“Woman is the companion of man,
gifted with equal capacities. By sheer force of vicious custom, even the most
ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a superiority over women which
they don’t deserve and ought not to have.”
- Mahathma Gandhi
The
interpretation of epic characters has at all times been the fond interest of
artists associated with all forms of expressions. The relevance of such
associations is needless to question because of the foresight and depth of the
epics upon which their modern interpretations are based. Be it the case of the
caste based humiliation faced by Karna or the politics of war between Rama and
Ravana, or the lament of Duryodhana, every instance in the epic texts can be
given a contemporary colour and linked to the lives of the people we see around
us today, ages ahead of the timeline during which the epic characters are
believed to have lived. As against the generality of this observation, the case
seems to get more complicated and confusing when it comes to making
contemporary interpretations of the female characters of the epics. The deep
rooted societal archetypes with respect to the notions of femininity add
multiple layers to the fabric of the characters of epic women. Hence,
understanding them and placing them into the contemporary scene becomes
difficult but at the same time very intriguing.
Among the
prominent women of the Mahabharata, Draupadi, the daughter of the Drupada king
is an almost ideal example of the contemporary Indian womanhood. She is
believed to have been born as an adult from a holy pyre, and, according to the
text, the purpose of her birth was to initiate the final war between the
Pandavas and Kauravas. Draupadi is a
largely misunderstood and misinterpreted woman of the Mahabharatha. She is
pictured as the voluptuous woman who gave in to all the 5 Pandava brothers and
lived the life of a dignified, married, whore. The assumption that a woman who
had to yield sexually to 5 different men with 5 distinct needs is a vamp who
enjoyed such a fate is the starting point where my interest in understanding
the character germinated. I was intrigued by the image of that of a royal whore
which is attached to Draupadi, who was publically disrobed and humiliated in
the open court of the Kauravas. It seemed paradoxical to me that a woman who
had undergone such suffering is alleged to have enjoyed it all and, in fact, brought
it upon herself by choice. It was from this feeling of curiosity and empathy
that the investigation into the character, and, the social and moral
circumstances of women in general began in my mind.
- ·Draupadi – My first thoughts
It was the English translation of the Oriya novel ‘Yajnaseni’ by Dr.
Pratibha Rai that threw significant light into the episodes of the life of
Draupadi for me. I was in high school back then when I first read it upon the
suggestion made to me by my father. The book interprets the episodes of the
Mahabharatha from Draupadi’s perspective and brings out effectively the
plethora of issues she faces as a woman and as the wife of the Pandava
brothers. Upon the first reading itself a feeling of self identification took
over and my mind immediately raced to the possibilities of presenting Draupadi
as a representative of Indian womanhood through my vocabulary of expression,
i.e. theatre.
I was certain that Draupadi’s story definitely can be placed into the
lives of almost all women around the globe but the thought was too general and
vague. It had to be condensed and transformed into episodes that can be
theatrically represented and woven together as a story that makes sense.
Over the next few years, I made deliberate efforts to read and re-read
books about Draupadi as well as about women in general to mould my thoughts
into concrete shape. ‘Ini Njan
Urangatte’, ‘The Second Sex’, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, ‘Love in the Time of
Cholera’ and a number of various other books came across my horizon of
reading and after every book I collected some significant observation about the
lives of women. The insight gained from many cult classic movies that I
happened to watch was also very vital to the fixation of my own convictions
about women in general.
- The task of becoming her
During my investigations into Draupadi and as an effect of my general
reading experiences, I realised that the first thing I needed to build was
conviction. I had to identify and confirm my own personal stand about the
plight of women before I could perform the same using Draupadi as a medium.
This, to me, was the most difficult and confusing phase. I was barely 19 years
old and I sometimes found myself totally lost in the middle of the information
I got from the books I came across and the observations I made around myself.
There were times when I felt I could never feel stable about my changing
thoughts and even decided to stop thinking and give it all up. That was when I
got help from my mentor in theatre Professor Chandradasan. With his help I
would try to sort my mind and put things into better perspective.
Slowly I started preparing myself to feel Draupadi and relate her to my
own life though my real life experiences are not as intense as her’s.
My efforts and thoughts were taken to a higher level when I was chosen to
portray ‘Janaki’, in the Malayalam play ‘Abhayarthikal’,
written by the learned G.Shankara Pillai. The play is believed to be the Indian
version of the famous Scandinavian play ‘The
Dolls House’, written by Henrik Yohan Ibsen. The Ibsenic influence caught
me and I read other plays written by him. I was introduced to a style of
playwriting which made me feel a sense of solidarity for the portrayal of human
emotions with a stoical expressiveness that penetrated deep into the conscience
of the reader.
The performance of the play instilled in me the confidence that my
thought process was on the right track and that my Draupadi would certainly
communicate to the present day women.
Slowly and steadily, the woman in me began to shed all ornamental notions
administered to me by my surrounding society and think independently and
address issues of women from a humane perspective. It was during this phase
that I realised how hard-hitting the similarities between Draupadi and every
other woman of this era is.
Each time I went out or travelled and experienced the male gaze molest
me, I would think about Draupadi on the
day of her wedding when she was suffocated by eyes of men who had gathered to
win her over in the swayamvara. Each time I saw how political games affected
women and children the most, my mind would travel to the episode where Draupadi
laments the incidence of the Kurukshethra war and its pointlessness.
Each time I would act a certain way to survive my day, my thoughts would
go back to the identity crisis Draupadi faced. She was the shadow of every man
she was with and never had the opportunity to be herself.
Above all, each time I experienced a sense of loneliness and emotional
turmoil I would sit back and think of how needy a woman Draupadi was and how
deprived of companionship she might have been, even in the abundance of marital
partners and societal status as a queen.
My doubts had all gradually ceased to emerge and I was ideologically and
emotionally sure of what I wanted to portray through Draupadi.
My mind had reached a consensus finally.
- The process of converting ideas into performance
After I made myself emotionally sure of how I wanted my
Draupadi to think and feel, the next and the major challenge was to build a
definite storyline and convert the thoughts into gestures and actions that can
be performed theatrically. After repeated discussions with Professor
Chandradasan, we devised a body language and structure of performance for
Draupadi.
We decided to use a semi stylised pattern of acting. The
emotional scenes were decided to be performed using a realistic style of acting
whereas for the other areas we choose to rely on forms like Kalari Payattu,
Kathakali, Chau and Kathak. This hybrid, we felt, was the most suitable to depict
our theme. To aid in the process of storytelling, Professor Chandradasan also
brought in paintings and decided to use them to give more insight into the
fabric of the play.
In the middle of building the play, I happened to have an
opportunity to play ‘Mandodhari’ in C.N.Srikandhan Nair’s ‘Lankalakshmi’. The experience further empowered me emotionally and
equipped me physically as it exposed me to the culture of traditional, physical
theatre. The self sufficiency of Mandodhari and her sense of resilience helped
me mould my Draupadi better.
Finally, on
August 20, 2012 the play was staged at the Changampuzha Park, Edapally. The
journey of being and analysing Draupadi continues in my conscience even after
the performance. My Draupadi is a woman of deep understanding and intelligence.
The fact that distinguishes her from the other women of the Mahabharatha is
that she was very well aware of her circumstances. She was never an all-suffering
woman who did not rebel against the decisions about her life which were made by
other people on her behalf. Neither did she owe everything to fate like any
other conventional Indian woman. She choose to keep silent and go through
whatever came her way with the full knowledge that it was unjust and that she
deserved better than what she got. Even when she rebelled against the odds in
her own individual ways, she was also not all that empowered to break out of
the constraints and abandon the people who she believed were her family. She
found solace in her evergreen lover Krishna whom she considered as the epitome
of an ideal lover. She confided in him and dreamt of him and those were the
only moments of consolation Draupadi ever experienced during the entire span of
her life.
This is
where she becomes the representative of the contemporary Indian woman who is not
only educated and aware but also tied into the archetypes of family and
morality fed into her head by the collective conscience of her roots.
She thus is
an apt tool which can be used to draw relevant analogies with the lives of the
modern day Indian women. The underlying feeling of agony and the longing to
break free and also the inability to shake off the shackles of social
conditionings that Draupadi went through is the very same feeling of being
burdened that almost every normal Indian woman faces today.
In that
sense, Draupadi is even today, a character that gives scope for interpretations
of various kinds and dimensions.
* ( As published in the Kulashekara Festival Souvenir 2013)
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