Layout 3 - India Foundation for the Arts - IFA

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ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1
a gesture we associated with the song,
of her pushing aside her sari to reveal
her stomach to Lakshmana to tell him
to see that she was pregnant. Those
angry words of Sita were electrifying.
It was a Sita we did not know, a Sita
seething with anger about the injustice
meted out to her.
For those of us who have grown up in
the post-Independence years, the
nation, sacrifice and service were terms
that had become very much a part of
our lives. The body was never
mentioned either at home or outside.
We grew up in a kind of bodiless
space. So while we knew that chastity
was very important we did not quite
understand what it meant. The
chastity aspect that Sita represented
had always remained an enigma to me
until that incident. Now it seemed it
resided in the body that I had not
understood as yet. And the gesture of
revealing her stomach which I
associated with the song and the
earlier memory of women weeping
when the agni pariksha incident was
narrated, raised many complex
questions about the body.
Then came the film Sampoorna
Ramayanam. Rama was played by
N.T. Rama Rao who at that time
played all the important mythological
roles. Imagining a Rama while
listening to the narrations was
interesting. However, seeing NTR as
Rama was a great disappointment.
What lingered in the mind after the
film was the great theatre actor T.K.
Bhagawathi, who played the role of
Ravana in the film. Here, he was
Ravana the artist. He played the
veena, and the raga he loved was
Kambodhi. In the scene where he is
shorn of all his weapons and Rama
tells him generously, ‘Indru poi naalai
vaaraay’ (go now and come back
tomorrow), he sings with head bowed
in shame saying how could a man tell
him to come back another day to
fight. It was a haunting song and one
did not want T.K. Bhagawathi to lose
to N.T. Rama Rao.
One carried these words, sounds,
images and memories when one began
to study the Ramayana text. But the
experience of the text is a completely
different one. It is not the story but
the language that draws one into the
text. When one loves the Tamil
language it is difficult not to love
Kamban. Even reading parts of
Kamban can be an exhilarating
experience. His descriptions of the
river Sarayu and nature are
captivating. His play with words and
their sound and rhythms can be