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Cocktail of cultures
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Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam and bhajanais go hand in hand with book reading sessions, British theatre, Hindi plays and film festivals. Chennai's new fusion culture has made evenings more exciting and entertaining. GOWRI RAMNARAYAN writes...
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IT'S QUITE strange to recall that Madras was once deemed Dullsville, Diehardsville, Hicksville, Oldsville, Nodsville, Mamaborough and Mamiburgh, where the stolid citizenry retired with the Sun. You could spend a whole lifetime on the Mylapore, Mambalam, Triplicane circuit. A single car on Mowbrays Road after 9 p.m was cause for comment. Going past the Adyar River was an expedition. Guindy was Land's End. You had to be kooky to go to Kilpauk, waiting for hours at the railway crossing to get through.
To soak in avant-garde art and culture, from protest theatre to parallel cinema/post-modern art, you went to Bombay and Delhi, at least to Bangalore next door. You came back and shook your head sadly over this not too hip city. Madras had nothing but chaste Carnatic music, more chaste Bharatanatyam, not to forget bhajanais and upanyasams. Yes, and Test cricket at Pongal time.
But now?
A week's trip out of town and you are out of it all. And even when you are here, the choices for the evening are tough — the same day has trumpet and piano battling with veena and ghatam, among 30 other instruments bellowing out the fusion score of Kallidaikudi Saminath and Weirdo Rasputinovich from Siberia; a Portuguese prize-winning play translated into North Arcot Tamil from Malayalam, with feminist and post-prandial, sorry, post-colonial infusions, mimed by experts in the martial arts; discourse on the pre-Sangam poetess Athikeerai (in English, naturally) at an exhibition of paintings inspired by her sensual spirituality; a seminar on the Anglo Saxon influence on Indian temple sculpture at the British Council; the Oui-Oui String Quartet at the Alliance Francaise; "From Lubitsch to Lingusami'', a tribute to Indo-German cinema at the Max Mueller Bhavan; clubby addas where the cerebrals quiz top and not-so-topnotchers in diverse fields... Need I go on?
At most of these events I sport the look of Hans Christian Andersen's hoi polloi who admired the Emperor's New Clothes. However, on certain occasions I can safely be myself, as at Drive-In Prarthana, along with the Sunday picnickers before the big screen.
Cars are parked well on time, each disgorging members of three generations.
Hectic flurry as mats and bedsheets are unfurled, cushions and bolsters grabbed, chairs unfolded for senior citizens (Sariya utkarungo Appa, Ido Odomos Amma, Samatha iru pappa).
Huge baskets emerge, packed with every kind of food from puliyanjadam to pasta. The vendors are still welcome, what's a flick without Pepsi and popcorn? Ice cream and crisps? Girls and boys walk past, munching, giggling to their hearts' content, before and during the film.
Cloudy dusk and hide-n-seek crescent make a sweet setting for Thankar Bachan's "Azhagi''. The movie enchants you with its delicate treatment of calf love in a village school and harvest field, where crowds of children swing like monkeys on the banyan tree, or sway in desperate classroom boredom reciting maths tables.
The Panrutti dialect is music on the ears, while Ilaiyaraja's score soughs as naturally and tenderly as the south wind. And where did the director get such charming girls to play the lead role (Dhanalakshmi) as child and adolescent? After that, Nandita Das is no surprise, though she does move you as the innocent, vulnerable woman fallen on hard times, coming to terms with destitution and the repression of feelings. It was also good to see idealism in an ordinary man (Partibhan) for once.
Such lovely visuals of the countryside, of peanut shell ear rings, the breath stopping image of the girl glowing into visibility when the lantern is lit in the dark chamber, the flashing past of the woman on the cart down the street...The second half was a yawn, flat, blatant and maudlin. The dance number shocked you by the arrant cruelty of making the woman prance around dangling two terrified rabbits from her hands. After all, no one is going to see "Azhagi'' for its half-baked fight sequence or hiccupping farce. Why do even our sensitive filmmakers indulge in overblown, overstretched overstatement? Why not trust the viewer's intelligence? When will we find the grit to make a wholesome film?
January also brought the Penguin czar to Chennai, this time as debut author. Walking into the Binny Room at the Taj Connemara for the Madras Book Club-Penguin launch of David Davidar's "The House of Blue Mangoes'' was to reel back as all the perfumes of Arabia — I mean London and Paris — made a combined attack on your nostrils.
The glitterati packed the hall, the men in spiffy kurtas and shirts, ladies with blow-dried haloes rustling genteel-ly in Kanchivaram, Tussar, Puttapaka and Orissa. You had 'em all -- artists, dancers, media persons, writers, critics, scholars and academics. Looking at the autograph queue in ethnic haute couture and you knew why Davidar's book has the briefest introduction of debut authors I have ever seen.
This editor is touted as always right in his assessments. That evening, he said he couldn't make speeches.
He was right. He said he couldn't read well. He was right. Anyone who heard him plough through the short extract would have been tempted to avoid the book.
But the righteous who withstood temptation was richly rewarded. There's just one word for the novel: excellent. (I guessed as much even before I read it, when David mentioned my favourites as works which inspired him most: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Marques); and "The Leopard", Giuseppe Lampedusa's jewel-like roman clef, brilliantly filmed by Luchino Visconti).
We have a phenomenon here, a contemporary novel minus same sex relations, incest, eroticism, voyeurism... a family saga that the family can actually read in the open. And what a stunning cover design!
But imagine what fun it would have been if the book had been bad! What a field day for critics! What ecstasy for writers who had their knuckles rapped by the great Cham! On that day you had to console yourself with mild delights during question hour, as when a crusty voice asked why the author had chosen a genre, which was "the decadent tool of the elite".
Davidar was lucky. Aussie writers at a goodwill seminar at the Madras University were stung by diatribes like this one beginning with, "Your pe-RRRception of India is all w-RRRong." (The poor chap didn't know he had a perception of India in the first place). February brings more rain. Chennai's Cine Appreciation Forum joins NFDC to conduct a mini fest of Indian films in many languages. There's Gopi Desai's pleasant "Bas Yaari Rakho'' for children, and Fareeda's "Kali Salwar" based on Urdu maestro Manto's short stories (he is also a character roving through the narrative) for determined art buffs, and Tamil-born Ashoke Viswanathan's "Swapner Sandhaney" in Bengali. "Voicing Silence" brings women directors from all over India — plus some of their plays at a two-day seminar. The British Council presents a Scottish playwright's modern adaptation of an ancient Greek play (Medea) by Theatre Babel(!) Meanwhile at the January launch of the life insurance joint venture, AMP Sanmar, at Park Sheraton, brand new Australian High Commissioner Penelope Anne Wensley confessed that she was yet to visit Mumbai, while this was her second trip to Chennai.
Still need proof that Chennai has overtaken other metros as the most happening place in the land?
Watch cricket at Chepauk's MAC stadium and drool over action replays on the giant screen there, the first of its kind in India!
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