The Touch of Ambedkar (part I)
Monday, 07 November 2011 23:36 Written by T Dharmarajan
by Thamburaj Dharmaraj
The assignment is of performing the story of Ambedkar in a folk art
form, shadow puppetry. Shadow puppet theatre is widely held in the
southern districts of Tamilnadu. Though it is prevalent in most of
the South Asian countries it is habitually getting ostracized in the
villages and performance opportunity is on the decline for the past
fifteen years. As most of the puppeteers have deserted the tradition
of performance and turned into migrant laborers wandering in the
cities, the history of puppeteers who survive in Tamilnadu is
absorbing.
The puppeteers of Tamilnadu
Traditional shadow puppet performers portray themselves as a migrant
community originally from Maharashtra, a state of Central India. They
verbalize a dialect of Marathi among themselves and entitle this as
their mother tongue. However, they are conversant in Tamil and their
command over a range of Tamil dialects is astonishing. They fit into
a caste community called 'mantigar'. They have a legend to explain
their migration from Maharashtra to Tamilnadu some five centuries
back. Their narrative relates their community to a Maratha ruler,
Saraboji, who ruled the central part of Tamilnadu with Tanjavoor as
his capital. According to their legend they were brought here along
with the warriors of King Saraboji. We can easily identify a tone of
pride whenever they narrate this legend. It sounds like they demand a
distinct political identity by keeping alive this narrative as their
migration tale. Similarly, they have one more reason for claiming
uniqueness over others, however this time it is more religious in
nature. They believe they are chosen by god's grace for this
profession of puppeteers specializing in performing the 'Story of
Rama'. This legacy gives them immense pleasure and one puppeteer says,
"Our body and soul have grown with the ringing sound of 'rama'".
Shadow puppet theatre, the only folklore form that has a South Asian
currency is at its deathbed. Since there was no traditional
institutional back up for this art form in Tamilnadu (in some other
South Asian societies shadow puppet theatre is solemnized and adopted
by religious institutions), or any other state sponsorship to enliven
it, it is slowly vanishing from the cultural canvas of Tamil society.
The debacle of the puppeteer's life begins when they are forced to
sell their bullock carts due to financial constraints. Then there
follows the light and sound system in the list of sold items.
Finally, they displace themselves to the nearby town, leaving the
leather puppets to the digestive system of termites: puppets that have
been prepared by their forefathers' at least a minimum of hundred
years back! This is the gist of the life of Tamil puppeteers.
The puppeteers' analysis of the devastating decline of shadow puppet
theatre singled out the boom of electronic media as the major reason.
Specifically, the society's craze over cinema and television. Both
the industries, puppeteers blame, systematically manipulate the
narrative patterns of shadow puppets from the story line to the extant
of characterization. When people find the Rama story as television
series, they unconsciously establish an intimacy with that. The
puppeteers are very stubborn in their conclusion that electronic media
overtook the shadow puppet because of its sexual content. The mass
media's formula of mixing sex and religion within their narrative
seems to be the key of all these problems. Hence the Tamil puppeteers
quixotically develop a weapon against the mass media; and it is
popularly called as 'Record Dance'.
There is no equivalent Tamil term for 'record dance'. It is known by
this anglo saxon word even in the remote villages. It can be also
considered as a local art form, basically imitating the narrative
patterns of commercial Tamil films. Like any other, Indian popular
cinema and Tamil films too have an inevitable motif called film songs.
The songs are choreographed and incorporated within the story line of
the feature films. 'Record dance' is a mimic of this motif. The
record dance players will maladroitly costume themselves as the film
actors and actresses and try to redo the same dance sequence live in
front of the village audience. Astonishing sexual gestures are the
salient features of record dance. People more or less incorporated
these as a part and parcel of their popular culture. For the past two
or three decades the existence of this dance form becomes inevitable
in all festivities and celebrations. When the puppeteers have found
that the folk community begun to withdraw its loyalty from traditional
performances such as shadow puppet theatre, this mechanism was
designed to pull back the audience, by introducing 'record dance'
within their shadow puppet performance.
The shadow puppet performance which used to be enacted for two to
three hours has now been reduced to a thirty or forty minute capsule.
The remaining two hours has been re-allotted for 'record dance'.
Young men and women who costume themselves as tinsel characters will
occupy the stage and perform the popular mimes and gestures ordained
for the song sequences. Some puppeteers will be lucky to have a young
husband and wife in their troupe, and then there will not be any
problem in organizing 'record dance'. But in a considerable number of
troupes there will not be any newly married people; but young men and
women who are siblings may be around. The puppeteers never hesitate
to allow a brother and a sister to perform the 'record dance'. The
worst affected troupes will be the ones that have no such young people
as their members. These troupes naturally withdraw from the tradition
of shadow puppet performance and become unskilled laborers in small
towns and cities.
Shadow puppet theatre and 'Ambedkar's Story'.
We strongly believe that shadow puppet theatre should be a fitting
medium to disseminate the life and thoughts of Ambedkar. Not only
Ambedkar, I had a strong belief that any kind of social criticism
could be well accommodated within the narrative pattern of this
traditional theatrical form. The technology of shadow puppetry is
hypnotic. The inherent binary, 'colored shadows', is a point of
attraction. Hence, the subversion inspired by two comical characters,
Uchikudumi and Uluvathalaiyan, is a unique feature of this theatrical
form. Therefore, we chose shadow puppet theatre as a suitable
traditional art form to visually represent 'Ambedkar's Story', the
title we have given for the new shadow puppet performance.
It was by accident that we got acquainted with a traditional shadow
puppet performer, Lakshmana Rao, who lived in a nearby town,
Kovilpatti. Since his troupe had no youngsters he was suffering much
in doing the puppetry without 'record dance'. We explained our
project, 'Ambedkar's Story', to him. His reaction was double. At one
level he sensed a possibility of getting the assurance for regular
performance; contrarily at another level he was not sure whether he
could concoct the performance text of an altogether new story line.
As he was illiterate, he felt nervous about the creation of a new
text. Though we had explained in great length against the myth,
'creativity always goes with literacy' to him and had elaborated the
importance of being an innovative traditional performer, he never
regained confidence of doing that. Finally he came up with an
alternative that he would ask the assistance of another performer
called Muthukumar Rao for spinning the new performance. Muthukumar
Rao was his cousin. He began his life as a record dancer and then
became a puppeteer. Since he had sensed the devastating situation of
puppetry, he trained himself as a bow-song performer (another popular,
religious folk performing art) and an instrument player (he played the
key board). Most important factor is that he is a literate shadow
puppet performer.
The project was designed to evolve in three phases – formulating the
songs and dialogues of the performance at the first level; producing
necessary leather puppets, the second phase; followed by correlating
the animation of the puppets with the text.
Phase One
We initiated conceiving the textual part of the performance with the
repeated elaboration of the life and thoughts of Ambedkar.
Lakshmana Rao was the classic example of a traditional folk performer.
He would be around fifty. But he always maintained that he was
forty. For that he referred the experience of visiting Dhanushkodi
after the historical storm hit it. He would be telling us he was ten
at that time. That was his simple arithmetic of calculating years.
He continuously chewed beetle leaves. Whenever he encountered
literate people face to face his reaction would be at unease.
However, as soon as the person lost his eye contact he turned his
cheek. He was simple and raw. He was proud of whatever he knew and
would be tranquil wherever he was ignorant. He was very eager to see
his photograph with a feature about his art form in news magazines.
Muthukumar Rao on the other hand was slightly twisted. He was a folk
artist with cell phone facilities. He was almost running length and
breadth of the region for various kinds of performances he had
accepted. He had the habit of negotiating the amount, whatever it
might be, proposed to him. He was vociferous and also professional.
But, the intricacies of our project were astutely grasped by the
latter, but not the former.
The work had been bifurcated. It was decided that Muthukumar would do
the textual section, while Lakshmanan would prepare the puppets. Both
the processes continued for almost a month.
To be continued as The Touch of Ambedkar (part II)
Read Thamburaj Dharmaraj's bilingual articles in Tamil and English on
topics of caste, Tamil folklore, popular culture and related issues
here.
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