Gender and Film - Vol - 6 - Issue - 2

Contents
EDITORIAL
3
CARTOON AS ETHNOGRAPHY: ‘LITTLE WOmEN’ IN A BIG WORLD

Gokul TG
4
GENDER AND THE DOCumENTARY FILm: CAPTuRING A SENSED REALITY

Paromita Vohra
16
PRETTY mEN: GOLDEN AGE OF THE FEmALE ImPERSONATOR

Prakash Garud
(Translated by usha Rao)
42
WRITING DESIRE: THE BODY AS LOOkING GLASS

Joshua muyiwa
56
NOTES FROm THE mARGINS: THE FEmININE VOICE OF THE GHATAm

Sumana Chandrashekar
68
In Conversation
CREATING THEATRE SPACES: CONNECTING ART TO LOCAL LIFE

Atul Pethe and Waman Pandit with Ashutosh Potdar
86
ArtConnect
An IFA Publication
Volume 6, Number 2
July to December 2012
Editor
C.k. meena
Design
mishta Roy
Printed by B Narahari, published by Anmol Vellani on behalf of India Foundation for

the Arts and printed at manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, manipal,
udipi, karnataka - 576 104 and published at India Foundation for the Arts,
'Apurva', Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross, Raj mahal Vilas IInd Stage, IInd Block,
Bangalore - 560 094. Editor - C.k. meena
Photo and Text Credits

Gokul TG, Ramu Aravindan, Paromita Vohra, Deepa Dhanraj, Navroze Contractor,
Reena mohan, Lalji Gokhale, k.u. mohanan, Saba Dewan, Bharat kala Bhavan,
Banaras Hindu university, Sameera Jain, Prakash Garud and the Garud family,
Joshua muyiwa, Sumana Chandrashekar, Sukanya Ramgopal, Atul Pethe,
Waman Pandit, Ashutosh Potdar
Cover Image
Female impersonator Hammigi Nilkanthappa as Jambuvati in the kannada play
Chavatiya Chandra, staged in the early twentieth century by Garud
Sadashivarao's company, Sri Dattatreya Sangeeta Nataka mandali.
Photograph courtesy Prakash Garud and the Garud family.
All efforts have been made to contact and receive permission from all copyright holders.
Any source not acknowledged will be credited in subsequent issues.
Editorial
Gender is the string that ties together most pieces in this issue, which are written by
practitioners of theatre, music, film, poetry and cartooning, and span almost a hundred
years of history.
A very twenty-first-century perspective of gender informs Joshua muyiwa’s deeply

personal essay in which he speaks of his obsession with the body—“a map on which we
can pin down moments that made us”. Tracing the journey of his poetry, which is also a
journey of self-discovery, he describes how he has fashioned the man of his longings from
the clay of his own experience.
We step back in time from the bold, colourful eroticism of muyiwa’s work to the muted
sepias of understated sexuality in the early twentieth-century images of Prakash Garud’s
photo-essay. Garud, a third-generation theatre practitioner, has retrieved, from his
family album, old photographs of theatre productions. Casting his eye on the female
characters, which were usually played by male actors because ‘decent’ women did not
act in those days, Garud reflects on the status of women in theatre and recalls some of
the talented female impersonators of the Indian stage.
In IFA grantee Paromita Vohra’s now-playful now-trenchant analysis of the Indian

documentary, we discover an exciting though hitherto unwritten chapter that begins
where formal history ends. Vohra dwells on the myriad artistic forms that broke the
template of the ‘issue-based’ political documentary which privileges the collective over
the individual. The makers of these new, biographical films bring out non-literal meaning 3
and make use of performance to evoke a ‘sensed’ reality.
When IFA grantee Gokul TG documented the award-winning filmmaker G. Aravindan’s

weekly comic strip of the 1960s and 1970s, Cheriya Manushyarum, Valiya Lokavum (Little
men, Big World), he was struck by its immense popularity among women in particular.
This led him to take a closer look at the female characters in the strip. Gokul finds
that the auteur was compassionate and non-judgmental in his portrayal of the female
characters, and that he tied their personal histories to the history of their times.
Sumana Chandrashekar, a Carnatic vocalist and a ghatam player, attempts to understand

the constructs of gender and hierarchy within the realm of Carnatic music, and especially
within percussion, through the inspiring story of her guru, Sukanya Ramgopal, who is
India’s pioneering, professional female ghatam player. Chandrashekar finds that
Sukanya’s musical journey has been a quest for identity for herself and her instrument.
We end this issue with an interview: Ashutosh Potdar in a lively conversation with marathi
theatre practitioners Atul Pethe and Waman Pandit on the thriving theatre network in the
small towns and villages of maharashtra—a network that has succeeded in fostering a
larger theatre culture by reaching out to new spaces and new audiences.
C.K. Meena
ckmeena@gmail.com
In this episode from Cheriya Manushyarum, Valiya Lokavum (CMVL), Ramu unexpectedly comes into money. He
plans to buy slippers or treat his friends, but ends up buying earrings for his sister.
Cartoon
as Ethnography:
‘Little Women’ in a Big World
Gokul TG
All photographs courtesy Ramu Aravindan
much before G. Aravindan gained fame

as a national award-winning film director
he had established himself in kerala as a
cartoonist. Gokul TG got a grant from the
India Foundation for the Arts in 2011 to
study and document Aravindan’s comic
strip Cheriya Manushyarum, Valiya
Lokavum (Little men, Big World) which
appeared in the malayalam weekly
Mathrubhumi Azhchapathippu from 1961
to 1973. Featuring two central characters,
Ramu and his mentor Guruji, it was a
scathing satire on kerala society and
politics. Here, Gokul focuses on the women
characters in the strip, and finds
Aravindan’s portrayal of them to be subtle
and non-judgmental.
ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 2
ith Cheriya Manushyarum, boldly let his characters age, fall in
W Valiya Lokavum (CMVL)

coming to be widely
acknowledged as a precursor to the
love, land jobs, get married, migrate,
compromise their ethical standpoints
and undergo organic behavioural
modern-day graphic novel, G. transformations. In the bargain, he
Aravindan has re-entered the captured the essence of post-
consciousness of the generation that Independence Kerala society as it
knew him only as an auteur, as a grappled with the pangs of nation-
cartoonist. In fact, the weekly strip building and made a radical break
had no pre-determined plot that from the morals and ethics held so
would qualify it as a novel, but the dear by the previous generation. So
loyal readership that it had built up complete was Aravindan’s trust in the
over thirteen years had unwittingly memory and intellect of his reader
read into it a novel-like structure as it that he would have some characters
followed the evolution of Ramu from disappear from the narrative midway,
an innocent, educated, unemployed, only to turn up years later, having
young protagonist into a scheming, grown richer or fallen upon bad times,
6 lonely, megalomaniacal businessman. thus mirroring the world the reader
This novel-like structure was all the lived in. This, in the words of Indian
more apparent in the collected Express editorial cartoonist E.P. Unny,
editions that came out in 1978 (Bees “helped the Malayali for the first time
Books) and 1996 (DC Books) even to perceive ‘time’ in a comic strip”.
though they contained only two-third
the number of strips that had Art critic Sadanand Menon places
appeared in the weekly. Aravindan in the Indian storytelling
tradition of the Kathakar. “Like a true
However, in retrospect, it was the Kathakar, Aravindan would often
spiralling-cyclical narrative structure deviate from the main narrative, take a
that Aravindan adopted for CMVL detour, explore it, and then effortlessly
that was most responsible for return to the main thread to pick the
rendering it like a novel. To begin story up from where he had left it,”
with, Aravindan had entirely disposed Menon remembers. This narrative
of the usual narrative strategy, in the style, along with the good run he had
comic strip, of placing the characters in the most prestigious Malayalam
in a timeless limbo and then working literary journal, afforded Aravindan
on variations of thematic subsets. He enough space and time to map a
‘Little Women’ in a Big World – Gokul TG
society in flux. This feeling of for many other readers as well, for

liminality, of being neither here nor Aravindan used to make regular
there, so evident in the times references to world literature, music
immediately following Independence, and New Cinema in his comic strip.
was the backdrop against which the He would show Ramu and his
strip unfolded, and Aravindan’s open- philosopher-friend and mentor Guruji
ended cyclical narrative style was best deliberating on Albert Camus’ latest
suited for such an endeavour. CMVL book or Satyajit Ray’s Teen Kanya, or
is a mine of visual information on the enjoying Pannalal Ghosh’s music,
rapidly unfolding societal changes of without succumbing to the ‘common
those years, and this turns the strip, reader’ myth or pandering to so-called
albeit a work of fiction, into an ‘popular demand’. He had no
unintended ethnographic text. That reservations about the intellect of his
the author of such an ethnographic readers or their capacity to imbibe
document is not an objective outsider new ideas (credit must also go to the
with a scrutinising gaze, but someone weekly’s iconic editor N.V. Krishna
who experienced and lived the Warrier who shared this outlook and
zeitgeist, adds to its appeal. supported the comic strip with great 7
conviction). The strip’s intellectual
Despite retrospective attempts from quotient never deterred its readers; in
some quarters to brand the strip as fact, as was obvious from their letters
incomprehensible, arty, and limited in to the editor, many appreciated this
popularity, it was quite a hit among its quality, while almost everyone enjoyed
readers, especially women. Author and the strip at its most basic level as an
translator Prema Jayakumar maintains interesting serial narrative.
that the strip taught a whole
generation of readers to read the The Malayali reader of those times
Malayalam weekly Mathrubhumi was no stranger to serials, having
backwards, as it were, starting from being introduced to serially published
the last page where the comic strip novels both in the original and in
appeared and moving to the front. translation (mainly from the Bengali)
She also acknowledges the strip’s through the weekly, and the comic
foremost influence in the shaping strip was a natural extension of the
of her aesthetic sensibilities and format they had grown comfortable
her preference for narrative with. A strong sense of self-
understatement. This could be true identification with the central
characters that comes with addictive off letters to the editor, addressed to
serial reading is quite prominent in the Ramu, conveying their collective
letters to the editor that I archived prayers for him and even proposing to
with the help of a grant from the India send him a ‘terylene’ shirt if he would
Foundation for the Arts. The love and send them his shirt size (Mathrubhumi
empathy for the educated, gullible but Azchapathippu, Volume 41, Number
intelligent Ramu is strong especially 9, Page 5, 19 May 1963). In their
during the early years but tapers off letters, they also reminded him of his
during the later part of the narrative duties as a brother to his still
as he compromises his morals and unmarried sister Rema (Volume 47,
ethics and metamorphoses into a Number 1, Page 5, 8 June 1969) and
profit-driven, cold and conniving reprimanded him when he turned his
businessman. back on his friends and moral values
(Volume 47, Number 29, Page 5,
Female Readership 5 October 1969).
The comic strip, despite its If one were to use these letters to
8 predominantly male cast, had a strong make generalisations about CMVL’s
female readership. Most women female readers, it could be safely
eagerly awaited the weekly’s next assumed that they were traditional by
instalment to find out if Ramu had nature, for they seemed to gravitate
passed an exam or found a job. Unny towards the central protagonist Ramu
remembers how his aunt and her whom they idolised as a brother, lover
friends would eagerly wait for each or friend, and not towards the
week’s issue to land on their doorstep. women—some of whom were quite
As was common then, only a few radical—that Aravindan created.
homes actually subscribed to the What makes their responses not so
weekly, which would then be passed traditional, though, is the way they
around the neighbourhood over the took to the serial graphic narrative and
week. “I have seen women who had to broke the prevalent myths, in Kerala’s
wait for their turn to lay their hands male-dominated society, about women
on the weekly, eagerly enquiring of somehow lacking the intellectual
those who had already read the week’s capability to digest such ‘cerebral’ fare.
strip, about the job interview that The women brought the strip into a
Ramu was to attend that week,” Unny more inclusive domestic sphere, and
reminisces. Some of them even shot its popularity, reach and longevity
9
Leela, who began her career as a government employee, becomes a female escort.
increased in a way it couldn’t have, had narrative forward by transcending the

it been confined to the male- everydayness of the comic strip and
dominated public space. Interestingly, attempt to build an overarching
as someone who never pandered to narrative theme. This would later play
‘popular demand’, Aravindan’s a crucial role in providing the strip
characterisation of women in his strip with that novel-like structure that
appears to be in direct contrast to the would endear it to generations of
general nature of the female readers and thereby overcome the
readership that followed it. This ephemeral nature of the art.
apparent disparity warrants a study of
the strip’s female characters. Leela would continue to make
appearances in the strip over the years,
The Lost Love first as a worker in the social welfare
department, then as a social worker in
Leela, Ramu’s first and only true love, New Delhi and later as a high flying
is a key character in CMVL, maybe escort in the power circles of the
next in importance only to Guruji and nation’s capital. While Ramu hates her
10 the protagonist himself. In fact, it is initially, he later comes to terms with
the newly employed Leela who, by this loss. Towards the fag end of the
dumping the unemployed Ramu for strip he bears no ill will towards Leela,
her co-worker, provides the first even wishing her good cheer while
turning point in the narrative of the turning down a genuine attempt on
strip. The strip had been floating in a her part to find him a job. It is as if he
state of limbo till Leela jilts Ramu— had realised that she, like him, was a
an act which did away with any sense mere victim of the times they lived in.
of innocence and perpetual goodness In that sense, Leela is an alter-ego of
that readers must have started Ramu, a Ramu who realised early
associating with the central characters. enough that the secret to survival lay
This very act made it clear that in keeping pace with a rapidly
CMVL would be unlike any other transforming society, a society in
strip to which readers had grown which people had grown up with
accustomed. morals and values that were
completely at odds with reigning
More importantly, it is here that we realities. Ramu’s later willingness to
first see Aravindan evolving compromise his values stems from this
multifarious strategies to move the lesson learned early in his life.
Letters written by female readers of CMVL addressed to Ramu. 11
It is important to note here that sister. In spite of her family’s best

Aravindan fleshes out the character of efforts, the beautiful Radha remains
Leela with great compassion and unmarried till the end of the strip, first
dexterity, refraining from any value because of the family’s inability to
judgement or gender bias. This makes cough up a ‘decent’ dowry and then on
Leela the true ‘hero’ of the strip, account of her having crossed the
someone who early on walked a path ‘marriageable age’. While Leela, her
that invariably everyone in the story friend, escapes her encumbering
would later tread. surroundings early enough, Radha
remains the quintessential
The Demure Sister ‘domesticated’ Indian woman. To his
credit, however, Aravindan never allows
A reader might imagine he has found this apparent contrast between these
the perfect antithesis to Leela in the characters to regress into an easy
demure Radha, Ramu’s loyal, loving whore/angel binary. While Leela
Introducing Latha the engineer, Ramu's co-worker, who handles her job like a true professional.
exhibits a lot of care and concern that is The Co-Worker

seemingly at odds with her ruthlessly
ambitious demeanour, it is a highly Latha, one of the most impressive of
suppressed sexuality that rounds off the women characters of CMVL,
the character of the otherwise shy and makes a very brief appearance but
reserved Radha. Far from being leaves a lasting impression. An
diametrically opposite, Leela and engineering graduate, she joins the
Radha actually subsume each other, the firm that Ramu manages as a clerk
former being the actualisation of the and in no time proves to be an
possibilities inherent in the latter. This intelligent and efficient employee.
suppressed sexuality of Radha, the However, she and Ramu become
most beautifully drawn woman victims of a slander campaign run by a
character in the strip, owes much to the local yellow journalist, which forces
reigning societal perceptions of the her to give up her job. What sets her
‘ideal woman’ of those times. Though apart from others in the strip is a
never expressed overtly, Aravindan’s strong sense of the dignity of labour
lines suggest certain undercurrents of and willingness to learn her job like a
vivacity and sexual passion in Radha, true professional. It is interesting to 13
which she seeks to hide well in an note that the 1960s and 1970s were a
attempt to conform to this ideal time when women were beginning to
woman archetype. She remains at the get equal opportunities in the
fringes of the panel, muttering an workplace because of the big strides
occasional line of dialogue and mostly made in women’s education in the
sporting a sad and distant look, preceding decades. Aravindan uses
burdened as she is by an oppressive, this sub-plot to make a telling
biased society. She rarely ventures comment on the vulnerability of
outside the confines of her house, and woman at the workplace and more
when she does, is subjected to an importantly, society’s reluctance to
intense, ogling male gaze. The character accept a change in the status of
of Radha allows Aravindan to make women in spite of the tall claims
critical observations about the about progress and development.
chauvinistic nature of a society that,
despite political independence and the The Other Woman
spread of education, steadfastly holds
on to the gender prototypes it Nothing captures Ramu’s moral
inherited. degradation better than the changing
Janu uses her sexual alliance with Ramu to manipulate him.
contours of his relationships with According to Unny, CMVL had the

women. Towards the end of the strip, strongest and most interesting women
Ramu has an adulterous affair with characters in Malayalam literature
Janu, the vivacious middle-aged wife after Uroob’s Rachiyamma.
of his tenant. This relationship is (Rachiyamma is the titular character
purely sexual, of mutual convenience, of the short story collection
and devoid of any feelings of love and Rachiyammayum Mattu Pradhana
respect that marked his earlier Kathakalum by P.C. Kuttikrishnan
relationship, with Leela. Janu, being alias Uroob who belonged to the
aware of the effect she has on men, progressive writers’ group of the
deftly manipulates Ramu to extract 1950s.) A seminal characteristic of
money from him, often sending subtle Aravindan’s art was a sustained use of
messages bordering on blackmail, understatement as a narrative device.
while continuing to enter into Subtle and non-judgemental, he
‘profitable’ affairs with others from his always strove to keep his narrative
circle. While Ramu had simply wilted, open-ended and susceptible to
some years ago, when a yellow multiple interpretations. He used
journalist falsely accused him of images to convey the subtleties of 15
having an affair with his co-worker existence that words could never
Latha, this time he ‘manages’ the aspire to express. A glance, gesture or
gossipmonger and kills the story with posture of his female characters would
clinical precision. With Janu, women reveal layers of their inner worlds, the
become mere objects of desire and unspeakable and the unspoken. The
gratification for Ramu, something he master tied their personal histories to
was never guilty of in his earlier the history of the times.
relationships. His relationship with
Janu is as hollow as his relationship
with his rich friends and symptomatic Gokul TG is a comic artist based in
of his failure as a human being. In the Thrissur, Kerala. He pursues his Ph.D
end, there is no trace of love and on the Indian comic strip at the
compassion left in him and his tragedy Mahatma Gandhi University,
is complete. Kottayam.
Gender and the
Documentary Film:
Capturing a Sensed Reality
Paromita Vohra
An odd lady who haunted film festivals led Paromita Vohra to look more
closely at the evolution of the Indian documentary film and to ask an
apparently frivolous question: Why do so many male documentary filmmakers
grow a beard? Between the anecdote and the question lies an unwritten
story—of new artistic forms that have broken away from the agit-prop
template. Vohra says that these new films, many of them by women, consist of
layered individual narratives that explore meaning through what is said
between the lines. A gendered awareness and questions about truth and reality
have led to myriad explorations of form that have reinvigorated documentary
film culture in India.
17
kamlabai Gokhale acting in a play. She and her mother Durgabai kamat, who acted in Dadasaheb Phalke’s
mohini Bhasmasur (1914), are acknowledged as the first ladies of the Indian screen.
Photograph courtesy Lalji Gokhale’s private collection.
t was February 1992 and the was and they shrugged. I never went
I second edition of the Bombay

(now Mumbai) International Film
Festival of Documentaries,
to see the film.
Nevertheless I kept bumping into this

Animations and Shorts (BIFF, now woman over the many years that
MIFF) was underway at the National followed, mostly at film events.
Centre for the Performing Arts. I had Almost always she would tell me, “You
been working as an assistant to the know, I have made a brilliant film.
well-known filmmaker Anand And I made it all that time ago, in the
Patwardhan for eighteen months. It 1970s.” Each time I would respond
was a job with a view. As a pioneering with awkward politeness and flee. It
figure of Indian independent even became something of a jokey
documentary, Patwardhan was anecdote for me. God alone knew
someone who independent what this film was about, because no
documentarians of all ages contacted one I knew had heard of it.
or visited. For a young person, it was
an exceptional way to be directly And that was the operative phrase: ‘no
18 plugged into ‘the scene’: what was one I knew’. No formal written history
going on, who was making what, and of the Indian documentary film
what filmmakers were arguing about. I existed. You haphazardly absorbed a
would eagerly go to every screening, sort of oral history of remembered
devour every videotape I could find. It films and ongoing occurrences just by
is fair to say that for a twenty-two- being ‘in the scene’.
year-old I was uncommonly aware of
the current documentary scene. In 2004 Shai Heredia curated the
second edition of her film festival
That year, at the festival, a woman Experimenta. Featured in it was
with a wild shock of hair came up to Chhatrabhang by Nina Shivdasani
me and gave me a flyer. She said, Rovshen and I thought, “Oh good
“Come and see my film, I’ve made a grief! Let me go see what this is all
brilliant film long ago, it is showing at about.”
the festival.” Taken aback at how
someone could unabashedly sing her All I can say is that Nina Shivdasani
own praises, I stammered acceptance was right. She had indeed made a
and fled. Her name was Nina striking film and she had made it “all
Shivdasani. I asked someone who she that time ago”, in 1975.
Gender and the Documentary Film – Paromita Vohra
Chhatrabhang is a narrative based on spontaneity would take over.

a true story, set in a village with This was very interesting…a
separate wells for lower and upper true-life incident combined with
castes. One hot, arid summer, the as much of the reality of that
lower-caste well runs dry. Despite incident along with a certain
their trepidation, the lower-caste amount of fiction to supplement
communities are so driven to anger where it needed it. So this
and despair that they storm the complex play of real and fiction
upper-caste well and draw water is what turned it into a really
from it. It is a moment of great strong work. I went on a research
triumph. But the higher castes in trip, took photographs, did a lot
collusion with the police extract a of taping and then wrote a script
violent retribution, and whole outline with minimal dialogue
families are wiped out in the and narration—all the rest is
massacre. free-form, dehati language which
1
the villagers spoke themselves.
The film is shot in a village similar
to the one on which it is based, with This is the most notable thing about 19
its residents as the actors. Here is an the film: the drama hovers in a strange
excerpt from an interview Shai space where you strongly feel it’s a
Heredia did with Nina Shivdasani documentary and yet you know it is
during Experimenta 2004, which not ‘real’. An almost parallel sense of
talks about the methods she used in fiction and non-fiction co-exist and
the film: inter-play, an effect achieved with
artistic intent—through dramatic shot
Heredia: So were the villagers compositions and precise rhythm,
drawing from their own real which produce a blurred space where
experiences in a way? past and present, fiction and reality
together arrive at a certain truth. One
Shivdasani: Yes. They knew their might say it is not so much testimony
own truth. Most of what they as evidence of experience.
were saying was in their minds
already. I would just give them a I had found the most incredible end to
gist or a line or the idea and then my jokey anecdote. Over fifteen years
their own improvisation and I would repeatedly meet a strange lady
and she’d tell me how she’d made a such as freedom fighter Lala Lajpat
brilliant film long ago. And guess Rai’s funeral and the devastating
what? She had! The film shared the Quetta earthquake of 1935, and these
FIPRESCI prize at the Berlin were exhibited through the same
International Film Festival 1976. In channels that fiction films were. From
the Q&A session at Experimenta 1940, when the Film Advisory Board
2004, Shivdasani said that when she was established, the colonial
ran into censor trouble, she wangled a government took complete control of
meeting with (then Prime Minister) raw stock distribution and began
Indira Gandhi and told her that it was producing war propaganda films. Films
impossible for her film to be censored Division (FD) was established post
because the Berlin festival authorities Independence, in 1948. Its mandate
forbade changes in any film they had was to transmit the idea of India to the
given a prize to. How this was people and make them aware of how
believed is anyone’s guess, but it the government was carrying out its
worked. She had her censor certificate, Five-Year Plans. Peace propaganda
albeit through strategy, not films, you could call them.
20 confrontation with the State.
Although ‘Films Division’ is often used
The anecdote may be over but it as shorthand for ‘tedious and boring’,
opens up many questions: Why is FD did make some interesting films
Nina Shivdasani not famous? Why until the late 1960s, most famously
was no one working in the 1970s and under the stewardship of chief producer
1980s familiar with her name or her Jehangir Bhownagary; some of the
film? Why was she completely missing leading lights were Sukhdev, S.N.S.
from the history of the Indian Sastry, Pramod Pati and K.S. Chari.
independent documentary? When the Emergency was imposed by
the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
A Sensed History in June 1975, censorship robbed FD
films of much of their experimentation.
A formal history of the Indian It was a time of tremendous political
documentary film would go something injustice and social uprising against the
like this: In British-ruled India in the State. A series of films linked to people’s
1930s, a few companies produced non- movements began to be made in the
fiction accounts of important events independent space.
This point marks the end of the told, isn’t it—inside the ‘main’ edifice of
formal history—a good example being history, a women’s room?
documentary filmmaker B.D. Garga’s
excellent book From Raj to Swaraj: There is no account of female
The Non-Fiction Film in India directors in non-fiction film until the
(Penguin Books, 2007)—but later 1970s. In 1974 Vijaya Mulay made an
documentary practice was little animation film Ek, Anek aur Ekta
recorded or observed except in the about unity in diversity, for the
more informal space of dialogue at Government of India’s Centre of
documentary screenings or occasional Educational Technology (CET). The
conferences. It is commonly accepted film, and the song it features, “Suraj ek,
that the pioneering films of the chanda ek”, are now nostalgically much
independent movement are Anand shared on YouTube. Mulay went on to
2
Patwardhan’s Waves of Revolution direct several films for CET as well as
3
(1975) and Prisoners of Conscience FD and some of them won National
(1978). They display a passionate Awards, but frankly, none of them are
commitment to resisting political remembered in the way Ek, Anek aur
injustice and are strongly centred on Ekta is. Mulay, fondly called Akka by 21
the idea of the testimony—of both the many, has been a significant part of
filmmaker and the filmed, perhaps. State initiatives around media and
They are direct, with no artistic education and has represented the
digression, and in the agit-prop mode. idea of the Indian documentary at
They are the base from which film festivals abroad. Her book From
Patwardhan developed his unique Rajas and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond:
style of the political essay-cum- Images of India in International Films in
mobilisational film. Others too began the Twentieth Century (Seagull Books,
making films related to people’s 2008) details how Indian culture is
movements: for example Voices from represented in international cinema.
Baliapal (Ranjan Palit and Vasudha But she has been more an institutional
Joshi, 1989), Aar Koto Din (Shashi figure than a filmmaker.
Anand, 1989) and Something Like a
War (Deepa Dhanraj, 1991). Now we have this odd conundrum.
Two women make their first film
Was there a women’s history inside this around the same time (1974-75): one,
history? Because that’s how it’s usually an indictment of the caste system
made with artistic power; the other, an documentary being creatively shot
animation film for children, reality and primarily a tool to convey
exemplifying the Constitutional ideal democracy to the masses, and his
of equality and unity, which is nice discomfort with favouring the
enough but not extraordinary in ideas individual over the collective—these
or execution. were central to the Indian
independent documentary experience.
Why does one woman make it to the
sensed history and not the other? During my initial research for a
project on the evolution of the Indian
But let’s not take up the women’s-room documentary film, for which I got a
approach. Let’s put it another way. grant from India Foundation for the
Arts in 2009-10, I was struck by how
Two people make independent films many people had arrived at
in 1975: Shivdasani, a powerful documentary not through a desire to
exploration of caste inequality and make films but through an
violence, and Patwardhan, a involvement with organised political
22 cinematically naïve but passionate and work and discussion. The reigning
committed record of a mass notion was that since films were made
movement. Why is the latter so for ‘the people’, to show the social
prominent, and the other, a strange conditions that led to their oppression
lady I run into at events who is and help bring about systemic and
compelled to tell me time and again social change, they would not focus on
that she made a brilliant film, perhaps individual narratives. The filmmaker’s
because no one else will? task was to give voice to the truth
revealed by this ‘unvarnished’
The answer may or may not rest in sociological reality, a truth that was
gender. We will come back to it shortly. marginalised in mainstream and
government-sponsored media.
Nothing but the Truth
Deepa Dhanraj, a filmmaker from
I have discussed John Grierson’s Hyderabad who had been radicalised
influence on the Indian documentary by her experience of the Emergency,
in an essay co-written with Dr Arvind had been working with a feminist
4
Rajagopal. Grierson’s idea of the group, Yugantar. I interviewed her in
2010 and she described how they been that we picked women as
functioned: protagonists, that we wanted
some of their personal
I remember coming to stories....And you have to
meetings...in those days, and it understand that it was very
would start at twelve and [we collaborative, so you can’t go
would] leave at ten. We were— against the politics of other
what?—like twenty-four, twenty- people in the group. You have to
five, many of us were single. You have consensual decisions....It
had the kind of mental space in wasn’t just a film we were doing
your life to get obsessed with and moving on, you were living
these...things. It was a completely this stuff, you know...in Nipani,
different kind of way of entering we went and stayed in that slum,
politics. And at that moment was in one room over there to shoot.
when I felt, okay, why not make And it was actually the women
films? [We felt] that there are who got us the access to make
exciting things that women’s that film. They showed us. Take
groups are doing in various parts a shot of this, now show this, 23
of the country and how do you this person suffers this....It’s
share this...how do you convey the enough if women speak, because
power of what they were doing they really had not spoken. You’d
and can you convey it with...our never heard stories like this. That
newfound feminist theory which just may seem naïve...but I
was in its infancy? Like we wanted remember at that time thinking
to do a film on tobacco workers in that it’s such an amazing thing.
Nipani. You could do it as a
labour politics film, around wages The explosive power of these early
and conditions of work etc. but records remains meaningful even
the idea was to say, what does it today. Dhanraj’s Something Like A
mean? War, on government family-planning
policies and what it meant for women
What is the feminist to be ‘targets’ and to lose autonomy
understanding? I couldn’t tell over their own bodies, is a feminist
you. But it was there, like a sort classic with good reason. It was a film
of inchoate thing, it may have made, as Dhanraj said to me, “in a
white-hot rage”. The relentless initiated the Video SEWA experiment

uncovering of appalling facts and the in 1984. SEWA is an Ahmedabad-
ironic juxtapositions of quotes from based trade union of women working
the authorities about the “war against in the unorganised sector. As part of
population” coalesced into a tight and its media project, the women used
resonant work. relatively cheap and portable U-matic
video equipment to make films about
Meanwhile, there was an interesting issues important to them, in their
development within the feminist own, unmediated voice.
context in the 1980s. Several film
collectives emerged, the most noted An interesting iteration of this was the
being Mediastorm, formed in 1986 by community video work by the women
six women—Shohini Ghosh, Sabeena of the Deccan Development Society
Gadihoke, Shikha Jhingan, Ranjini (DDS) in Andhra Pradesh, where
Mazumdar, Sabina Kidwai and Charu rural Dalit women began shooting
Gargi—who had graduated from the activist films around their own
Mass Communication Research Centre concerns as labourers and farmers.
24 at Jamia Millia Islamia. They made In this process they arrived at an
several films on the important political intriguing critical taxonomy of shot
issues of the time. Not to put too fine a types. For example: Patel (landlord)
point on it, many more women than shot = Low-angle shot (which makes
men got into collective filmmaking, the subject look like a towering
though there were exceptions like the figure); Gayadolla (bonded labourer)
Drishti Media Collective started in shot = Top-angle shot (which dwarfs a
1993 by Shabnam Virmani and K.S. person); Sangham (the collective) shot
Stalin in Ahmedabad. = Eye-level shot.
With the advent of video, community Cast in a Template

video projects mushroomed. ‘Media
access’ became the buzzword; the idea An initiative that had evolved from a
that putting a camera in the hands of powerful urge to express, explore,
‘the people’ would give them the tools understand and mirror a set of
to articulate their concerns gained experiences turned into a template for
currency after the Self-Employed the political documentary. The ‘issue’
Women’s Association (SEWA) became the film’s guiding force. There
25
Women with tags on their foreheads waiting to be sterilised at a camp in maharashtra where
operations are conducted assembly-line style. From Deepa Dhanraj's 1991 film Something Like a War.
Still by Navroze Contractor.
was an almost conscious attempt to not merely in being able to speak. And
dissociate what was considered while technology was given to the
‘political’ from the filmmaker’s people it was often not accompanied
individual sensibility or artistic by education in the film language that
engagement with a political question. the elites were conversant with.
Among these ‘issue-based’ films, a
large number were on ‘women’s issues’. There were some who criticised or
Owing their allegiance to the idea of critiqued the turn that documentary
the women’s collective, they recorded was taking. Partha Chatterjee, in an
the women’s oral testimonies and essay on Indian documentaries in
captured their feistiness, but not Cinemaya, dismissed activist films as
through new narrative forms or strong signalling the death of Form, praising
individual styles. The term instead the documentary work of
‘documentary’ came to mean an fiction filmmakers such as Satyajit
amalgam of the ‘educational’ thrust of Ray, Shyam Benegal and Kumar
5
the government, the ‘uplifting the Shahani. His opinion is debatable.
marginalised’ slogan of the political The best activist films were not
26 elite and the ‘giving voice to the lacking in form, even if their makers
voiceless’ endeavour of activists. chose not to discuss form; some of
their early work, in fact, evoked a
Despite its exciting beginnings, vibrant sense of showing you the
community video projects often world anew, as most art does. It was
followed a set pattern, and to this day just that, over time, a single Form
they are funded on the basis of what I had become paramount and even
will call a ‘noble savage’ understanding: hegemonic. As Deepa Dhanraj said
that all you need to do is put a camera in an interview with Madhu
in the hands of untrained people and Bhushan in Deep Focus, “The reason
by sheer virtue of their marginalised I feel for not many individual
condition they will be able to filmmakers breaking from the
communicate through this new standardised mode is the insidious
medium. Equating technology with peer pressure from the Left which is
6
empowerment is a Soviet-era view, still a strong reference point.”
which increasingly ignores a seminal
feminist understanding—that power Nevertheless, or perhaps therefore, by
resides in language and syntax, and the end of the 1990s, when video was
no longer new and the industry of the funders, they decide their
developmental, ‘issue-based’ films had mandate, you write your proposal
expanded so much that it almost according to that....They were the
became a substitute for the old FD, ones funding your films,
some filmmakers started questioning documentary screenings at that
their own practice in a changing time use to happen through NGO
political landscape. circuits, women’s groups, so they
were all praises for your work. I
Saba Dewan described some of these think for me there was a certain
troubling questions in an interview I disillusionment....It was somehow
did with her in 2011: not the truth. They were making
me question my ideas as a woman.
What might have attracted me to Since being a filmmaker, being a
take up a commissioned film, say woman, both the things are
on Mahila Samakhya [a enmeshed... questions arose of—
government programme for what is my politics? What am I
empowerment of rural women saying...what is my form?
initiated in 1989]...is the politics of 27
Samakhya till then. Samakhya was Women were not the only ones asking
not just a literacy programme. these questions. In an interview I did
There was hope, there was in 2011 with Amar Kanwar, who is
optimism, there was politics...and well known today for his documentary
some independent women’s groups films and installations in the poetic-
too were working there. Most of visual-essay mode, he recalled the
the NGO culture in India comes discomfort he used to feel:
in after the Emergency, so they
were still young and very I found that every film I was
political....But I think through the making I had to hone my skills
[19]90s... [there] was a certain co- of minimising [the filmmaker’s]
option of NGO politics in presence. And [I] had therefore
becoming systems of distributions collected a whole bag of tricks of
for the state....Once you get used how to minimise this and...
to huge amount of money, then devise a space where my audience
terms like ‘mandate’ become feels that it is actually face to face
important. Mandate is always from with the territory of my film and
that I am not in between. Now The filmmaker Madhusree Dutta

the more skilled I got at this...the narrates an interesting story in an
more people liked the film. And I interview with Bhaskar Sarkar and
7
had also started to feel a little Nicole Wolf in BioScope. She and
uncomfortable with this skill feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes co-
that I was acquiring, and also founded the Mumbai-based
what I was getting...from the organisation Majlis, which has both a
documentary community, cultural and a legal centre, and which
particularly...those who has the mission statement ‘Culture as
appreciate...those who approve, Right, Rights as Culture’. A woman
peer groups, clients, teachers. arrived at the Majlis legal centre along
with her daughter who had been in a
Said Between the Lines violent marriage. In speaking for her
daughter she blamed herself for
Orality was central to the Indian raising her daughter “in an ambience of
political documentary, which was fear”. Dutta reports that the woman
founded on testimonies. In the classic said, “I gave her fear as an inheritance
28 political film there was an assumption and that is why she could not cope
that once people spoke, they and the with her own life. Punish me but
film had said everything there was to please help her.” Dutta says in the
say. It was all about giving people an BioScope interview:
opportunity to speak, not about what
is hidden in the speech of those who That became the synopsis of the
are often not allowed to speak. film [Memories of Fear]. [In that
woman’s story] there was also a
Feminist theory had a different take separation between law and
on oral history. It recognised a non- rights. The mother’s testimony
literalism within orality, a ‘sense’ of a could not be a part of the
meaning that opened up entirely new daughter’s legal case as memories
ways of looking. The act of listening are not considered evidence….
to accounts of people was also the act Formally, Memories of Fear
of listening to what was being said needed an overlap between the
between the lines, what remained woman’s memory of her own life
unsaid and how things were said. and the legal case of the
daughter’s domestic violence.…
29
Sagira Begum doing zardozi embroidery in Sameera Jain's 1997 film Sagira Begum.
For the first time I attempted to theatre: Scribbles on Akka (2000) and
place contrived narratives 7 Islands and a Metro (2006).
[stylised performances,
embellished re-enactments] back Similarly, other films which worked
to back with standard with protracted testimonies, or
8
testimonies. biographies, expanded the
understanding of the documentary
Although criticised at the time for form and its political nature. Notable
“mutilating the integrity of the among these were Kamlabai (1992),
testimony”, the film led Dutta to an Reena Mohan’s film about Kamlabai
exploration of this form, which Gokhale, the first woman to act on the
resulted in significant films that used Indian screen; and Sagira Begum
elements of performance strongly (1997), Sameera Jain’s film about a
inflected by her background in seventy-five-year-old zardozi worker
30
Family group portrait of kamlabai Gokhale (extreme left), her mother Durgabai kamat (centre,
holding baby), and her sons Lalji Gokhale (second from left), an accomplished tabla player and
Chandrakant Gokhale (second from right), a veteran actor of the marathi stage and Indian screen,
seen next to his wife. Photograph courtesy Lalji Gokhale's private collection.
in Old Delhi. Neither film inserted cinema. Their personal stories were a
any material that was not testimony. type of record of that history.
In a way the biographies of these
women were ‘performed’ via their The evolution of these cinematic
individual stories and their unique forms is almost visible in this
way of comporting themselves. These story that Reena Mohan told me in
women had lived through and been 2010, about the making of Kamlabai:
part of major historical events: Sagira
Begum had seen the Partition of India We entered her flat and she was
and Pakistan and the subsequent sitting in her choli and petticoat
ghettoisation of Delhi’s old city, and that you see her in, [in] the film,
Kamlabai, the growth of Indian but I said, you are sitting like
31
Replicating the poses in the old family group portrait, kamlabai Gokhale (centre) with her son
Chandrakant (second from right) and his family. Still by k.u. mohanan.
this! Aren’t you going to get Ranjan [Palit] said the frame is
ready? And she said why? What’s looking very empty and bare. So
wrong? This is what I wear. So I we pulled out this rack from the
said you’ve got to wear a sari and second bedroom, brought it
proper blouse you know, this is a within the frame and her
film and...so she changed. Oh it’s background, brought all the
terrible, actually. Then I said you trophies from the top of the
can’t be sitting on the bed all the cupboard. And soon Rekha said
time, you’ve got to sit in different ‘bara aaji...’ you know in a formal
parts of the house. We had these way, and she was pitching her
plastic chairs and she sat in one voice a certain way.
and Rekha [the Marathi
interviewer] sat in one and I kept getting the feeling this is
32
kamlabai Gokhale, first lady of Indian cinema, still going strong. Stills by k.u. mohanan.
not right. Mohan [K.U. which continues to reshape how we

Mohanan] and Suresh see history.
[Rajamani] and Ranjan and me
and Rekha sat down and I said Reena Mohan eventually shook free of
what’s going wrong?...you are this idea of a reconstructed
putting her in a chair and documentation, following only the
bringing down these trophies and way in which Kamlabai spoke and
making her change clothes and how she presented herself as a person
that doesn’t feel like who she is. while she remembered the experience,
The notion that I am talking to and not the milestones, of her life.
this first lady of the Indian screen Considered a classic, Kamlabai is a
and I am going to get... facts was beautifully shot, forty-minute film
very strong somewhere. So it was made up of one woman speaking, or
very structured interviews, now performing herself.
we’ve done the childhood, now
we’ve done the marriage, now we Redefining the Political
talk about her first male
role....Every time she was being With the making of such biographical 33
cute and jokey, we were switching films, which recognised non-literal
off the camera and I was saying meaning and evoked a ‘sensed’ reality,
that now she’ll settle down and the idea of the political had to be re-
we’ll switch on the camera, then negotiated. Madhusree Dutta
we’ll get on with it. comments on these films in her essay
“In Defence of the Political
The idea that a documentary is a Documentary”:
public record that must be about
public achievements, and that it These films are distinct among the
requires a certain type of performance sea of films that were produced in
from the subject, is palpable in this the South Asian subcontinent
story. This notion is influenced, in during this period. They are
turn, by the idea that there is a biographical films with an agenda
consistent arc of history into which related to nationalism. They are
one just fits the ‘women’s experience’, a non-linear, with sublime
women’s room in the bigger house of aesthetics, and yet are political.
history, rather than an experience The number of films produced in
this genre is growing by leaps and to the very act of filmmaking.

bounds. Encouraged by easily
available digital technology, Rahul Roy spoke of this in an
filmmakers today can afford to interview I did in 2011:
spend more time with the
protagonists, developing layered Since Saba [Dewan] and I used
engagements, also altering their to work together and lot of our
9
own agenda in the process. films were on gender and on
women, over a period of time I
It is hard to say if the many new just felt that...it was an extremely
explorations of form in documentary comfortable position to be in
are specific to women, although, as the and...[also that] it was limiting. I
researcher Nicole Wolf points out in started questioning my own role
her unpublished dissertation, “...there in those films and I felt that if I
is a wide range of prolific explorations am interested in gender then I
of documentary mode filmmaking should be looking at men’s lives
that has been and is continuously [too]. So that was the starting
34 happening in India by women point and after that it was more
filmmakers…Namely there is a thing of hurtling down a
commitment to filmmaking practices certain path and I keep engaging
which is deeply invested in with that theme in different ways
contemporary political questions… in different circumstances and
that takes multiple cinematic forms, situations. But eventually it [the
(and) is thus inextricably linked to gendered awareness] blurs the
reflections on, negotiations of and the lines....So I think in filmmaking
10
working upon notions of the real.” I am less and less interested in
The presence of the filmmaker as making masculinity the object....I
audience, as interlocutor and not find it extremely limiting and
rapporteur, is implied in the also problematic to make just
performances of subjects such as that into an object. What’s more
Kamlabai and Sagira Begum. The interesting is actually how do you
personal space in which this encounter implicate gender in other
happens imparts a gendered quality to situations and then read off
the intimacy and interaction between those situations.
subjects and filmmakers, and indeed
Gendered awareness and questions itself as a movement with a

about truth and reality had led to politico-cultural identity of its
myriad explorations of form. These own. It stands by itself, its head
filmmakers were wrestling with the bloody, but unbowed, under the
weight of a certain type of inherited pressure of bureaucratic
history of documentary form and suffocation and suppression,
practice. In the process they were also official red-tapism and a
compelled to acknowledge the ideas of dictatorial, even fascist,
11
performance that are inherent in censorship.
documentary practice and political
activity, and which become normative Through the rest of the account there
as a history is created. is curiously little else to describe the
nature of the movement in terms of its
So much of the history of form is cinema. There is instead a stance, a
about the history of form you’ve pose on a poster, a demeanour or
received—or, sometimes, perceived. behaviour that marks it. A similar
tone can be found in a 1999 report
Here is a common form of history from the Deccan Herald, about a 35
provided in the 1990s in particular. fellowship project initiated by the
12
Shoma Chatterji, writing in a 1994 organisation Majlis. The writer
issue of Spectrum, the catalogue of spends a few paragraphs describing
MIFF’s Indian non-competitive Madhushree Dutta as a fiery, gutsy
section, describes the independent woman on the basis of an encounter
documentary movement: she had with the Mumbai police,
before getting to the point of
The Emergency triggered a the report.
series of films starting with
Anand Patwardhan and It is not cinema that is being spoken
followed by others. …From the of here so much as comportment.
1980s a simmering movement
made its presence felt within the A Matter of Performance
realm of Indian documentary
films. The simmering gained To elaborate my meaning, I would
momentum and speed, garnered like to describe Saba Dewan’s lovely
13
itself for action, and defined film The Other Song (2009). It is a
wonderfully warm, but fairly opportunity to refine their craft; they

straightforward journey into the have not acquired the quicksilver,
world of tawaifs (courtesans) in flirtatious twists necessitated by the
search of a lost or obscured thumri, kind of performance where one must
and through this, a lost or obscured make regular eye-contact with the
life, tradition and aesthetic. audience, not unlike that eye-level shot
which the community video women in
A significant sequence in this film is Andhra Pradesh aptly named the
of a classical music mehfil in Sangham shot. The ‘sense’ of
Benaras, organised at the haveli of an distinction between the comportment
old, elite, merchant family by the of both sets of artists and their art
Kashi Sangeet Samaj as part of its may be subtle but it nevertheless
centenary celebration. The gathering provides irrefutable evidence of
and musicians are mostly male and hierarchy. The Other Song brings out a
upper-caste; in the old days there ‘sense’ that the world thinks that the
would have been courtesans. The male artists are doing real, serious
ambience is in stark contrast to the work, whereas the louche courtesans,
36 frayed glamour of the courtesan while fun, are not to be taken so
world, indicating that a sanitisation seriously as artists.
and perhaps brahminisation has
taken place. Similarly, I find Shoma Chatterji’s
description of the independent film
For me, the sequence strikingly brings striking for its personification: “It
out the issue of comportment in the stands by itself, its head bloody, but
arts. There is a manner in which these unbowed.” It sounds like a
artists carry themselves, with import, description of a performance, not of
with gravity, with punditry, with the a film. And yet, what is a
stately pace of experts. This is quite in documentary film but a performance
contrast with the comportment of the of the filmmaker? When Thomas
women who people this film—their Waugh labelled these political films
mischief, their tartness or sweetness, the “committed film” he pointed out
their fragile vanities and arrogant that in doggedly documenting a
glamour. It may well be that here, the certain politics, the filmmaker
men are technically far more enacted a performance of
14
accomplished singers, having had the commitment. The more passionate
filmmaking but her battle with the

police that marked her as a warrior
and hence significant, according to the
Deccan Herald report.
These performances and the manner

of their performing—the
comportment of the filmmaker and
the film—conferred status on both.
That which did not fit into this
comportment might well struggle to
be recognised, or cause those who
view it to be uncomfortable with
recognising it. This idea of the
comportment of a film is echoed in a
Writer, poet, journalist and playwright conversation I had with a critic who
Bharatendu Harishchandra with his courtesan told me he loved my films because
mistress, madhavi. Photograph courtesy
Bharatendu Collection, Bharat kala Bhavan, they were funny and political but he 37
Banaras Hindu university. Still from Saba
Dewan’s The Other Song.
could not imagine giving them a prize
because though they were political,
they could not be serious, because
the performance, the better the film: they were too enjoyable. Another
The more derivative the performance, experience I had was after I had
the duller the work. An important screened my film Unlimited Girls in
element of this performance was often 2002. The film, about feminism in
the rite of passage of censorship. India, is in English and Hindi, and its
Battles with the Central Board of Film form and content are rooted in urban
Certification or the ‘right-wing’ were a contexts. A few days later I received a
badge of validation of a film’s political four-page letter from a man about
significance. This is not to imply that how my film was elitist, not genuinely
this is not a genuine battle or problem political because it is urban and
in any society, particularly ours, but humorous, and that I, with my short
censorship often became a means of hair and my manner of dressing, had
judging a film’s importance. Similarly, silenced the suffering women of rural
it was not Madhusree Dutta’s India. The writer obviously felt, as
many do about women who laugh too In this history of warfare and
loudly, that the film and I had not warriors, how could someone like
comported our selves well enough to Nina Shivdasani have found a place?
be deemed political. A woman who, quite apart from
creating a political work of art made
A Frivolous Question outside the context of organisational
politics, had got her censor certificate
Which brings me to an apparently through strategy, not chivalric public
frivolous question I have frequently confrontation?
addressed to my documentary
filmmaking colleagues: Why do so The history of Indian documentary is
many male documentary filmmakers far more hybrid than the monolithic
have a beard? one being bandied about. The
gendered nature of this history and
This performance of commitment may its valorisation had enforced a
have various comportments, or rasas. somewhat gendered practice along
While the ideas of the unvarnished fairly conformist lines. When this
38 form may no longer have such a tight history was questioned in feminist
hold, the notion of significance still terms, it resulted in new and exciting
comes via comportment. Eventually no political understandings which found
matter what your chosen form, its articulation in diverse artistic and
enactment varies depending on the rasa resonant forms that reinvigorated
you choose, the register of the film, and documentary film culture in India.
often—though by no means always and
only—it is important that there be an
aura of fervour or gravity to it, Paromita Vohra is a documentary
something that ‘carries weight’. filmmaker and writer.
Sometimes these rasas of seriousness,
the comportment of the ascetic, the
warrior, the guru, the seer and seeker of
truth, the arduous carrying of weight
on your shoulders requires the growing
of a beard. Of course I’m only joking.
Aren’t I?
39
Poster of Paromita Vohra's 2002 film Unlimited Girls.

ENDNOTES 7. Bhaskar Sarkar and Nicole Wolf, ‘An

Interview with Madhusree Dutta’, BioScope:
1. Shai Heredia, ‘Excavating Indian South Asian Studies, Vol. 3 ( January 2012),
experimental film’, unpublished research pp. 21-34.
project, Experimenta India, 2004.
Available from Shai Heredia at 8. Ibid., p. 22.
experimentaindia@gmail.com.
9. Madhusree Dutta, ‘In Defence of the
2. Waves of Revolution documents the non- Political Documentary’. Available at
violent Bihar Movement of 1974-75, which http://infochangeindia.org/film-
was initiated by students and led by the forum/news-a-views/in-defence-of-
veteran Gandhian Socialist Jayaprakash political-documentary.html.
Narain ( JP). The movement became the
symbol of resistance to dictatorship, 10. Nicole Wolf, ‘Make it Real:
culminating in the electoral defeat of the Documentary and other cinematic
Congress Party in March 1977. experiments by women filmmakers in
India’, unpublished dissertation, 2007.
40 3. Prisoners of Conscience focuses on the
political prisoners of the Emergency, the 11. Shoma Chatterji, ‘The “Investigative”
muzzled media and the over-100,000 Documentary’, Spectrum India, (1994), p. 15.
Indians who were arrested without charge
and jailed without trail. 12. ‘Gutsy and Different’, Deccan Herald, 1
August 1999.
4. Arvind Rajagopal and Paromita Vohra,
‘On the Aesthetics and Ideology of the 13. Saba Dewan’s The Other Song was
Indian Documentary Film: A researched and produced with two grants
Conversation’, BioScope: South Asian from India Foundation for the Arts in
Studies, Vol. 3 ( January 2012), pp. 7-20. 2001-02 and 2005-06 respectively.
5. Partha Chatterjee, ‘Indian Documentaries 14. Thomas Waugh, Show Us Life: Towards
in Perspective’, Cinemaya, No. 28-29 ( July- a History and Aesthetics of the Committed
September 1995), pp. 32-36. Documentary (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1984).
6. Madhu Bhushan, ‘Interview with Deepa
Dhanraj’, Deep Focus, Vol. 1(3) (November
1988), p. 38.
REFERENCES 8. MULAY, VIJAYA. 2008. From Rajas and

Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond: Images of India
1. BHUSHAN, MADHU. 1988. ‘Interview in International Films in the Twentieth
with Deepa Dhanraj’. Deep Focus, Vol. 1(3), Century. Calcutta: Seagull Books.
pp. 32-39.
9. RAJAGOPAL, ARVIND and VOHRA,
2. CHATTERJEE, PARTHA. 1995. PAROMITA. 2012. ‘On the Aesthetics and
‘Indian Documentaries in Perspective’. Ideology of the Indian Documentary Film:
Cinemaya, No. 28-29, pp. 32-36. A Conversation’. BioScope: South Asian
Studies, Vol. 3, pp. 7-20.
3. CHATTERJI, SHOMA. 1994. ‘The
“Investigative” Documentary’. Spectrum, pp. 10. SARKAR, BHASKAR and WOLF,
15-28. NICOLE. 2012. ‘An Interview with
Madhusree Dutta’. BioScope: South Asian
4. DUTTA, MADHUSREE. n.d. ‘In Studies, Vol. 3, pp. 21-34.
Defence of the Political Documentary’.
Available at 11. WAUGH, THOMAS. 1984. Show Us
http://infochangeindia.org/film- Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of the 41
forum/news-a-views/in-defence-of- Committed Documentary. Metuchen, NJ:
political-documentary.html. Scarecrow Press.
5. GARGA, B.D. 2007. From Raj to Swaraj: 12. WOLF, NICOLE. 2007. ‘Make it Real:
The Non-Fiction Film in India. New Delhi: Documentary and other cinematic
Penguin Books. experiments by women filmmakers in India’.
Unpublished dissertation.
6. ‘Gutsy and Different’. 1999. Deccan
Herald, 1 August.
7. HEREDIA, SHAI. 2004. ‘Excavating

Indian experimental film’. Available from
Shai Heredia at
experimentaindia@gmail.com.
Female impersonator Hammigi Nilkanthappa as the
ravishing Jambuvati in the play Chavatiya Chandra.
Pretty Men:
Golden Age
of the Female Impersonator
Prakash Garud
(Translated from the kannada by usha Rao)
All photographs courtesy Dr Prakash Garud and the Garud family.
A rich whiff of rare history wafts up

from the photographs of this family
album. The family is that of Garud
Sadashivarao who founded the Sri
Dattatreya Sangeeta Nataka
mandali theatre company in the
early twentieth century.
Sadashivarao brought a breath of
fresh air into kannada professional
theatre and personally trained
countless young actors. His grandson
Prakash Garud takes a second look
at the family archives and shares his
thoughts on the social taboos that
restricted female actors, and the
talented impersonators who
convincingly occupied their place on
stage until such time that women
could reclaim it for themselves.
here is no definitive record of Dream). Narayan Shripad Rajhans,
T the moment when female

actors entered the world of
Modern Theatre in India. The
better known as Balgandharva, was
the star of Marathi Company Theatre
and an outstanding female
Russian adventurer-musician Gerasim impersonator. As he grew older, his
Lebedev is credited with having female roles were handed over to his
brought proscenium theatre to India, colleague Goharbai Karnataki who
and Modern Indian Theatre is said to hailed from Bijapur. She too was an
have originated with his staging of two extraordinary artist but the patriarchal
European plays, which he translated audiences of her time, instead of
into Bengali, in Calcutta in 1795 with appreciating her skill, blamed her for
male and female Bengali actors. the decline of Balgandharva.
However, it would take several
decades for society to accept women In Company Theatre in Kannada,
on stage. According to Lata Singh, women of ‘respectable’ lineage did not
“Women began to be paid to perform appear on stage. Among the
roles as actresses for the first time audience, too, ‘respectable’ women were
44 with the staging of Michael segregated from the rest. The only
Madhusudan Dutt’s Sharmistha in women who dared to be actors were
1873 by the National Theatre in those of ‘ill repute’, such as devadasis or
1
Bengal.” But theatre continued to be those who were sani, the popular term
considered a profession unfit for for women who had converted to
3
‘respectable’ women. Islam. But these pioneers find no place
in theatre history.
2
In the heyday of Company Theatre in
India, it was always men who played In the golden age of Kannada
the female roles. Men convincingly Company Theatre, roughly between
portrayed characters that epitomise 1905 and 1930, female characters
the ‘feminine essence’ in classical were mostly played by men. Here are
Sanskrit drama, such as Shakuntala in some photographs of performances of
Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntala (The plays staged by Garud Sadashivarao’s
Sign of Shakuntala); Vasantasena in company, Sri Dattatreya Sangeeta
Shudraka’s Mrichakatika (The Little Nataka Mandali. As I looked at these
Clay Cart); and Vasavadutta in Bhasa’s images closely, what arrested my gaze
Swapna Vasavadattam (Vasavadatta’s were the poses of the female
Pretty Men – Prakash Garud
impersonators who, besides being speech. Looking at these photographs

accomplished singers and dancers, I am struck by how his poses resemble
were able to create the illusion of those of Balgandharva, whose craft
femininity through their affectations, and body language had a profound
sinuous grace and skilful projection of influence on the female impersonators
coquetry. of the Kannada stage. Most Company
Theatre artists subscribed to the
The Illusionist theory that acting begins with
imitation and that one’s skill is later
The photographs on this page and the honed by using one’s individual talent.
title page illustrate the various poses
of female impersonator Hammigi
Nilakanthappa in the roles of the
protagonists Sharavati of Vishama
Vivaha and Jambuvati of Chavatiya
Chandra. Sharavati, who is forced
to marry the ageing emperor
Ashoka, is said to possess 45
“unparalleled beauty”, while
Jambuvati, daughter of forest
king Jambuvanta, who
marries Lord Krishna, is “as
beautiful as the wild
jasmine” that grows in her
forest home. When
Hammigi Nilakanthappa
played these eighteen-to-
twenty-year-olds, he was in
Hammigi Nilkanthappa
his early forties. To create the
illusion of a ravishing young as Sharavati in
woman he had to not only look Vishama Vivaha.
the part but also sound it, and
perhaps his exceptional singing
ability helped him achieve the alluring
feminine cadences of his characters’
Jambuvanta gives his daughter's hand in marriage
to Lord krishna, in Chavatiya Chandra.
Shot in the Studio
The image on the previous page,

from Chavatiya Chandra, looks as if
it were retrieved from a wedding
album. Although this is a scene from
the play, the photograph has been
taken in a studio during what we
would now call a post-performance
photo session. Jambuvanta the forest
king is giving away his daughter’s
hand in marriage to Lord Krishna.
Hammigi Nilakanthappa is
Jambuvati; Garud Sadashivarao,
Jambuvanta; Sitarama Bhatta,
Krishna; and Krishna’s companion,
A modern touch in Vishama Vivaha:
the Vidushaka ( jester and
48 commentator), is Gangavati a character in trousers.
Basavanna. Standing beside
Jambuvati are her servant, and her
two female companions played by Experiment in Realism
boys whose faces haven’t yet sprouted
moustaches. In Company Theatre, The images on this and the facing
such young boys, who were being page are from Vishama Vivaha,
trained in dance and music, played written by Garud Sadashivarao, and
‘side’ (i.e. minor) female roles before performed in 1910, and seem to
graduating to the part of the hero or suggest that the play experimented
the heroine, popularly called raja- with using a ‘realistic’ box set. In the
party and rani-party (‘party’ being a fledgling years of Company Theatre,
corruption of ‘part’). I do not know attempts at creating ‘realism’ in acting
who played these ‘side’ roles because and other aspects of theatre were
there is no record of them, and I quite crude. In the play, king Ashoka
could not locate any knowledgeable marries Sharavati, who was engaged
viewer from that era who might to his son. The maiden rebuffs his
identify them. amorous overtures, for she is
king Ashoka (Garud Sadashivarao), his second wife Sharavati (Hammigi Neelkanthappa) and son
kamalakara (Sitarama Bhatta) in Vishama Vivaha. 49
enamoured by the prince. Hammigi Evergreen Magic

Nilakanthappa is Sharavati; Garud
Sadashivarao, the old king; and Maya Bazaar, also titled Vatsala
Sitarama Bhatta, the young prince Apaharana, occupies a special place in
Kamalakara. The playwright the annals of Company Theatre.
conceived Vishama Vivaha as a social Written by Garud Sadashivarao and
play. But it is possible that audiences first staged in the 1920s, it was
viewed it as a historical play since it performed by numerous Indian theatre
foregrounds the characters of a real companies all through the century; in
king, queen and prince, although the fact, Surabhi, a company from Andhra
situations it depicts have no Pradesh, performs it even today. It also
historical moorings whatsoever. All found its way into popular cinema, and
the women characters in these people still recall the famous thespian
photographs were played by female S.V. Rangarao’s fantastic performance
impersonators. in the role of Ghatotkacha in the 1957
In this scene from Maya Bazaar, Abhimanyu
(Sitarama Bhatta, extreme right) has fatally
felled Ghatotkacha, whose mother Hidimbi
tries to kill Abhimanyu while Lord krishna
(Garud Sadashivarao) restrains her, and
krishna's sister Subhadra looks on. The
female impersonators remain unidentified.
Telugu film Maya Bazaar. The

playwright came up with a new arena
in which the Pandavas and the
Kauravas could compete—the wedding
of Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu and
Balarama’s daughter Vatsala. Since
many people, including the bride’s
mother and the Kauravas, oppose this
alliance, Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha and
Krishna intervene to unite the couple.
Vatsala consents to being kidnapped.
There are several female characters
(and hence impersonators) in this play.
Perhaps the dramatist was aware that if
there is a wedding, the women must be
in charge! In Manoranjan
Bhattacharya’s seminal play
52 Chakravyuha, Abhimanyu’s story is The murder scene in Yechchama Nayaka.
tragic, but in Maya Bazaar it is
delightfully frolicsome. Ghatotkacha
conjures up enthralling magic on technology used to print pamphlets
stage—scenes created with the most and posters of plays. Many such
rudimentary technical support—and I wooden blocks that could have helped
can’t help wondering whether we, with us recreate the history of theatre are
all the technical wizardry we have at now lost to us, and I believe it is vitally
hand, can successfully replicate the important to archive whatever we can
fantastic scenes that thrilled audiences lay our hands on. In this scene from
a century ago. Yechchama Nayaka, Bayamma is slaying
her wicked father Jagadevaraya.
Honourable Murder Incidentally, a play by the same name
and on the same subject was written by
Many images from the well-known the famous comedian K. Hirannaiah
play written by Garud Sadashivarao, and staged by the pioneering Kannada
Yechchama Nayaka, are in the form of theatre director Gubbi Veeranna. Some
letterpress printing blocks; this was the believe that Yechchama Nayaka, who
Banashankari Paage as Shahzadi and Shakuntala kulkarni as maulvi in Ugra Kalyana.

53
fought to protect the kingdom of not of female impersonators but of
Karnataka, was a sixteenth-century female actors. These are from Ugra
historical figure. His story appears in Kalyana, staged at the National
the novel Kumudini by one of the early Drama Festival in New Delhi on 25
Kannada novelists Galagantha (1869- December 1954. Banashankari Paage
1942). A tribal chieftain, Nayaka is said plays a female character called
to have fought to protect the kingdom Shahzadi, and Shakuntala Kulkarni
of Vijayanagara after the reign of plays a male character called Maulvi.
Krishnadevaraya. The story of his At long last, society had begun to
struggle constitutes the plot of accept female actors playing the roles
Sadashivarao’s play. of women and even those of men!
Women at Last!
Dr Prakash Garud is a puppeteer,
Finally, I want to present two theatre director and the Managing
photographs from Company Theatre, Trustee of Gombe Mané, Dharwad.
54
Ghatotkacha kidnaps a willing Vatsala in Maya Bazaar.

ENDNOTES nineteenth century to the middle of the

twentieth century. Their spectacular and
1. Lata Singh, ‘Modern Theatre as epitome melodramatic productions, interspersed
of middle class civilized culture’ in Rohini with a lot of song and dance, were highly
Sahni, V. Kalyan Shankar, Hemant Apte successful at the box office.
(eds), Prostitution and Beyond: An Analysis
of Sex Workers in India (New Delhi: Sage 3. Company Theatre actresses such as
Publications, 2008), p. 322. Bachhasani and Nanjasani were among the
few who were identified as sani. They
2. Company Theatre is the popular term for generally belonged to the weaver
the commercial theatre companies that community, in which families were
dominated the Indian stage from the late dominated by women.
55
Jambuvati (Hammigi Nilkanthappa) tends to her wounded father in Chavatiya Chandra.

Seated on the floor is Vijaya the Vidhushaka.
Self-portrait in muthuramalingam's bathroom,
2010, by Joshua muyiwa.
Writing Desire:
The Body as Looking Glass
Joshua Muyiwa
When Joshua muyiwa started writing poetry, as a teenager trying to

understand his own desires, he felt trapped by the genderless quality of his
text and constrained by the assumption that the desired object must be female.
From exploring the abstract emotion of love he had to progress towards
articulating to himself, and then fleshing out, the man he longed for, “my own
Adam”. While doing so, he had to refashion his own body, create an ‘I’ as well
as a ‘You’. using language to make up desire, not necessarily to reveal it, his
writing became a catalogue of other people’s wants, confessions and
experiences filtered through him. muyiwa describes his continuing obsession with
the body and how it has shaped and changed his writing.
hen I look into my own heartbroken, I had a lot of time to
W poetry I see people. I begin

to see gestures. I begin to
remember their bodies; there is
wallow. And I had more feelings; this
time I wanted to write them out, so I
did. They were random lines, words,
something so truthful about the body. situations from television, music,
In remembering, I never hear voices. I anything posted on Twitter. A lot of
am deaf to people’s voices. I can’t mimic people seem to tweet about heartbreak.
anyone’s voice. I want to, always, tell the
story. When I look into my own poetry But then, while digging through old
filtered through Canadian poet, essayist, emails, excavating for clues to the
translator and professor Anne Carson’s moment the first crack appeared, I came
exploration of Eros in her book, Eros: across a BBC Documentary series, The
The Bittersweet, I glimpse that my Genius of Photography, buried deep in
poetry deals with the concepts of body the Inbox. By the end of the series, my
and biography. random lines had found structure. I
wanted to tell my story, the story. I
In 2011, I spent the whole year writing wanted it to reflect everything that was
58 and re-writing nine poems, The informing it, everything that had
Catalogue, an attempt to map the informed it. I had spent too much time
relationship between a photographer talking about photography and not
and a poet, or image and text, using enough time responding to it. I wanted
seminal photographs in the history of to state my case. I knew that The
photography. Before attempting this Catalogue must be a work of doing, it
work I knew I needed to read. I needed must unabashedly be about heartbreak.
to read writers writing on their practice, It must not shy away from pastiche, a
writing about the image and fabric of technique mastered by Carson.
love. Anne Carson and Roland Barthes
were perfect examples for this study. Through reading Eros: The Bittersweet, I
Carson has this primal, ‘manual’ style received clues to understanding my own
and Barthes is a wise, distant uncle. I work. There seemed to be a sense of the
spent a few months wallowing in direction I was headed, a direction
feelings: I didn’t want to write another explored in the months that bore The
word because I thought Carson and Catalogue. Initially, when writing poetry,
Barthes had said everything on I was interested in the abstract emotion
everything. But, having been of love but I felt trapped by the
Writing Desire – Joshua Muyiwa
genderlessness of the text, and also by grind, bite and gnaw at him. Through
the inherent understanding that the this process of writing, I began to
desired object was female—at least, in understand my own motives, especially
the responses of my initial readers, who at a time when moments of tactility
said things like “One can’t tell if you are were brief, quick and filled with silence.
writing to a boy or a girl, that’s what I Through this process of writing in the
like” or “I thought you were gay, but all blanks of the lover’s body, I began to
your poems are for girls”. fashion the world around me, but
beginning with my own body. It was
Since this was also a time of important to understand and
understanding my own desires, acknowledge stories told by others and
longings, I wasn’t able to flesh them out. yourself about your body. I was no
After reading Carson, I had also greatly longer ashamed of representing my
panicked that, like the conundrum faced body, of crossing over the threshold of
by the lyric poet, I was assigning actions the proper to become shameless, to be
to the emotion of love like bullying, naked. How could I know the
crushing, grinding, biting, gnawing, but threshold? By reaching out with my
if I was the one loving and therefore toes till I hit wood. But only on finding 59
performing those actions, why was I not the boundary and then grappling
in the text? And if I were to insert between the gap could I free the erotic.
myself performing these actions, then I
would need that desired body to exist. I No. 4: Shiva
would need to situate the erotic in
physiology, rather than in concepts. I Shiva,
would need to place it in the body. It I want a man with skin
had to be articulated. like filigreed silver
with grooves and ridges
But besides ‘the shaft, his male hardness, for me to hold on to
throbbing member, broad chest, big and climb from his
arms’ written about brazenly in the toes to his lips.
Mills & Boons, I encountered no man I Fingers like bamboo reeds
wanted, longed for. I needed to with strength and flexibility
articulate to myself and then proceed to to reach into
write this man, wrest him out of these my hard to reach places.
coy phrases, so I could bully, crush, Legs like a coconut tree,
thick and a darker shade has been cyclical, a you-scratch-my-

at the thighs. back-I-scratch-yours process. I began
A tongue that is forked with flagging the edges of this body,
so he can play knowing the dimensions of each area of
with my perineum and glans, his, all the while surprised at how
leave me brimming readily he was forming, my own Adam.
and thirsty. I started writing at sixteen and it took
Lips that are like till two years ago to finally have him—
thighs, so he can swallow the lover—fully fleshed out, and to have
me, keep me and send me bodied. Though this tangential trip
me out a born-again. has been inspired by black, feminist and
women poets who exposed the body in
Shiva, ways that empowered and charged the
I want a man to love vocabulary used to describe the body, I
he should be like was willingly and excitedly using
an ocean – large and all-holding, language crafted by this breaking down
so even if I drink of the dam, but I was using it to make
60 him whole, he will still give more. up desire, not necessarily to express or
I want to be his Lakshmi reveal desire.
and sprout from his navel
and know no other place. Rorschach Inkblot 2
I want him to be Narasimha
and reach into my belly, pull Come, put your hand
out my heart and burn against my face,
his name on it. graze against my skin
alternating soft, silky patch
Anne Carson wrote, “Eros is an issue of against remnant astro-turf skin.
boundaries.” He now existed because Now, curl your hand,
certain boundaries did. Writing the retract a little and let go
body, skin, fingers, legs, tongue, and the against my face,
edges of the man I desired, longed for, I alternating soft, silky patch
finally knew what to play with. The against remnant astro-turf skin.
definitions of this desired body have
allowed me a compass to navigate my Dab, the blood of your knuckles,
desires in the real world. This process roughly on my dreading hair
and paint lines on my face, it as something else. In a way, learning

alternating soft, silky patch and writing what a beauty-thing is to
against clotting blood on skin. me has led me to writing it, thereby to
loving it. Because this learning was so
Dance, extend your fingers personal, resulting in the insertion of ‘I’
towards me and reach out and ‘You’, and these ‘I’s and ‘You’s had
to drying rivulets of blood definite physiological boundaries, my
and move that knee erotics finally had its playground.
and make contact, harder, harder.
Untitled
Prawn, on the floor,
watch me draw my knees Let’s fall in love with
closer to my chest the same person.
and come down and whisper. It could be me or you.
Just whisper. I would prefer me.
And then let’s take a road-trip
What is the difference I’m marking to some small town in Karnataka.
between making-up, expressing and How about Koodli? 61
revealing desire? This posturing is again The place where the Tunga meets
backed by Carson, who wrote, in The the Bhadra, let’s you and I meet.
Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay Okay, get ready, learn to say my name.
in 29 Tangos: It is Joshua Olatokunbo Rahoul Muyiwa.
Fuck you, it is sexy if you say it right.
Beauty convinces. You know beauty makes We will drive into an empty field,
sex possible. park under a large banyan tree.
Beauty makes sex sex. Then, we will kiss and bite
the seat covers into small clouds of
I didn’t want to challenge or re- dandelion
configure the notions of desiring, but and then fuck.
rather had to learn a way to understand It will be tongues groping, fingers tasting,
and negotiate my body, my own toes hearing and skin seeing.
sexualness, with this object of beauty I It will be the kind of sex
was lusting for. Therefore, I had to that will make us cry and moan
make it up, even if it was just the simple and the banyan tree will stretch
task of listing it out and then rendering its tendrils to whip our butts.
But remember, we must both scream But, now, it is an empty bed,

Joshua. I flail about, my hands don’t have to be
removed
My writing, in effect, became from under your neck,
biographical by virtue of it being a and my nostrils aren’t tickled by your
document, a personal catalogue or a smell,
catalogue of other people’s confessions, and though, like a mist-wrapped morning,
experiences, wants, filtered through me. I’m cocooned in your snoring,
But the wonderfulness of poetry is that My nights are now spent wishing the fan
it is through the blurring of strict was less vocal, that the shuffling feet
categories that it allows the reader, the of the neighbours on the floor above would
listener, to make up their own minds stop,
whether it is a fictional or non-fictional that the boys on the corner attempting
account. Though the intention might be to smoke their first joint would find
biographical, the very act of writing another place
creates either an exaggeration or an to experiment, and the Alsatian next door
understatement but never the exact. would stop
62 Thus, by escaping into the just-missed, barking at the pink light.
or hereabouts, there is a way in which it Meanwhile, you who is not used to me,
leaps from the particular to the probably yawning, is snoring,
universal. The very act of writing down posting your final tweet for the night,
for me created a mode of understanding but pause a moment in bed,
myself; it is therefore possible to see a the blanket gives too easily to your pull.
shift in the concerns of my poetry
towards pinning down my ‘lover’ self. But, in the past two years, my work is
changing, it is interested in the absence
Untitled of the body, not in the sense of
abandoning the lyric, confessional style
I am not used to having the bed to myself, I’ve mostly adopted, but interested in
anymore, it usually is two heavy-weight how my man’s body makes impressions
boxers in spaces he inhabits, and the changes I
battling it out for more legroom, experience in his absence. Probably,
or sometimes, I use my experience of lately, I could see my work as being
shoving interested in the lack, rather than in the
previous lovers over and push. possessing. It is interested in
investigating the back-stories of my own they lied, the bohemians –

repeated re-tellings, it scopes out things because, to keep going,
that happen, and the happened. we must hold each other by the wrist,
Sometimes, I feel like I’ve come to a our ankles must be deep in sweat
point where I just want to share the and there must be no dust.
room with my lover’s body, not notice it,
even trip over it. While before I wanted Being concerned with ‘lack of ’, I’m still
to act on his body or be acted upon, amazed by the vulnerability with which
now I want to not act or not be acted the body recognises and pines for
upon, and still look to the body to absence, and how when present it begs
understand and record this impact. to be controlled, shaped. Thus, the body
is the addressed because it is absent, but
Untitled it is privy because it is present, listening
to records of its absence. But I can only
We had thought, if we had a place, take this route because I learnt, along
it would all be fine, the way, important lessons from black,
I could run around in my underwear – feminist and women writers, and even
even if your hands didn’t always through my flatmate’s thesis: the body is 63
reach out to graze my thigh a weapon. And now, I think, my writing
or wrestle me down, presently negotiates two lessons, where
but even in your boxers, I’m finally learning, a little, to deploy the
I’d always be greedy, body, but stealthily, powerfully and at
my tongue constantly slithering my command, as well as to envelop,
licking the air of your sweat – protect and safeguard myself from its
we had thought, the place would mend assault.
itself,
the dust would avoid the spaces, The Catalogue: Nine
we frequently used – dust doesn’t settle on
furniture, objects and people, we love, Confidential: this message is only for the
because we touch them regularly. photographer or A Poet Makes a Self-
Portrait of Himself
We thought, if we had a place, Joshua Muyiwa (1986- )
poetry would peel from the walls Self-portrait in Muthuramalingam’s
and photography would snap itself bathroom, 2010
at the moments of cross-sections –
You must understand, that we have learnt happen?

to settle into our definite role but we Did you acknowledge it? Did you in
haven’t let go of our ability to covet. anyway return it?
And Dibutades, I began to wonder if Or did you leave it gray-green, a static
ignoring Sontag’s warning television in a room,
about the seduction of image would be an over-cooked segment of garlic, what did
exciting. Photography like you do in this time?
poetry happens in the careful editing or the But, of course, you did. Mr. Fox Talbot of
purposeful reign of disregard, our times. You understood
but the choice has to be made after the photographs must be made of the beautiful
work is done. and if ugly then in a beautiful way.
Never in the beginning, the end or the Kalos. Beauty. Greek.
middle of the process. Calotype. Beauty-thing. English.
It happens in setting the limits of the story, You accounted by being selfish. You didn’t
it sometimes exists in the elements want to regret.
outside of the frame and sometimes in the No motivation is more romantic.
tiniest moment in the image, but, this You didn’t want this beautiful moment to
64 moment even the photographer discovers disappear. You wanted to record it.
after he has made the image. You wanted to stay. But the beautiful
It is like we arrived into each other’s lives moments ran out of things to say.
after desperately needing a break from There were other beautiful things in the
fiction, from story-telling, and actually viewfinder.
wanted to hear a more exciting anecdote. Sometimes, it takes a long time for the
One we weren’t telling. We wanted to be picture-taking to drain the image
startled, just once. Sometimes, it was too of this initial wonder. Sometimes, just a
overwhelming to be quiet and at the while.
times, The eye is fickle. Even if the heart is
we were hollowed out from all the anchored.
catharses. But, we tried. We are anxious never wanting to betray
And that will always be good enough. either organ
But, the question isn’t that. It is, if you and always making a decision using our
noticed at all? feet.
Did you notice the overwhelming, the We surmount the tug of coming
hollowing out, the draining out together.
of this person’s every iota to make this Despite thinking, ‘I wouldn’t want me.’
We break the spell. We touch. We talk. my lovers. I was afraid to catalogue the
And yet, if the feet say: stay or go. We changes in my present body, my own
heed. changing notions of boldness. Though,
Never thinking outside of the two options. I always thought, I was inserting my
By virtue of our choices, we become present, I seemed to situate them in a
photographers or poets. particular place and time where there
Minor White said the state of mind of the was an immediate possibility of finding
photographer while creating is a the crack, the fault line. I seemed to
blank….When looking for pictures…the skim over the internal conversations
photographer projects himself into that finally revealed the crack.
everything he sees, identifying himself with
everything in order to know it and to feel In The Catalogue, there is an attempt to
it better. And Sontag echoed thought is include those internal conversations, to
seen as clouding the transparency of the use the different shapes, actions and
photographers’ consciousness. weight of the body to talk about tracing
Ah, thought in execution is the difference and digging through the rivers, rivulets
between us. and tiny streams that make up the ideas
of ‘what it means to be a lover’. For me, 65
Before The Catalogue, discovering the right now, it means to be hesitant,
body was about the boundaries, bones, unsure, to second guess, and nothing
fleshing it out, fucking it, wrestling with reveals this infarction more than the
it, missing it. And these various body. In my own life, my body has
explosive encounters highlighted and changed from something that needed
informed the route to my present unravelling and naming, to something
understanding of my own body. Except that wavers between the magical and
that with this series, there is also the scientific. I stopped noticing only
shyness, insecurity, unsureness, lethargy, the bodies I had created, my own and
awkwardness, all the things I had my lover’s—filigreed skin, thigh-like
thought I needed to dispose of, to be lips, coconut-tree legs—and started
bold about the body. I realised I was noticing my own body and the bodies
constantly using the bodies I had in the world around me: the perfect
discovered and created—they seemed ankles of this boy who never wears
to grow of their own accord, shorts and you can only see his ankles
independently and frozen. I was afraid when he mounts or dismounts his
to use my own body and the bodies of motorbike. I was shamelessly interested
in the workings of these bodies in everything and anything to write about

different situations. I was interested in the body, my own and my lover’s. It
my own body in different situations. doesn’t have to just be things that turn
me on, it could be the mundane, the
While before I would risk my body action of smoking a cigarette and then
being in different situations, now the crossing the road, listening to another
quality of the risk-taking has become person talking, it could be presence, it
different. So also in the writing: earlier, could be absence. I am investigating and
the risk of writing blatantly about the investing each action with meaning. I
body was about exposing it, but now, want to take situations and then see
the risk is also about being shameless in bodies inhabit the space. I am interested
terms of the body loving, grieving and in the effect of the body on a space, on
experiencing such other emotions. The another body. I want to just go into the
poems in The Catalogue don’t directly effects. Not too much, for me, lies
refer to any specific body-type for either outside the body. It stores little
the photographer or the poet, but there anecdotes, it is privy to the fact that
is a strong, suffocating sense of the most encounters are theatre. Perhaps I
66 body. I’m grappling, somewhat, with want to write about this theatre, this
understanding the elements that made performance. To be a lover is to
this possible and can only tentatively say understand that it is performance. To be
that my ideas of boldness, of loving, of a relatable actor one must perfect the
sex, of reality, of dream and of memory body language of the character; to write
have changed. I no longer want to about the lover, I had to embody it, and
distance myself from these incessantly observe when others embody it.
shifting ideas and still want my work to
be able to speak to everyone. The body But the renewed obsession with regard
became that bridge between taking to the body comes most from sudden
something particular and making it comfort with it. I am not afraid of the
universal. power of the body to express itself;
rather, I am learning to channel it to tell
Writing about the body was something a more authentic story, and in some
I needed, and still do, but lately, it has instances tell the story by ignoring it in
become something I love to do. And order to be authentic. The body has
now exploring outside of the strict become a wonderful playground, it can
boundaries of my lover’s body, I need be both erotic and ordinary. I love the
slothful body, the body that leaks back. Such a wonderful symbol, the
inhibitions in order to commune with a body remains. By writing about it I
space, a body that grapples with the wish to publicly revel in it.
contours of itself till it envelops it
whole. Much like a lover who comes And at the most basic level, I think, I
into your room and makes the space am interested in mortality. Like that
their own, seeming irreplaceable, like wall in the kitchen with the pencil
they’ve always been there. But for me markings, the body possesses markings
the most beautiful realisation is that the of growth, of nearing the end. But the
body allows for grand gestures. It learns process of marking that milestone is
to share, to express, to welcome, even joyous, an achievement. The body
before the heart has been won over. It is wonderfully remains the site that
also the map on which we can pin down juxtaposes the notions of success and
moments that made us. failure, of being open and closed, of
being easy and being stupendous. I
I know that I’m still learning about my think that most times in life we
body, and my relationship with it might constantly negotiate these positions, and
change, but I don’t ever want to be the body clues us in on our place in the 67
afraid to acknowledge and catalogue it. spectrum. While first writing, I
Writing about the body has taught me attempted to bind the body, pin it down
that there are reasons why it is feared. and now I want to watch it, embody it,
We never know whether our bodies will discard it, but pick it up again. I want to
betray us, so wicked, it is like having a play with it but also be bored with it.
best friend who knows every secret and But I never want to give up on it. I want
is also talkative and flaky. But who to continue having a long, intimate
doesn’t want that patient ear even if it conversation with my body, and I want
comes at a risk? to eavesdrop on conversations between
bodies. And I want to write them down
But mainly writing the story of my own in order to understand my own
body and the bodies of my lovers has meandering desires.
allowed me to find my place in the
scheme of things. In some way, the
writing has been therapeutic; in all its
bustlings and staggerings, it has allowed Joshua Muyiwa, 26, is a writer, poet and
me to escape and at the same time come television fanatic.
Notes from the Margins:
The Feminine Voice of the Ghatam
Sumana Chandrashekar
All photographs courtesy Sukanya Ramgopal
The earthen pot or ghatam, one of the

simplest instruments in folk music traditions,
has long remained on the fringes of the
world of Carnatic music. Subject to the
politics of hierarchy and patriarchy, the
ghatam has coincidentally suffered the
same fate as that of the female Carnatic
musician. To be a woman and a ghatam
player is to be doubly marginalised, says
Sumana Chandrashekar. By examining her
guru’s inspirational life and music, she
attempts to uncover the reasons why
percussion is considered a male domain in
Carnatic music, and explores the many
forms of discrimination in the concert space.
Sukanya Ramgopal, India's pioneering female ghatam player.
he fragrance of fresh earth; no other women playing the ghatam?
T the incessant sounds of a
ringing clay pot—when
such seemingly random sensations
Why had she not had a female
student for thirty-five long years? I
began to look for answers. The
began to overpower me, I knew it was ghatam and my guru became my
a calling I could not ignore. Years after windows into a world that, as a
training as a Carnatic vocalist, the vocalist, I had never spared much
ghatam too had silently entered my thought for. It is through their
life. journeys that I attempt, in this
essay, to understand the constructs of
I began to seek my guru. After many gender and hierarchy within the realm
months of searching for the kind of of Carnatic music and especially
guru I had in mind, I finally landed up within the realm of percussion.
at the house of Sukanya Ramgopal. I
1
knew Sukanya to be one of the ‘Ghatam’ in Sanskrit is a generic name
greatest ghatam players of the for a pot; it is the ghata/ghada in
country and one of the finest Hindi and gadige in Kannada.
70 exponents of Carnatic percussion. Although the earthen pot is one of the
That she is today the country’s only simplest instruments found in several
(and possibly the first) woman ghatam folk traditions across India and
player to perform professionally was, elsewhere, it was only towards the
to me, merely additional trivia. “This latter half of the nineteenth century
instrument draws me. Will you take that it made its entry into Carnatic
me as your student?” I requested her music. We do not know how and
hesitantly, unsure if she would have when it did so, as its early history in
the time for a beginner. She happily Carnatic music has been poorly
agreed. After a couple of classes she documented. Legend has it, however,
said to me, “For thirty-five years I have that a musician walking past a village
waited for a female student! I’m glad heard a farmer’s plough hitting an
you came.” earthen pot that his wife was carrying
and, enamoured by the sound it
I was elated. But gradually these made, he decided to use it to
words began to intrigue me. The piece accompany his music.
of trivia I had gathered about Sukanya
began to take on new meanings and The early years were those of
raise new questions. Why were there experimentation. In a period when
Feminine Voice of the Ghatam – Sumana Chandrashekar
Sukanya playing the mridangam in 1972 as a Class 10 student of Sri N.k.T. National Girls' High
School, Triplicane, madras.
71
existing Carnatic music instruments instruments on the ghatam. For a long
such as the veena, nagaswaram, flute time the ghatam served as an
and mridangam had attained a certain accompanying instrument for
degree of musical sophistication, and kathakalakshepams (musical
when most experimentation, discourses), bhajans and other
especially under royal patronage, community singing performances
focused on new kinds of where the music was light and simple.
compositions, on ‘Indianising’ the It was also used to provide comic
violin, or on experimenting with the interludes in ‘serious’ musical
Western idiom of music, here was an performances: for instance, ghatam
unsophisticated, humble instrument players would simulate the sound of
from the countryside that was trying the train or create other comical
to find its own voice and space. sounds by playing on different points
on the instrument and by placing it
A few percussion artists who had in different positions.
trained in the mridangam and the
chenda tried out the fingering Such acts perhaps attributed to the
techniques meant for these ghatam player the qualities of a jester,
72
Sukanya receiving a certificate of appreciation from Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer in 1973.
In the middle is her mridangam guru Harihara Sharma.
not to be taken too seriously. rendering pallavis. Pallavi singing,

Although the instrument was with its intricate mathematical
eventually assimilated into Carnatic calculations, was the exclusive forte of
music it continued to remain on the men. Women, believed to be inept at
fringes. For a long time, even as late numbers, were therefore expected to
as the 1960s, accompanying focus only on bhava, emotion, and
2
for pallavi was considered the not attempt ‘cerebral’ music.
exclusive privilege of mridangam
players. The ghatam was deemed Less than Equal
unsuitable and the ghatam player
seen as lacking the necessary Gender bias was evident not only
expertise for this role. among male artists but among concert
organisers as well. For the male artist’s
Like the ghatam, women too were concert, the organisers would specially
considered unfit for and incapable of choose each accompanying artist. Not
so for women’s concerts. Organisers The female artist and the ghatam player
would ask the female lead artist to were, therefore, subject to a similar
bring her own ‘party’. The names of politics—of hierarchy and patriarchy.
the musicians in such a ‘party’ were Perhaps it was this that brought the
usually not announced in the publicity two together. Most leading women
material. Female main artists were singers, for some reason, warmly
invariably paid less than their male accepted the ghatam. In fact, several
counterparts. Since male singers ghatam players of yesteryear such as
generally did not prefer ghatam Umayalapuram Kodandarama Iyer,
accompaniment, ghatam players Vilvadri Iyer and K.M. Vaidyanathan
mostly accompanied female singers, owed their musical careers to women
and they would have to be content singers such as K.B. Sunderambal, M.L.
with the paltry amount that came to Vasanthakumari, M.S. Subbulakshmi,
them from a concert that was already D.K. Pattammal and others who
under-priced. supported and nurtured them.
73
Sukanya (right) playing prince Rajendran in Rajaraja Cholan staged during the 1974
annual day celebrations of Ethiraj College, madras.
When it came to learning a percussion announcing his concerts with a picture

instrument, the mridangam was of himself with his ghatam. He even
preferred since it was regarded as had ‘GHATAM’ as his telegraph
indispensable to a Carnatic concert. It address: telegrams addressed to merely
was believed (and to a large extent is ‘GHATAM’ would reach him!
still believed) that by training in the
mridangam, one would be able to play Despite the existing politics, some boys
any other percussion instrument. This were encouraged to specialise in
belief was warranted to some extent the ghatam or the khanjira—the
when it came to the khanjira which, morching came much later—because,
like the mridangam, is a drum with a given the dearth of percussionists other
flat surface made of skin, and is played than mridangam players, they stood a
with ease by many mridangam players. good chance of performing in concerts
However, the ghatam is different: and earning a living. Mridangam player
its material and circular structure Harihara Sharma encouraged his son
demand a training methodology and a Vikku (ghatam artist Vikku
practice that is radically different from Vinayakram) to take up the ghatam so
74 the mridangam’s. that the boy could supplement the
family income. If there were two
I do not know if the challenge that the mridangam players at home one of
ghatam posed to the hegemony of the them would have been redundant!
mridangam also contributed to the
tension between the artists of the two Historically, the ghatam (as also
instruments. But a certain disdain for the khanjira and the morching)
the ghatam was widespread. has been classified as an
Nevertheless, ghatam artists were upapakkavadya, a sub-accompanying
gently, insistently and imaginatively percussion instrument, occupying a
asserting their identity. My favourite secondary status in relation to the
story is of Alangudi Ramachandran mridangam. The trajectory of the
(1912-1975), one of the foremost ghatam and the ghatam artist seems to
ghatam exponents of his time. He me to be strikingly similar to that of
came up with an innovative idea to the woman, the female artist, who also
popularise the instrument he was so has for long been considered an
passionate about. He frequently placed upapakkavadya, playing second fiddle
advertisements in local newspapers, to a man.
It is these trajectories—of the ghatam who regularly accompanied her

and the woman—that I see embodied brother, the famous violinist
in Sukanya’s musical journey. Hers is Tirugokarnam Ulaganatha
the position of the doubly Pillai. Between 1942 and 1960 the
marginalised: not just a ghatam player duo travelled across the country and
but a female ghatam player. But even to Malaysia, Ceylon (later Sri
instead of relinquishing this position Lanka) and Singapore for
in the face of sharp criticism and performances. There were many
humiliation, her music and her life others such as Kanakambujam, the
have persistently challenged first woman mridangam player to
patriarchal attitudes and questioned perform in the Madras Music
the hierarchy of percussion Academy, Hamsadamayanti who
instruments. She has also re-imagined played the mridangam for T.
the ghatam as a melodic instrument Balasaraswati, and Thanjavur
and moved it from the sidelines to Pakkiri Ammal who was a versatile
centre stage. thavil player.
Women in Percussion Another artist was N. Rajam, 75

the young on-screen mridangam
A question that has always concerned player seen in the 1948 Tamil
me is this: why is percussion in movie Krishna Bhakti. Rajam,
classical music considered a male according to film historian Randor
domain? Why is it rare today to find Guy, “was adept in playing on that
women percussionists in Carnatic inimitable percussion instrument.
music? Temple sculptures and During the song recording the noted
murals across southern India stand mridangam artist of the day, S.V.S.
testimony to the fact that since Narayanan, played on the mridangam.
medieval times, women have Kumari Rajam ‘acted’ the scene well
routinely played percussion. Even because she knew to play the
3
during the early part of the twentieth instrument!”
century there were accomplished
female mridangam players who were The women mentioned above were
respected as brilliant performers as perhaps the last of many generations
well as tutors. Ranganayaki Ammal of women percussionists. It is
was a pre-eminent mridangam player noteworthy that all of them belonged
Sukanya performing with her guru Vikku Vinayakram (second from left) during the 1978 annual day
celebrations of their music school Shri Jaya Ganesh Talavadya Vidyalaya, Triplicane, madras.
76
to the community of hereditary Percussion as a gendered space in
temple dancers and musicians: the Carnatic music was among the many
devadasis. Most boys and girls in this outcomes of the nationalist and the
community were taught the anti-nautch movements, which
fundamentals—vocal music, a formulated and formalised certain
melodic instrument and a percussion societal values and stereotypes,
instrument—after which they were including those concerning women,
free to specialise. For example, M.S. and which sanitised and classicised
Subbulakshmi was well-trained in Carnatic music, creating strictures
playing the veena and the around its transmission and
mridangam. So many women took to performance. It soon became a
percussion with ease. However, common practice for girls from the
we find a steep fall in their numbers, upper castes to be trained in singing
a phenomenon that coincides with or playing melodic instruments,
the anti-nautch and the nationalist while percussion became an almost
movements that intensified between exclusively male preserve.
1928 and 1947.
Sukanya leading a team of young percussionists studying at Shri Jaya Ganesh Talavadya
Vidyalaya in 1978.
77
Enter Sukanya Ramgopal warmly to Sukanya’s unbridled
passion and soon began teaching her.
This was the world into which He spared no effort in honing her
Sukanya entered. Growing up in skill, and within a couple of years she
the 1960s, in the Triplicane area of had begun to accompany concert
Madras, Sukanya seemed to have artists on the mridangam, and even
deeply imbibed the eclectic spirit of won music scholarships.
the neighbourhood. Consumed by a
passion for percussion, the young However, one day, upon closely
school girl sneaked out of her violin watching Vikku practise, Sukanya
class, barged into the mridangam class realised that the ghatam was her true
in the adjacent room, which was being calling. When she expressed her desire
conducted by Harihara Sharma and to learn the instrument, Vikku was
said, “Mama [uncle], I want to learn astounded. “This is not for women.
the mridangam. Will you teach You will not be able to play on it,” he
me? Can we start right away?” The said. Perhaps he had his own reasons.
4
liberal-minded teacher responded The Manamadurai ghatam which he
plays is thick and heavy: extracting a respected her ghatam, she would not
sound from it requires extra effort, marry. While such tensions between
and mastering it would be a challenge the guru and the shishya quickly
for anyone, man or woman. But even subsided, other artists in the field were
before Vikku could make up his mind, disturbed by a girl’s unusual foray into
Sharma had started giving Sukanya a ‘male’ space. Vikku’s decision to teach
ghatam lessons. “Would the a girl shocked many of his male
instrument distinguish between a boy colleagues, especially vocalists and
and a girl?” he had admonished mridangam players, and they kept
his son. trying to dissuade him from doing so.
But by now, like his student, Vikku
“When I was told that women too was firm in his resolve. He taught
wouldn’t be able to play the ghatam, it her wholeheartedly and continues to
only fuelled my passion. I loved the guide her to this day.
instrument and nothing would deter
me,” Sukanya recalls. Before Vikku On the home front Sukanya’s unusual
returned from a year-long concert life choices did create some ripples.
78 tour, Sukanya’s playing style and The twelve-year-old’s fascination with
fingering technique had been fully the mridangam might have been
adapted to the ghatam. Seeing that he considered a childish fancy but when
had been proven wrong, Vikku the sixteen-year-old embraced the
accepted her as his student. ghatam, her father disapproved so
strongly that he refused to speak to
Nevertheless, there were moments her for over a month. It was only
when Vikku felt that his investment in much later in life, when he saw
a girl would be in vain. Marriage Sukanya’s reputation grow, that he
would put an end to all her acknowledged her decision.
endeavours. When even female singers Throughout this period it was her
struggle to pursue their careers after mother who remained a constant
marriage, it was impossible that a support and companion.
percussionist wife would find any
support, he feared. But Sukanya Bias in Concerts
reassured him that she would not
sacrifice her instrument at any cost. If Learning the instrument was
she did not find a family that just the beginning of her negotiations
with the ‘male’ space. The performance Academy. Normally, the veena player
arena further fortified gender is accompanied only by percussion
stereotypes. There were spaces where artists, and if there are two of them
women were not allowed, spaces they generally sit on either side of the
where women percussionists were not veena player, facing one another. The
allowed, and spaces where the ghatam mridangam player for the day, a senior
was unwelcome. Being a female man, told the veena player before
ghatam player was, in these Sukanya had arrived at the venue,
circumstances, the most undesirable “I hear that a girl is playing the
combination. ghatam today. Tell her not to sit facing
me. She can sit on the side.” When
Sukanya was about fifteen Sukanya arrived, the message was
when Kothamangalam Subbu, the conveyed to her. The concert was
famous Tamil writer and filmmaker, about to begin. Sukanya took her
passed away and the family organised ghatam and even before the
a harikatha performance in his mridangam player could sit down, she
memory. K.C. Tyagarajan was made herself comfortable in the spot
performing the harikatha and he took facing him. He was furious. The 79
Sukanya along to play the mridangam concert went on and it was time for
for him. Subbu’s son was visibly the tani avarthanam (percussion solo).
unsettled to see a girl in a pavadai The mridangam player refused to
(long skirt) entering with the play his solo, knowing that if he did
mridangam. He called Tyagarajan not play, neither could the ghatam
aside and said, “We do not want artist. He was attempting to wind up
women to perform here. Could you the concert when the audience started
send her back and get a male shouting “tani avarthanam”. The
accompanist?” Sukanya says, “That mridangam player was forced to play.
was the first time I was refused a He finished his part and Sukanya
concert because I was a woman. It is responded with a brilliant solo. When
ironical that it happened at the she finished, much to the mridangam
residence of Subbu, who was also a player’s dismay and fury, the whole
major champion of women’s rights.” house burst into applause.
Another case in point was a veena For Sukanya, such victories have been
concert at the Madras Music innumerable. Today she is regarded
even by her guru as the best exponent

of the Vikku baani (style) of ghatam
playing, a unique playing technique
that Vikku has evolved. He explains
that he consolidated the various
existing playing techniques and
created several of his own to suit the
demands of the sturdy Manamadurai
ghatam. This baani employs different
parts of the hands—all the fingers,
palm, wrist, nails and knuckles—to
produce sound, and entails playing on
various locations on the instrument.
Sukanya has not only perfected these
techniques but has also created many
of her own.
80 Hindu discourse commonly employs

the body as a strong metaphor to
A 1977 press clipping from Dinamani of a
describe the society and the world. It
is therefore not uncommon to see concert review in which the critic upbraids
music and musical instruments Sukanya for playing "a little too much" and not
following tradition during the tani avarthanam.
likened to the body. One myth about
the origin of the ghatam is that god
Ganesha played on his pot-belly and mouth of the ghatam to the stomach.
that was how the instrument was To generate this sound, the male
born. The ghatam is played in a ghatam players of earlier times
manner that defies all prevailing generally performed bare-chested.
notions of the ‘slender’ female body. Browsing through my guru’s old
Placed on the lap, the pot becomes an photographs one day, I was intrigued
extension of the stomach. The woman to see a picture of one of her
who plays it is perceived as being performances. In the midst of male
pregnant or ugly! ghatam players, who were performing
with shirts unbuttoned, was Sukanya,
The gumki is an inimitable booming clad in a sari. How then did she
sound produced by pressing the manage the gumki? After much
hesitation, I broached the topic with either side of the main artist, facing
her. Her eyes sparkled mischievously. each other. The upapakkavadya artists
“One day while practising I tried to sit diagonally behind the main artist,
‘adjust’ my sari and play. It worked,” either next to the violin or the
she said with a smile. The adjustment mridangam.
had obviously brought the ghatam in
direct contact with the body. This These positions for instruments
‘open’ method of playing does not exist appear to have been fixed in recent
today. Sukanya too requires no such times. Was this done purely for
‘adjustments’ to produce the gumki. aesthetic reasons or to establish
But her mastery over this ‘male’ hierarchies? Some old photographs
technique is something that few men and records indicate the absence of
can match. any rigid formulae for seating and
naming such as is prevalent today. A
Further, Sukanya has shattered the 1936 photograph shows the great
prejudice that a woman’s fingers are khanjira exponent Pudukottai
too ‘delicate’ for the ghatam. The force Dakshinamoorthy Pillai in the
needed to produce sound on the foreground while Palghat Mani Iyer, 81
instrument often leaves its imprints on the mridangam player, is seated by his
one’s hands. The first time I side. There are also records which
complained to her about the cuts on mention violinist Rajamanickam Pillai
my fingers, she affectionately passed first, followed by the name of the main
her hand across mine, smiled and said, artist. The seniority and expertise of
“So you have been practising well.” accompanying artists seem to have
She herself cherishes these ‘signs’ on governed seating arrangements and
her fingers and retains them through naming order. I am not sure when the
constant practice. hierarchies among musical
instruments were formalised and
Carving New Spaces when they began to be reflected in
their arrangement on stage, but I can
The concert platform strongly think of a probable reason why.
reinforces the hierarchies among
percussion instruments. In a Carnatic Since the mridangam was made of
music concert, the main artist hide, playing it was equivalent to
generally sits in the centre. The violin touching a dead animal and hence
and the mridangam players sit on taboo for orthodox Brahmins.
Therefore the mridangam and the mridangam in front, therefore,

khanjira masters came from the ‘lower perhaps the upper castes were
caste’ community called Isai Vellalar asserting their social position. It is
(literally ‘those who practise music’), possible that such a stratification of
which had changed its original caste musical instruments became more
name, Melakkarar, following the explicit when the last beacons of the
Dravida Self-Respect Movement of Isai Vellalar community passed away.
1925. While women belonging to the
Melakkarar community continued to The established hierarchy among
be called devadasis, ‘Isai Vellalar’ was a instruments meant that the
term that encompassed both men and upapakkavadya could never occupy the
women who practised music, front position, let alone take centre
5
according to T.J.S. George. By the stage. However, Sukanya was dissatisfied
early twentieth century Brahmins had with the lower status accorded to the
started breaking the religious taboo ghatam. Could it not become a lead
against playing the mridangam, and by instrument? Midway through a highly
the latter half of the twentieth century successful career Sukanya was seized by
82 they were dominating the field of a creative unrest that inspired her to
6
Carnatic percussion. By positioning embark on another musical journey.
In this undated clipping from Kalkand magazine of an interview with Vikku, he says his first female
pupil was a Japanese girl in California, and that he had initially hesitated to accept an Indian girl,
Sukanya, as his student.
Having established herself in a male Hindustani vocalist Vidya Rao, in her

world, she now began seeking an essay ‘Thumri as Feminine Voice’, says:
enlarged role for her instrument.
As women in patriarchal
She found the answer in melody, the societies, we are familiar with
musical ‘other’ of percussion. To limitations, constraints, and
extend the ghatam’s expressive range, small, confining spaces. We live
Sukanya invented the Ghata Tharang, in confining spaces—both
where she plays six or seven ghatams physical ones...and ideological
of different shrutis (notes). In 1995, ones....I believe that women can
when Sukanya presented the Ghata and have extended their limited
Tharang at a music conference, spaces in dignified, creative
nobody imagined that this novelty encounters....I think one way of
would go any further than a lecture doing this has been to extend
demonstration. Some musicians even this space without rejecting or
said, “Why does a woman have to vacating it but by exploring and
indulge in such things? Moreover, the working with what is available
ghatam is just a ‘side’ instrument.” within it, by re-interpreting its 83
constraints to discover
7
However, Sukanya disregarded such unexpected richness.
opinions about the ghatam’s assigned
position in Carnatic music and broke These words seem to encapsulate not
new ground. Today, the Ghata just the journey of the female artist
Tharang is hailed as a unique but the journey of the ghatam as well.
performance idea and has won great
acclaim in India and abroad. By “There is a fire within that refuses to
seamlessly blending melody and be quelled,” my guru often tells me.
percussion, the Ghata Tarang has For a moment, I wonder who is
centre-staged the ghatam and the speaking—the woman or the
ghatam artist. In 1995, Sukanya also ghatam. Well, perhaps it is both. For
formed the Sthree Thaal Tharang, an me, Sukanya’s life seamlessly weaves
instrumental ensemble of women together these two contested yet
artists. As its very name and even its equally charged trajectories. In her
performance aesthetics suggest, Sthree musical journey one finds a quest for
Thaal Tharang is an initiative to identity—both for herself and for
reclaim percussion for women. her instrument.
As I am about to conclude this piece, a earth, the primordial feminine energy

verse from the fifteenth-century poet that nourishes and sustains the world?
Kabir peeks out of my old notebook,
as though in response to my thoughts: The fragrance of fresh earth and the
ringing sounds of the clay pot come
is ghata antar baag bageeche, isi mein back to me and I set out on yet another
sirajanahaara journey—in search of that guru; in
is ghata antar paaras moti, isi mein search of that unstruck sound.
parakhanahaara
is ghata antar saat samundar, isi mein
nau lakh taara Sumana Chandrashekar is a Carnatic
is ghata antar anhad garaje, isi mein vocalist and a ghatam player. She currently
uthat phuvaara runs the New Performance programme at
keheta kabir suno bhai sadho, isi mein India Foundation for the Arts.
sain hamaara
In this vessel are gardens and bowers, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

84 In this, the one who made them
Much of the historical information in this
In this vessel are diamonds and pearls, essay is based on oral history. Since existing
documentation on the ghatam is very
In this the one who discerns them
sparse, I am deeply indebted to my gurus
In this vessel are the seven seas,
Sukanya-ji and Vikku Vinayakram-sir for
In this, the nine million stars
providing me with insights into the cultural
history of the instrument.
In this vessel the unstruck sounds,
In this, burst the fountains I also thank Ms Indu Jayanthi Varma,
Director, Tapasya Kala Sampradaya,
Says Kabir, listen seeker friends: Chennai and Mr K.N. Akash, grandson of
In this is my guru. Ranganayaki Ammal, for sharing
information on the women
(Translation by Vidya Rao) percussionists, on whom little
I marvel at Kabir’s metaphor of the documentation exists.
ghata. Does he see it as a Universal
Womb from which springs all creation?
Does the ghata, to him, embody the
ENDNOTES REFERENCES
1. For the purpose of this essay, I have taken 1. Achievements in the field of Percussive Arts
the liberty of using the first names of my over 50 years. 1999. Bangalore: Percussive
revered gurus Sukanya Ramgopal and Arts Centre.
Vikku Vinayakram without adding the
suffix ‘ji’ or ‘sir’ that I normally would to 2. GEORGE, T.J.S. 2007. MS: A Life in
indicate my respect. Music. New Delhi: HarperCollins
Publishers India.
2. Pallavi is usually a one-line composition
set to a single tala cycle. Considered to be 3. KNIGHT Jr, DOUGLAS M. 2010.
the touchstone of musical creativity, it Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life. Chennai:
allows for immense improvisation in raga Tranquebar Press.
and tala. The rhythm structure could range
from the simplest to the most complex. 4. LAKSHMI, C.S. 2000. Singer and the
Song. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
3. Blogpost by Randor Guy
on www.sangeetham.com available at 5. RAO, VIDYA. 1999. ‘Thumri as
http://tfmpage.com/forum/29107.20880.0 Feminine Voice’ in Nivedita Menon (ed)
3.21.22.html Gender and Politics in India. New Delhi:
85
Oxford University Press.
4. A small village near Madurai in Tamil
Nadu. It is one of the major ghatam-making 6. SUBRAMANIAN, LAKSHMI. 2006.
centres. From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music
Academy. New Delhi: Oxford University
5. T.J.S. George, MS: A Life in Music (New Press.
Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers India,
2007), p. 84. 7. VENKATRAM, BANGALORE K.
1996. (ed) Talavadya Seminar-2. Percussive
6. Ibid., p. 86. Arts Centre.
7. Vidya Rao, ‘Thumri as Feminine Voice’

in Nivedita Menon (ed), Gender and Politics
in India (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1999), p. 475.
Creating Theatre Spaces:
Connecting Art to Local Life
Atul Pethe and Waman Pandit

in conversation with Ashutosh Potdar
maharashtra stands out for its unique network of

theatre activists that takes plays to small-town
audiences. Atul Pethe, playwright and
documentary filmmaker, travels to urban and
semi-urban places in maharashtra conducting
‘Arogya Samvad’ (Health Communication)
workshops. He directs plays and tours with his
performances in and outside maharashtra.
Waman Pandit is in the printing industry and is
also a performing artist based in kankavli. There,
he leads the theatre organisation Vasantrao
Acharekar Sanskrutik Pratishthan, which has
extended its network to small villages, towns and
cities in maharashtra and to the konkan region in
particular. Engaging the two theatre activists in a
conversation about their intertwining journeys is
Ashutosh Potdar, who writes plays and is closely
involved with the marathi theatre scene.
Creating Theatre Spaces – Atul Pethe, Waman Pandit, Ashutosh Potdar
shutosh Potdar: Atul, you Elkunchwar, saw them performed, but
A grew up in the culture of

Theatre Academy, Pune. You
used to do theatre like a man
the plays I wanted to do were certainly
not going to be by Tendulkar or
Alekar.
possessed. What was your position as
a director at that time? How did you This was in the 1980s. Twelve young
look at Marathi theatre and at your playwrights in Maharashtra had been
own theatre practice? selected for workshops under a Ford
Foundation grant. I was one of them.
Atul Pethe: I began doing theatre A new generation of writers was on
around 1983. Initially, I was influenced the rise. With the assassination of
by the professional theatre of Indira Gandhi, demolition of Babri
Kashinath Ghanekar, Prabhakar Majid and growing trend of
Panshikar and Dr Shriram Lagoo. globalisation, privatisation and
Theatre has been the most distinctive liberalisation, society was going
and respected feature of Marathi through a process of disintegration.
culture. But I was simply jolted out of Later, computer technology and IT
my senses when I saw Mahanirvan centres too contributed to this 87
written by Satish Alekar and produced fragmentation. While a new middle
by Theatre Academy. It shattered my and upper middle class was emerging,
concept of theatre and fundamentally cities were being transformed into
changed my very perception of it. This metros, and villages were getting
play was completely different from ruined. All this was clearly reflected in
what I had seen on the Marathi stage the plays of the twelve playwrights. It
until then. It made me introspect is important to note that they had
about the very meaning of life itself. issues and sensibilities that were
singularly different from those of
Later on, I saw plays like Begum Barve Alekar, Tendulkar and Elkunchwar,
and Ghashiram Kotwal which changed who had launched a devastating,
my perception of human beings. It frontal attack on society. Maybe their
came as a revelation that theatre can kind of plays was no more possible in a
present the very questions that life society that was so fragmented! I felt I
confronts you with. I began doing could connect to playwrights like
theatre of this kind. I read plays by Makarand Sathe and Shyam Manohar
Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh much better. Sathe’s plays like
Thombya, Sapatnekarancha Mul, I was getting restless and had a feeling

Golayug, Charshe Koti Visarbhole were, of stagnation. I developed differences
in a sense, an articulation of the post- of opinion with Theatre Academy,
modern sensibility. I was soon which led to conflict. I felt that the
grappling with the challenge of staging plays that we and the Academy were
these plays. doing did not articulate the angst of
my generation. I did not want the
Ashutosh: I remember an article you language of attack, of playwrights like
had written in the journal Samantar Tendulkar. Those plays offered me
about Theatre Academy. On the one neither the content that I wanted to
hand, you had talked about how it had articulate nor the language for that
contributed to the development of articulation. I felt an urge to engage
your generation, but on the other, you honestly and critically with the reality
also confronted them with some around me. Ghashiram Kotwal and the
critical questions. This was a very atmosphere it created were indeed a
important phase, wasn’t it? great contribution of the Academy to
theatre. But there was an
88 Atul: You are right. This was a strange overwhelming feeling of saturation. We
crisis. I believe such crises are could not relate to the old generation.
necessary in the growth of a We wanted to create a new generation,
generation. A play like Mahanirvan create our own audience. We had
had confronted people from the arrived at the crossroads.
previous generation with a similar kind
of crisis. The audiences were totally Ashutosh: I agree that strong
flummoxed! Now, our plays like differences of opinion had developed.
Thombya (Idiot), Sapatnekarncha Mul Nonetheless, a new network was
(Sapatnekar’s Baby), Golayug (Lump emerging, linking theatre activists
Age), Charshe Koti Visarbhole (Forty across diverse locations. The Academy
Billion Forgetfuls) or Sheetayudhdha had created centres in many small
Sadanand (Cold-War Sadanand) were towns. Their plan of reaching plays to
seen as abstruse, incomprehensible. diverse audiences as part of their
Actually these plays presented a very Prekshak Pratisad (Spectator
complex experience but people were Response) scheme initiated in
unable to grasp it. collaboration with Ford Foundation
had yielded good results. It created a
I believe theatre includes all the arts that help build

society. This is why theatre activists for me
are social workers.
huge network of theatre activists, while directed plays. But we did not agree to
at the same time each centre in the accept a director who was ‘given’ to us.
small towns had its own independent We wanted one who shared a rapport
identity. Let me turn to you, Waman with us and was familiar with the
Pandit. Your organisation, the infrastructure. So we invited Atul
Vasantrao Achrekar Sanskrutik Pethe and Prasad Vanarase. We did
Pratishthan in Kankavli, has been not want the plays to be directed by
active in theatre for a long time. Could the same old people. It is very
you tell me how you viewed this scene? important to work with people who
have diverse ways of seeing, a different
Waman Pandit: I look at all this from ideological base. I was working as a 89
a completely different perspective. For director and giving a chance to other
me, the theatre movement is social youngsters to direct too, but I felt that
work. Atul posed questions to Alekar’s they would surely benefit from Prasad,
generation just as Alekar had who had basic training in theatre. They
questioned Bhalba Kelkar. Every would learn from Atul’s rich
generation has had to face such a crisis. experience. Not only directors, even a
Ten years hence, there will be other painter could stay and work here for a
writers and directors with different couple of weeks! People could come
perspectives. I believe theatre includes and watch him at work, talk to him; he
all the arts that help build society. This might respond if he felt like. For me,
is why theatre activists for me are the creation of such a space is
social workers. important, the networking is
important.
Now, coming to the four centres
created by Theatre Academy with the Ashutosh: In recent times, what kind
assistance of Ford Foundation, of directors and artists did you invite
different directors worked there and to Kankavli?
Waman: Basically I wanted the kind of had been exposed to at Theatre

person who rejects tedious old notions, Academy. When the actors and the
strives hard to search for something writer understand my social and
innovative and constantly tries to do political ideology, only then can I
things differently. It was not as if bring a play into being. I cannot
Theatre Academy offered us directors force a play into life. Once I
and we rejected them. But I didn’t understood this, I changed track and
want to follow their procedure. When chose to do some one-act plays there.
Atul came to me, he hadn’t decided on
any particular play. As a director, his I also read scripts of some local
outlook was like, ‘Let me gauge what’s playwrights like Manohar Shahane
happening here, what can happen here, and Vasant Kanetkar and thought
what their psychology is like’. He about how to connect with the local
wanted to work in such a spirit of people. I did not evaluate the plays;
inquiry. value judgments were best left to
history, I thought. Initially I used to
Ashutosh: Let me come back to you, feel slightly superior and think that I
90 Atul. What led you to the idea of had something to teach them. But
networking? gradually that disappeared. I
pondered over my wide-ranging
Atul: After my stint in Theatre interests and realised that while I
Academy, I went to Nashik for a job. was in Theatre Academy, I was
I wanted to do Waiting for Godot in exposed to so much, simultaneously.
Nashik. Naseeruddin Shah was Apart from plays, I read books,
going to direct it and I was going to poetry, saw films and dance
act. I wanted to do the play in programmes. You can’t have a mature
Nashik. And it was then that the sensibility unless you are exposed to
point Pandit is making hit me hard. many art forms, lectures by experts
When I read the play in front of on various topics, social and political
theatre people in Nashik, none of movements etc. Then I started the
them liked it. They couldn’t Samakaleen Kala Mahotsav
understand what it was all about. (Contemporary Arts Festival) in
Then I realised that the people there order to bring likeminded people
had different issues. They simply did together. It was an initiative that
not relate to the kind of theatre I arose out of my need to connect.
Rather than just insist on doing a play, is it possible

to connect with the people and the environment
around you in a more fundamental way?
Ashutosh: So the networking grew search of an organisation to which he

out of the interaction between could relate and which would
contemporary art and social life? reciprocate his beliefs. The most basic
requirement is social consciousness; it
Atul: Yes. The most wonderful thing is an essential precondition for theatre
that happened was that I was able to to happen. What is important, as Atul
connect with the place, relate to the says, is to develop as human beings. If
youngsters. Many students from the theatre people who share such an
architecture college joined the group approach get connected, it will make a
and they brought in very different significant impact. That is why it is
perspectives. I realised through my absolutely essential that theatre 91
interaction with them that each networks are built.
community of artists has its own
strengths which I may lack. Whether it Ashutosh: The important point is
is Nashik or Kankavli or Jalna, my that you do not look at the actor as
basic aim was to understand the local only an actor...
people, their way of life and
sensibilities, as Pandit has said. Rather Waman: What is important is the
than just insist on doing a play, is it process through which an actor
possible to connect with the people becomes an actor, develops his
and the environment around you in a personality; because through him the
more fundamental way? Does that society can develop too.
interaction help you develop as a
human being and as an artist? This Ashutosh: So for you a theatre group
was crucial for me. is a group of people with social
awareness, artists who are socially
Waman: Just as I was in search of a aware.
likeminded director, Atul also was in
Waman: And if they aren’t, they You know how it is. It is generally said
should try to be. that ninety-nine per cent of what a
director does is management and one
Ashutosh: But Atul, you seem to have per cent, creativity. For me, choosing
a different perception. As a director, the right actors for a play was only the
you realise that you have your own first step; I had to organise workshops
ideology and the members of the to prepare them, develop them
group may have their own. Then you intellectually, increase their awareness,
get together and the process of making train them in physical movements,
a play begins. Developing the actors as develop a sense of rhythm in them…
a group, developing their theatre and all this, not just for the play.
sensibility—how does this happen? Through reading, speech training and
interaction they would become better
Atul: Let me get back to my Nashik human beings, grow richer as artists.
experience. There were many theatre They read stories by Manohar
groups in Nashik when I went there Shahane, Gangadhar Gadgil and Va.
but somehow I was not able to relate Pu. Kale, engaged with the question of
92 to any of them. Now, my relationship what constitutes Marathi literature
with Pandit goes back many years. I and the Marathi stage. This raised
have been regularly attending the their level of understanding and helped
theatre festival that the Acharekar them bond with each other. Such a
Sanskrutik Pratishthan organises every process was also useful for developing
year. It provides a wonderful their sense of different styles of acting.
opportunity for groups doing
alternative theatre. It is an amazing
experience to perform before the A play has to be
Konkani audience, to engage in the produced with as
post-performance discussions with
them…that’s been an enduring,
little money as
exhilarating and educative experience possible.
for me. Then I realised that I was able
to relate to these people from Kankavli
because of their theatre sensibility. At the same time I had to look for
That did not happen in Nashik. So I places for rehearsals and take care of
began my own theatre group there. finances as well. I had put in some of
my own money and some others had staging a play. Each space comes with
pitched in with whatever they could its own limited but completely
afford; a play has to be produced with different audience. For instance, people
as little money as possible. My Theatre from Ozer, a small place near Nashik,
Academy experience had taught me would never come to see my plays. But
that like a singer, an actor also has to suppose I went to them? I might be
practise a lot. And the more he able to attract at least a few spectators
performs the more professional he from there! I could draw them into
becomes. By professional I don’t mean discussions, speak to them, and this
doing business, but gaining proficiency would lead to theatre education. So we
in the technical aspects such as lights went there, and an artist, a painter
and sound, apart from acting. That is from Ozer, became our friend. We
why stage performances are absolutely arranged an exhibition of his paintings.
necessary for actors. But where do I do This amounts to much more than just
them? Not in regular theatres because doing a performance and saying, “I
my plays don’t do well at the box office. have come here to educate you; I’ve
So I have to take the next step: take on done my job. I’ll leave.”
the role of a producer. Then I realised, 93
why spend money on travelling to other Now let me come to the last point,
places in search of performance spaces? which is the economics of theatre.
Why not explore the spaces in Nashik? During my four-year stint in Nashik
I was able to locate thousands of spaces I’d written a paper on this. When we
where we performed: small villages, designed a play, we would think about
community halls, temples, college halls. factors such as, what vehicle do we
have and how many people can it
hold? If we visit one town, can we do
Each space comes two plays instead of one? Or three?
with its own limited Can we do a poetry-reading or story-
reading along with the play? Thinking
but completely out such permutations and
different audience. combinations helped us work out the
economics. Now, Pandit (I wouldn’t
call him just a ‘manager’), as the
There are many advantages to a person in charge of a whole
director’s creating his own spaces for institution, has a particular
perspective. His place, Kankavli, is a Ashutosh: Let’s come back to the

small township with a population of larger point of networking. In the play
just around 10,000. But 700-800 that you did in Kankavli, Mi
people take time off at night to come Mazhyashi, the protagonist enters in
see the play—that is nothing short of the form of a Rakshasa, speaks a
a miracle for me. This tells me that certain kind of language, and all of it,
Pandit looks at theatre as a serious, even the live music, originated from the
purposive activity. This perspective, local culture. The play travelled, and in
this ideology is what brings us the process you went on networking,
together. creating cultural spaces. How did you
connect with the local people?
Ashutosh: This is a very valid point.
But Kankavli also becomes significant Waman: You cannot plan for such
because of the attempts to create a connections to happen. An audience
theatre culture. Pandit, you organise that relates to the work of a
one-act play competitions and theatre particular director may not relate to
workshops, invite various people, go to another director in the same way. The
94 nearby villages. As a result, you not spaces created in the process of doing
only help create an audience, you also Mi Mazhyashi may not be useful for
create small spaces for doing theatre. another play.
Tell us a little more about this.
Ashutosh: But a lot of planning did go
Waman: Well, it’s a little difficult to into it, right?
say exactly what we do. You work with
a perspective towards a goal. The work Waman: Let me explain this with an
that you do and the discipline with example. As part of the project with
which you do it, both have an impact Ford Foundation and Theatre
on the environment. When people Academy, we began organising a
around you have watched you doing theatre festival every year. One year we
this work consistently for thirty-five decided to stage the plays in Kudal the
years, their mentality certainly changes. day after they had been performed in
They also start thinking about what Kankavli. But we could not continue
they can do, start feeling responsible. with this practice the year after that. In
Creating a sense of responsibility is contrast, the festival of experimental
very important for me. plays that we began organising some
The locality where sex workers lived, or the road

where I performed, became theatre spaces for me.
two years later has been going on for with our literature. It might be Kirti
the last ten years. Something happens College or Ruparel or Vaze-Kelkar,
once but there is no guarantee that it you get a readymade audience. We no
will happen again the same way. Atul, longer needed theatres or
what do you feel? advertisements. But that space should
not die out. To keep these spaces alive
Atul: The success of the play is in I would organise theatre workshops,
being able to perform it in various show films, etc. I had to constantly
places. You can create your audience, keep in touch through a series of
your theatre spaces. But this requires a activities.
lot of thought and planning. For
instance, I did not go to the slums with Then we went further. I was working 95
Waiting for Godot. I needed to think in Mumbai in the Aids Control
about who I wanted to address. You Society. There was Theatre for Aids,
cannot make mistakes as far as the Theatre for Transgenders, Theatre for
audience is concerned, otherwise they Sex Workers. The spaces in which
may desert you, sometimes even such theatre was performed were
permanently. The time also should be naturally different and, for the first
right. You cannot do a play on the day time in my life, I got an audience that I
of a World Cup cricket match. Where would never have expected for my
you perform also depends on the kind plays before. I did a play on the issues
of play you are doing. And we would of sex workers, with and for sex
perform in spaces for two or three workers. The locality where sex
years continuously to retain them. workers lived, or the road where I
performed, became theatre spaces for
To make it economically viable we me. The point is that a theatre space is
avoided big theatres in Mumbai and not just a hall or infrastructure; it
went to colleges. They have libraries, means new places for performance and
Marathi departments, they are familiar new audiences.
Exploring theatre spaces involves relating to different

people in various locations...and this requires
thinking, planning and consistent effort.
But one needs to find entry points, your plays find a resonance with
the people who control these spaces. organisations like ours, because we also
So if I go to Kolhapur, for instance, have our own spaces, our own
there may be a Deval Club, but I will audiences. If that happens, networking
also have to relate to people like becomes easier.
Comrade Pansare and his workers
unions, or the Shramik Pratishthan, Atul: NSD [National School of
or a friend like Sanjay Haldikar who Drama] had organised a month-long
does theatre with children in prison. workshop in collaboration with the
Then I am able to do four Vasantrao Acharekar Sanskrutik
performances in Kolhapur. I can Pratishthan. I was there for three days.
96 perform at nearby places too. Many people from Kolhapur and
Normally, no plays travel to Nipani, surrounding places had participated in
but I found a space there which it. This contribution of the NSD is
belonged to an organisation run by very important because organising a
one of my friends. Then there could month-long workshop in a remote
be Gadhinglaj, or villages nearby. The place is not easy. In my discussion with
point is that exploring theatre spaces the people from the organisation, I
involves relating to different people in said, why don’t you organise such
various locations, working at different programmes yourself? They asked me,
levels, and this requires thinking, why don’t you come here? I said okay, I
planning and consistent effort. will. The beginning was that easy.
Waman: Another important point is After I went there, I realised that rather

that you might say, I’ve written this than working with a readymade play
play, my job is done, but your work there, the challenge was to do a play
doesn’t get over just like that. Besides which is a product of that environment.
forming connections and finding your Then the people will identify with it. I
own audiences, it is important that tried to bring the Konkan region into
It is commonly said, who's interested in a play, who'll

come to see it? But that is not really true. In remote
areas there is a great yearning for theatre.
my play, their theatre traditions, Ashutosh: Now let us come to a

especially Dashawatar, their language, different point. Very often the
the colour and structure of their networking is more at an individual
houses, their music and the local dialect level. The individual is a source of
of Marathi. I tried to bring in a new inspiration for the play, for creating
interpretation of Diwakar Krishna’s theatre spaces and providing
dramatic monologues [his 50-odd motivation for different activities. But
‘Natya-Chhata’ pieces loosely based on how can that network help to create a
Browning’s monologues but in prose wider theatre culture? The general
form, which were a first in Marathi experience is that some kind of
literature]. We performed in forty to slackness creeps in. It is fine that Atul
forty-five places. Later on I went to went to Kankavli, Sangli or many such 97
Jalna, where there is no theatre, no places and did theatre there. But what
infrastructure for doing a play. We happens after he leaves? How do the
managed to do theatre there as well, but local theatregoers, audiences and
for me Nashik and Kankavli really are actors, take it forward? How do they
the major highlights of this journey. develop the network further? What is
their responsibility? How can
Waman: While doing Mi Mazhyashi, I networking foster a larger, new theatre
realised that people from all over culture?
Maharashtra have an urge to see
theatre. But plays don’t reach them. So Atul: Of course, whatever experience I
taking this play to them was a great have had may be quite limited. But I
achievement. It is commonly said, would like to humbly state that the
who’s interested in a play, who’ll come seeds I had sown in Nashik are
to see it? But that is not really true. In sprouting today. There are many
remote areas there is a great yearning people there today, involved in theatre,
for theatre. cinema, painting etc. We are still in
contact. I visit them regularly. Jalna,
The idea that theatre spaces can be

created, has taken strong root in
Maharashtra.
Kankavli—these places now have an fact that it is happening is a sign of life.

audience which has seen a play. That A positive and vibrant picture of
audience begins to see more new plays. theatre seems to be emerging in
People who are in some way connected Maharashtra today. I mentioned only a
with me—like the group Aasakta from few names but many small groups have
Pune, or Samanway—now go and do become active now.
theatre there. A seed may sprout in
many ways! Waman: Many of us are not even
aware that such spaces exist. We did
98 Waman: Basically it is important that around forty performances of our
a culture of doing such theatre is recent play. Before that, when we
created. After Atul, another director worked with Prasad Vanarase, we
may come. He may do different kind of staged seventeen performances. We
plays. But the very fact that a basic staged eleven performances of Thank
foundation is laid, that the seeds of the You Ajoba. Atul’s Mi Mazhyashi was
culture have taken root, is important. staged in thirty-seven places. This will
go on increasing. Many more groups
Atul: A person like Naseeruddin Shah will be able to utilise these spaces. I feel
has taken his plays to Kankavli—that that theatre has taken strong roots now.
theatre space has become available to
his group too. So what is created is not Atul: A new theatre group in Pune
limited to one Atul Pethe, one called ‘Natak Company’ performed a
organisation. Many play competitions play in a residential colony. They have
get organised in Kudal, in other places revived a tradition that had been
around Kankavli, in Goa. They may be discontinued. Theatre Academy used
different from Vasantrao Acharekar to do this in its time, and I had done
Sanskrutik Pratishthan, but the very it to some extent, but this practice
You perform, take a plate around to

collect money or sell tickets.
Whatever money you manage to
collect is yours.
had stopped. Now it seems to have sound and such stuff. Now we have
re-started. I find it very important made the facilities available. If many
that the awareness that we can do more such places get created, that will
theatre anywhere is growing once be great for networking. The other day
again. The idea that theatre spaces Chandrakant Kale did Natakache Tare;
can be created has taken strong root he managed to collect more than Rs
in Maharashtra. 2,500 by passing his bag around.
Waman: I must mention the Atul: Just as Kankavli has Natakghar,

networking that our organisation has Pune has Sudarshan Hall. Today one 99
initiated with a scheme called can see plays from all over India there.
‘Natakghar’. Since we have the So it is not just individuals like Atul
infrastructure, any group or people can Pethe and Waman Pandit who have
come there and perform—for instance, worked out this approach. Many
a play, poetry reading, solo people have been taking theatre to
performance or dance programme— small places. Even Dr Shriram Lagoo.
free of charge. You perform, take a We did Surya Pahilela Manus with
plate around to collect money or sell him and staged it at many small
tickets. Whatever money you manage places including Talegaon. What I
to collect is yours. Now this has taken mean is, from great actors like
roots. Eighteen performances have Shriram Lagoo and Mohan Agashe to
taken place there. People come from hundreds of amateur artists, theatre
distant places to perform: Goa, people have worked in small plays and
Nashik, small towns. When you are performed at small places. Small
doing proscenium theatre, a lot of your theatres spaces are enriched and
energy gets wasted in running around strengthened when great artists like
for infrastructure facilities like lights, Dr. Lagoo perform there.
About IFA
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Contents

CARTOON AS ETHNOGRAPHY: ‘LITTLE WOmEN’ IN A BIG WORLD

GENDER AND THE DOCumENTARY FILm: CAPTuRING A SENSED REALITY

PRETTY mEN: GOLDEN AGE OF THE FEmALE ImPERSONATOR

WRITING DESIRE: THE BODY AS LOOkING GLASS

NOTES FROm THE mARGINS: THE FEmININE VOICE OF THE GHATAm

CREATING THEATRE SPACES: CONNECTING ART TO LOCAL LIFE

Printed by B Narahari, published by Anmol Vellani on behalf of India Foundation for

Photo and Text Credits

A very twenty-first-century perspective of gender informs Joshua muyiwa’s deeply

In IFA grantee Paromita Vohra’s now-playful now-trenchant analysis of the Indian

When IFA grantee Gokul TG documented the award-winning filmmaker G. Aravindan’s

Sumana Chandrashekar, a Carnatic vocalist and a ghatam player, attempts to understand

much before G. Aravindan gained fame

ith Cheriya Manushyarum, boldly let his characters age, fall in

W Valiya Lokavum (CMVL)

society in flux. This feeling of for many other readers as well, for

increased in a way it couldn’t have, had narrative forward by transcending the

Letters written by female readers of CMVL addressed to Ramu. 11

It is important to note here that sister. In spite of her family’s best

exhibits a lot of care and concern that is The Co-Worker

contours of his relationships with According to Unny, CMVL had the

I second edition of the Bombay

Nevertheless I kept bumping into this

Chhatrabhang is a narrative based on spontaneity would take over.

white-hot rage”. The relentless initiated the Video SEWA experiment

With the advent of video, community Cast in a Template

that I am not in between. Now The filmmaker Madhusree Dutta

not right. Mohan [K.U. which continues to reshape how we

this genre is growing by leaps and to the very act of filmmaking.

Gendered awareness and questions itself as a movement with a

wonderfully warm, but fairly opportunity to refine their craft; they

filmmaking but her battle with the

These performances and the manner

Poster of Paromita Vohra's 2002 film Unlimited Girls.

ENDNOTES 7. Bhaskar Sarkar and Nicole Wolf, ‘An

REFERENCES 8. MULAY, VIJAYA. 2008. From Rajas and

7. HEREDIA, SHAI. 2004. ‘Excavating

A rich whiff of rare history wafts up

here is no definitive record of Dream). Narayan Shripad Rajhans,

T the moment when female

impersonators who, besides being speech. Looking at these photographs

Shot in the Studio

The image on the previous page,

enamoured by the prince. Hammigi Evergreen Magic

Telugu film Maya Bazaar. The

Banashankari Paage as Shahzadi and Shakuntala kulkarni as maulvi in Ugra Kalyana.

Ghatotkacha kidnaps a willing Vatsala in Maya Bazaar.

ENDNOTES nineteenth century to the middle of the

Jambuvati (Hammigi Nilkanthappa) tends to her wounded father in Chavatiya Chandra.

When Joshua muyiwa started writing poetry, as a teenager trying to

hen I look into my own heartbroken, I had a lot of time to

W poetry I see people. I begin

thick and a darker shade has been cyclical, a you-scratch-my-

and paint lines on my face, it as something else. In a way, learning

But remember, we must both scream But, now, it is an empty bed,

investigating the back-stories of my own they lied, the bohemians –

You must understand, that we have learnt happen?

in the workings of these bodies in everything and anything to write about

The earthen pot or ghatam, one of the

he fragrance of fresh earth; no other women playing the ghatam?

not to be taken too seriously. rendering pallavis. Pallavi singing,

When it came to learning a percussion announcing his concerts with a picture