earn doing small roles. She could do any role, for she knew all the dialogues. At the age of 11, Ambika got married to her own uncle who was also a nataka vaathiyaar. Her mother seems to have done this more to protect her daughter than for any other reason. At one point, her mother bought all the plays of Shankaradas Swamigal and Ambika learnt all of them by heart and could sing all the songs in just the way composed by him. Later in life Ambika also spoke on political platforms and she remembers speaking in praise of women on the Self-Respect Movement's platform.
I asked Ambika what were the main things in her life which she would never like to forget. I was expecting her to talk in great detail about her theatre memories. But Ambika replied that she would never like to forget what her mother had done for her. According to Ambika, her mother had teeth like pearls and she was a beautiful woman and she became a widow at a young age. But she swore that she would make somebody of Ambika and she succeeded. She was with her throughout in whatever she did and Ambika feels that she kept her integrity as an actor and as a woman because of her mother. The other thing she cherishes is the village that gave them succour when they needed it most. I hesitantly asked her if we could visit the village. She readily agreed and what happened at the village was incredible.
An old woman who looked about hundred years old (later we found out she was 94) lay on a cot as we entered the village. Ambika went up to her and asked her if she knew where Thayaramma's sons were. Thayaramma was the person who had told Ambika's mother that she would be taken care of. Ambika had heard that Thayaramma had passed away. The old woman woke up and looked at Ambika and told her that she was Thayaramma! She asked Ambika to come closer and hugged her. She began asking her about her mother and others who were already dead and every time Ambika said that so and so had passed away she would hug and caress her. "Is that so kanne? Is that so?" she would say, and hug her. Ambika became like a child and began to cry as the old woman consoled her. Later we went around the village and visited many others who knew Ambika as a child. They were old men now. But all of them gave her a warm welcome, talking to her about old times. Ambika told me later that this particular village was known for its generosity and that whenever famine or cholera hit an area, refugees would start coming to this village for this village never refused succour to anybody. "Rain or no rain, this village will remain green like the minds of the people here," Ambika told me.
Ambika meeting people who belonged to families which had taken care of her as a child and the respect with which they received her and greeted her as a theatre personality was a greater drama than any in which she could have acted. It also spoke volumes about how this woman, with the help of a talented and devoted mother, had made a place for herself in the theatre world where her name is mentioned with respect.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Researches on Women).
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