A splendid Kathakali evening

Divine Performance

It isn’t everyday that one gets to see a full-fledged kathakali performance in Delhi. A select audience at India Habitat Centre, however, had this privilege recently, thanks to ‘Rasikapriya’ — an organisation to promote Carnatic music in the City. ‘Rasikapriya’ recently celebrated ‘Swathi Smriti’ — a two-day festival in memory of 18th century Kerala king Swathi Thirunal, and left art and culture lovers enchanted.

While the first day saw classical Carnatic and Hindustani vocal recitals by prince Rama Varma — a direct descendant of king Swathi — and singer Mallika Banerjee respectively, the second day was witness to the president of ‘Rasikapriya’, Guruvayoor T V Manikandan, give another Carnatic vocal recital. This was immediately followed by the most awaited act of the festival — a kathakali performance by dancer Evoor Rajendran Pillai and his student Risha Ramachandran. It was an unforgettable experience for all those who attended the programme.

All the compositions rendered during the two-day festival were of king Swathi. Guruvayoor explained, “Swathi was an acclaimed composer, musician and a great patroniser of art forms from every region. Very often, he would invite musicians of the Benaras and Gwalior ‘gharanas’ to perform in his court. He was well-versed in 16 languages and composed music in all of them. Our festival ‘Swathi Smriti’ is in honour of his musical contributions and hence we rendered only his compositions.”

Guruvayoor himself sang five pieces written by the king, almost all in Sanskrit and in praise of Lord Padmanabhan. He began with a ‘Ganesh stuti’ called ‘Pari pahi’ seeking the blessings of the elephant god at the initiation of the programme, followed by ‘Pahi sripati’, which is in honour of Lord Padmanabhan. He then sang ‘Pari palayama’, in which the king is requesting Lord Padmanabhan to take note of the atrocities of the Britishers and rescue his countrymen, and followed it with ‘Ma mava karunayyar’, seeking the lord’s forgiveness. He closed his performance with a Hindi ‘bhajan’, ‘Sankara sri giri nadar prabhu’, extolling the virtues of the lord of music — Shiv Shankar. Evidently, the purity of his music touched the audience.

Then came the kathakali performance in all its traditional finesse and splendour. The lights of the auditorium were dimmed. Then came the musicians with their traditional instruments ‘chenda’, ‘chengila’ and ‘mattalam’, followed by dancers Evoor Rajendran Pillai and his student Risha Ramachandran. In a short recital, they depicted Lord Padmanabhan in all his glory at the Padmanabhanswamy temple. In an exquisite rendition, they compared the lord to the moon, stars and other heavenly bodies and ultimately came to the conclusion that nothing can be equated to him and he is complete in himself.

The audience thoroughly enjoyed the performance, even though it was short — unlike the night-long performances held in Kerala. As Guruvayoor added, “It is through such classical programmes that we stay in touch with our native cultures. We hope to organise many such evenings, and make our younger generations aware of our rich cultural heritage.”