Unpunctuated Conversations…: 2019-10-06

RAVANA-KATHA

a text for KANKHOWA’s Disposable Theatre Project

experienced on 6^th February 2007 in Faculty of Fine Arts campus

as a part of the national seminar on:

Cultural Practice and Discourses on the “minor”,

held in the department of Art history and Aesthetics, MS University of Baroda.

Epigraph

There was no one in him. …the story goes that, before or after he died, found himself before god and he said: “I, who have been so many men in vein, want to be one man: myself.” The voice of god replied from a whirlwind: “Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons – and none.”

Jorge Luis Borges (Everything and Nothing)[1].

PROLOGUE

In the midst of the first decade of the twenty first century, in a year, in a month, on some day he was being seated in a tea stall. With a cup of tea or not. Looking through the crossroads or somewhere else. He was talking to somebody, or somebody was talking to him. Approaching own hand 'that somebody' asked,

‘Sorry, I don’t know your name. Who are you?’

My hero put out his hand from pocket for a shake, but he was humiliated as he was in doubt-- was that hand his own! He took a little time to utter his name. Wanted to say, ‘well, my name is Charandas,[2] and thieving is my job’, but he couldn't. Such kind of truthfulness is not truthful yet.

He took a little time more.

He took little more time.

Little more time, he took.

And said, ‘Yeah, I’m Ravana’.

FIRST SKANDHA

I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I feel good and bad at a time.

With a sip in the cup of tea I think why I think what do I think what I should think... I think to that extend, where no thought figures out ultimately. I, a frustrated and enthusiastic lover, overleaf the pages from epics. Title pages are lost. Dismissed page numbers.

All of a sudden I find myself in the wine dark sea.[3]

All of a sudden I find my body turning blue.

(Aside: remember, there is blue inside a burning flame).

No I cannot recite Navakanta Barua or Michel Madhusudana. [4]

As my head becomes (or, as my heads become) heavy with thoughts, my body turns weightless like a kite or the Pushpak Vimana.

Yeah, exactly, I am one. No, I am ten at a time.

It’s Ravana

I am.

Chorus:

I’m a body of the words and the images and metaphors. I spend my life time tongue to tongue. I’m the HERO of the “same” and the “other”. I’m representing nothing. I represent everything. As Michel Foucault recognizes Don Quixote. [5]As Jorge Luis Borges portrays Shakespeare, Everything and Nothing.[6]

SECOND SKANDHA

No, I am not a poet, as in poetry one cannot lie. I’m not arguing you to believe me, or to trust me. Are you secular? A secular of which kind, having a god or without a god?

Please give me a god. Give me a god to love. To escape.[7]

It is my only identity that I exist.

I am large, contain within me the universe. My language introduced me to my world. With my hands I touch the earth, with my nose I take air in my breath. I see light with my eyes, recognize the sound with ears. My tongue identifies what is delicious, what not. My existence gives me the sense of my universe. There were no earths no air no light no water in my world if I was not there.

Neither was the nothingness of losing me if I was not there at all.

I am Whitman[8], Descartes, and Wittgenstein.

I am no one. No, I am not a poet, as in poetry one cannot lie. I’m not arguing you to believe me, or to trust me. Are you secular? A secular of which kind, having a god or without a god?

Please give me a god. Give me a god to love. To escape.

I know I am, and that is my only pride.

God! You don’t know actually you do exist or not.

And that is the reason to provide

You a tendency to destroy some other’s being-ness. Is not that?

Excuse me to be Ravana for once to challenge the God. The sky listens to my cry.

Blue is my favorite colour. The azure, my omen.

Excuse me to adopt the name of Ravana, for once, oh! wild swan

Just name me. I’m already ten in one.

THIRD SKANDHA

Lord, you are my antagonist. [9]

You, too, should go through some kind of self assessment. Look at yourself, recognize - Who you are: Human or Divine.

(Aside): Let us enact in the same way of Arun Kukreja’s DASHANAN, a one-act play in Hindi, after translation by Neera Kukreja Sohoni.

If human you cannot be Divine; if divine, you can hardly be human. If not human the claim to be best among humans (purusottam) rings false, a mere pretense. If you are God, then I, alone am best among humans – as earth is our witness. Or else say, you are no God.

Ram! This is our destiny – its irony that you and I are arrows of history’s common quiver. Two Truths Two Resolves

Two Entities

One Human the other God mutual rivals……

You are highborn (arya), and I unaryan of separate tribes. Yet both are heirs to high-ranking families. You are the eldest heir of Raghukul; I of Brahma’s lineage grandchild to Rishi Pulastya. Both are eldest sons; you, of the Solar Dynasty of king Dasaharath, a noble prince (aryaputra). I, am the Solar Son of Sage Vishwa’s Brahman clan.

At our naming ceremony for you as for me, “Ra” surfaced as the beginning letter to form our names. “Ra” meaning “Strength”.

Thus “Ram” connoting synergy, a confluence of strength, salvation, material fulfillment.

“Ravana” meaning “the one who cries”, makes others cry, terror of the world.

Of different lineage nurtured apart we are too similar.

Both were obstinate from childhood. As child once you were insistent asking mother Kaushalya to let the moon. Surprising! Moon!! Chandra!! Ramchandra, coveting Chandra! The lord himself is aspiring to possess the Moon!

And likewise I was aspiring to rule the earth, the skies, the Underworld

– the Trinity of worlds.

We both are thus aspiring highly ambitious with lofty desires.

Kakayee, your foster mother was much like my mother. Both showed similarity of traits; Kekayee favored her own son over you. To my mother Kuber, the lord of wealth was important, more than me.

I am human, jealous;

you are divine, merciful, and charitable.

We were both devoted sons. Ram! Headed to the forest surrendering to mother’s will. I, headed for the skies to avenge an insult from my youth, capturing Kuber’s flowery sky vehicle.

Lord! You are my antagonist.

FOURTH SKANDHA

I’m envious.

Once Gandhiji said to Chakraverty Raja Gopalachari , ‘Isn’t the Ramayana itself an example of a great love-story?[10]’ here I’ve questions. I’m a non heavenly being, jealous, envious, earthly Ravana. It’s a love story of whom? Of which kind? I know that the name of lord Ram itself is a synonym of love[11]. Yet I have oppositions, as I too was a lover. Although I was loveable or not I couldn’t understand, I also loved from the bottom of my heart.

Oh Sita, queen of my heart, forgive me.

I don’t understand why the matter of love is kept ever for the protagonists. In reverse, why does the successful lover become the protagonist in your stories? Why the ideal one gains?

Why?

Why the Ramayana never became Ravanayana?

Okay then, this envious, non celestial being would be the HERO today.

Let us enjoy

Ravanayana,

Ravan-Katha,

Ravan-Charit-Manas.

Janaki, doesn’t love me.

I see in her- the warmth of dawn, the passion of youth, the softness of petals, and the vitality of the forestland. I am tempted to give up all[12].

But she doesn’t love me.

Whose portrait is there, dear, in your dream? For whom do your lips tremble?

I was present at the Sita-swayambar. I have obvious accusations, when Ramchandra, the omnipotent god wins over the human. When the god comes down to the earth to play hide and seek with the earth-dwellers.

The dwellers of the earth never wear a mask, in the way the god wears.

I don’t understand why people decorate their arenas with Ravana’s masks.

Only the god pretends to be man in the name of incarnations. And you trust the mask-holder, the masterly imposture!

When Parasuram failed to lift his transfixed axe to kill the manly god, his hands stopped in the mid air as though all his strength had been sucked from him, the god was seized.

The axe fell; simultaneously the mask from the god’s face too was fall.

I was failed in my heartiest beloved’s prayer, the god listened to her.

I too was praying, but, remained unheard. It was decided politically, strategically, diplomatically – whose prayer should be heard, and whose not. It was necessary for you, god, to listen Sita’s prayer, to make successful your political journey.

To achieve Sita is to achieve the art of cultivation.

I knew the politics of the god who later on comes to me to receive the power of politics, with an excuse of rescuing Sita.

I am also a politician, nay, the greatest politician of the time, but not of your kind.

Forgive me, Janaki, if possible. I am jealous.

My heart breaks hearing the Ram-Sita’s glory.

God deceives man, my heart breaks.

My heart breaks when the right of earthly beings is manipulated.

Sorry, I’m not beyond the humanly desires, nay, I’m envious.

FIFTH SKANDHA

Being a Brahmin and a Rakshasa at a time, Ravana was privileged then other demons. Ramchandra also was privileged to be the God and a human at a time. And the injustice part in the whole remains to Sita, the daughter picked up from the furrows.

Abduction of Sita was a part of Ravana’s politics.

Rescue of Sita was a political step taken by Ram.

And what about Sita’s politics?

Sita is a symbol of the art of cultivation.

She is a symbol of the revenge of Surpanakha’s brother.

Doesn’t matter this or that, but, she is symbol or symbols. Not a being of flesh and blood.

According to Buddhist “Dasharatha Jataka” Sita is Sri Ram’s sister, not wife.

In “Adbhut Ramayan”, Sita is a lost child of Ravana and Mondodari only.

So, Sita, too, is not one like you,

like me,

but many at a time.

Here I am, a different Ravana.

No, Sita was never my love.

She is there, in my Ashok-vatika. Not a single word from me reaches her ears.

Her heart is a clock[13].

With her heart-clock I can measure up my life. I’m an astrologer. I can foresee my death.

I can hear her. She can’t.

It’s beating.

It’s knocking.

SIXTH SKANDHA

I’m Rakshasa, I do rakshya, I protect my forest.

Those are my totems,[14] the animals and the wood.

Am I scheduled? Am I scheduled In your defined state?

Have you nominated my living? What’s bad or what’s good?

I’m asking you, oh Aryaputra, was it necessary to cut down seven Shala trees

With one arrow to show your heroic power?

I’m asking you, Aryaputra, was it necessary

To kill my animals in the name of sacrifice, what you call “yajna”?

I, the Rakshasa, am the protector of the forest.

Can you be the protector of my vice and virtue?

Am I scheduled? Am I scheduled in the nation of your imagination?

Am I scheduled -the emperor of the reality?

Rama and Ravana’s battle was a battle of the Aryans and the non-Aryans.

Some believes, Ravana, the tribal democratic ruler was against Aryan because they intervened into his forest, cut the wood and killed the animals in the name of Vedic yajna or sacrifice.

On the other side, the Aryans were offended because the Rakshasas often disturbed their sacrificial acts.

SEVENTH SKANDHA

I am Siddharth Maharavana.

The non-violent king of non-violence. Contemporary to Gautama Buddha.

I asked Buddha, one hundred questions.

I am a disciple of non-violence, a theoretician of nirvana.[15]

EIGHTH SKANDHA

I’m Shaivite, worshiper of Lord Shiva.

Like me (the one containing ten within), Vimsatibhuja Dashagriva

You too can’t be one absolute

oh Mahadeva Sadashiva!

I see you being trance with the marijuana, trembling leaves of ganja;

I see your ash-smeared belly, swallowed by local liquor.

I see you meditating on the pick of mountain Kailasha;

I see your Nataraja posture reaching out the horizons.

Triambakam Yajaamahe[16].

In my village arena I see you dancing with teen-aged boy

With a red Sari making him up Gouri.

Dambaroo in hand. Trembling feet.

I see you in the showcases of the national museums.

What a metallic glaze!! A lost-wax cast.

I Ravana, once shook your Kailash-giri, of which are you resident.

(Let everybody go and see it on the bank of river Vaghora[17])

Yet then, what a calm and serene smile I saw on your face! Without a sight of hesitance.

Oh! Omnipotent….

Sorry, I never wanted to attain that kind of Paramarth, my lord.

I want to be shaken when my country is in trouble

I want to be effected with the bad times

I want to be destroyed; I want to be put fired.

Throughout the process of my death I want to utter a sound …………Like the phoenix.

The trembling Kailash’s scream was hidden behind your divine smile.

Sorry to say my lord, I won’t hide my bad time’s scream in my humanly face. Along with all my heroic conceit, I want to be impatient, when my earth is in catastrophe.

I’m a man. Having a perishable body, I’m nashwar.

I stare at the stars. I smear the mud.

I am mortal being, immortal are you, God!

Oh, Ishwar!!

As compiling this Ravana and that Ravana I’m one Ravana

having many within me; so you are another Shiva this time, Vrsa vahana.

No yajna, no sacrifice. Music is the mean of meditation and worshipping.

Oh Ishwar, the lord of the demons, oh Vrsadhwaja.

I can only sacrifice myself in the name of worship.

You are Shiva – the eternity. You are truth.

I am a search.

NINTH SKANDHA

I don’t know very much, but a very little.

I don’t know why people sing, why they paint, why even perform.

Why do people touch each other’s hand as if that is how they ‘recognize’ touch.

I don’t comprehend tears, laughter, encouragement, and dejection.

Why do people yawn, why even sneeze.

Why do people take a turn in their sleep.

(There’s no language for tears,

there’s no country for lullabies,

the only country is childhood in you,

I only understand this.)

I don’t understand this between why and why not. I don’t know why I do theatre.[18]

This time I am a performer, an actor. Gentlemen, please give me your ears.

You can’t blame me to be pretentious. Because, you too are pretentious.

If I wear the ten headed mask upon my face, definitely I’ll be the Ravana in your eyes. I’ll enact, which is nothing but pretensions. Okay, I accepted everything. But it is equally true that you are also pretending as if you believe me to be Ravana, and nobody else.[19]

Then why blame me?

So, let us pretend. Let us pretend again and again. Pretension,

Only pretension will be our mere mean of communication.

I know, every act is some kind of enactment of some act.

Each moment we act.[20] At this very moment,

I’m acting like a writer and you are like a reader or a listener.

While opening a file in your office, if you are unable to forget that

you are a lover,

You are somebody’s wife or husband

Or a poor citizen,

Being seated on your reading table if you don’t forget that you are a responsible father,

A social worker or a singer,

You are a journalist or a gambler or a football player,

Putting your eyes into your beloved’s eyes if you still keep yourself remembering

How much is left to reap in the field of paddy,

Or if suddenly you remember that you have forgotten to add sugar to the cup of tea;

Then know it,

You are a flop actor.

Everyone enacts,

as we have our pasts and futures[21],

as we have our identities,

as we have our heavens to provide us our times[22].

as we have fear of loosing our identities,

When you walk on the streets you are a traveler,

An eater while eating food.

In front of your father, beloved or a master you are constantly acting like

A son or daughter,

A lover

Or a disciple.

When I an actor enter to the stage for acting, only then, I offer myself to be seized that I’m an actor. I’m mere a performer.

Only that is the time, an actor offers the ‘self’ to be seized

At that very moment being seated among the audience’s seat you start to pretend that you are not believing me as an actor. With all your conscience, you pretend that I’m not a mere performer. I am either X, or Y, or Z. I am Ravana. You let your ears open to listen me, keep your eyes open to see me.

Being a performer I ever liked the wings and the skies of a proscenium.

Won’t you stare at me if I have a pair of real wings in my back?

Won’t you hear me if I stand under the real sky and start to speak?

My wings are hiding me.

My sky is constantly limiting my territory.

My cyclorama is my horizon.

I never can reach beyond these; neither can I touch your hand in real.

Again and again I become the Ravana.

I start my interior monologue. Dedouble[23] myself.

Ravana is not only a mythological character; or an image built up in our grandmother’s tongue, in our childhood days.

Ravana is also a ten-headed – Bhaworiya, actor.

TENTH SKANDHA

Oh my soul! Donot aspire for immortal life: exhaust the limits of the possible….

Pinder

When I’ll precede six steps forward,

two and two and two,

and then backward four steps, and jump and take a pause for a while,

all my native people will be staring at me without a single blink.

Each and everyone will salute me- the child, the old.

Their eyes will be burning lamps.

Hemchandra Goswami weaves the bamboo sticks for a Ravana skull in Majulee, the River Island[24]. I heard about Ayodhya Pathak and his son in Ramnagara[25]. The father is Ravana, and the son is Ravana too. One for the bachik (verbal) and the other for the angik (gestural).

People see more then one person at a time and pretend to be looking at only person.

That is Ravana.

Perhaps, pretension is the only way to satwik (essential).

The mirror is nothing but a gallery of masks for a performer.

One puts off a mask and then another one appears.

A lot of things happen in the world for me, though I could contribute a little.

Yeah, I am Henrich Hoffgan,

Why blame me? What have I done? I’m just an actor. What can I do?[26]

Rescuing Sita was just an excuse for you, lord Rama, I knew. Well, my abduction of Sita too was an excuse then.

I wanted to get you only, only in thy love I lose myself every time.

You are the absolute;

In your love I within myself becomes (not become) the third person.

For Satan, it is better to reign in hell then to serve in heaven.[27]

I agree. No, I don’t.

Two angels, good and bad, never come to me. There are ten angels dwelling in me.

None of them is good, or bad.

I listen to all of them. I listen to none of them.

Ladder is not completed yet, heaven is far away.[28]

Amongst the crowd of this post-colonial city a hero who wants to be defeated roams around. I am the hero, conqueror of the worlds. Now want to fall. You have to come down to earth only to fulfill my wish.

Oh! The god of the globe, I’ll be defeated. What an excitement in my veins.

Oh! The god of the globe.

I can foresee my death.

I’ll be the only responsible for my defeat, nobody else, no human, no god.

I need you.

I loose me within myself in your love.

Is it a mere lust? A mere thirst? A false temptation?[29]

Mere a kind of masturbation?

Yeah, you said it well; it is very hard to set right the ten heads of Ravana upon one body. It is always problematic to maintain the balance. If you put one head in the middle and five in the left, then four will remain for the right. It’s visually imbalanced. It is better to put a bigger one surrounded by nine smaller heads. Otherwise, four heads on each side, left and right, then put one on top and in bottom the rest.

No, it also is not that good.

No, I don’t have a stuff of ten heads. It’s just rhetoric.

Neither have I had a body with twenty hands.

No human, no god, no demon- I am a being, having a thousand of beings within it. Being or beings-that is the question.

So in my epic, the conflict is placed between:

The being and the non- being,

The masked and the unmasked,

The definite and the doubt,

The face and the mirror,

The lover and the loveable; more precisely

Between you and me. Me and you. You and you. Me and me.

But, not between the good and the evil, certainly not.

Everybody is privileged in my epic. Everybody is pretentious in my epic as we cannot discloth ourselves. I’m saying about everybody, who is not beholder of a body, I say about him/her also.

I don’t know why one likes to make a mask for Ravana. Why people enjoys putting fire to it. Why a mask of Ravana ever appears much greater than that of lord Rama. I don’t know even why people put the color of blue on Ravana’s face[30].

i.e., faces.

EPILOGUE

(Or catharsis)

My epic is subverted.

My metaphor is subverted. My process of imagination is subverted.

Residing in my subversive time I subvert, dear, your heartiest love.

Oh my audience, my spectator:

my bystander, my witness, my observer, my onlooker –

I would like to offer you a cup of tea in the end.

I, a subversive performer with a subverted character (or characters) won’t ask for your

BIG HANDS.

Ramchandra’s journey was from exploration of the power of cultivation under Rajarshi Janaka’s kingdom to the great economy of Swarna-Lanka, the golden city along with the political power of Ravana…..as many people believe. For some others the same story is one of territorializing the minor – or to say, a story of colonization.

All this things are not my concern, as this time I am a mere performer, not a scholar. Neither shall I raise question on the vice and virtue of Ram or Ravana.

Than what’s my area? What’s my field?

It’s SUBVERSION.

Let me offer you a cup of tea.

Bibliography

1. Wendy Doniger O’laherty, The Origin of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Motilal Banarasidas, Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar, New Delhi, 110007, 1976)

2. Arun Kukreja, Dashanan (translated from Hindi by Neera Kukreja Sohoni, Rupa. Co. 7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi, 110 002, 2004)

3. Nabanita Dev Sen, A Woman’s re-lelling of the Rama-Tale: Narrative Strategies employed in the “Chandrabati Ramayana” (in Narrative: A Seminar, edited by Amiya Dev, a collection of papers from a seminar organized by Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi, 22-25 February 1990. Published by Sahitya Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, 35, Feroze Shah Road, New Delhi, 110 001, 2005)

4. Richard Schechner, Performative Circumstances From the Avant Garde to Ramlila ( published by Naveen Kishore for The Seagull Books, 26 Circus Avenue, Calcutta 700017, 1983)

5. Gangagati Das, Sita Vanavas Kavya, (edited by Shivanath Bhattacharya, Bhattacharya Agency, Dibrugarh)

6. Keshada Mahanta, Vichitra Ramayani Katha, (Published by Asom Prakashan Parishad, Guwahati, 780 001)

7. Dr Rangeya Raghava, Prachin Bharatiya Parampara aur Itihas

8. Dr Krishnanarayanaprasad Magadh, Asom Prantiya Ramkatha

9. Malvi’s Patan, tr. Dr. K. Jamanadas, Ravana: a non-violent “Gananayaka”(chief of the republics); Shiddhartha Gautam Buddha and Ravana were contemporary

10. Shubhra Joshi, Iconographic Changes in “Ravana Shaking Kailasha” in Caves of Jogeshwari, Kharosa, Elephanta & Ellora, (read in the UGC/DSA Departmental seminar on “Medieval Concepts and Aspects” in the Department of Art History and Aesthetics, MS University of Baroda, 24-25-26 January, 2000)

11. Ramdeo Paswan, Bharat Se Arya

12. Dalit Voice, May1-15, 1998.

13. H. D. Sankaliya, Ramayana, myth or reality

14. M.S.Purnalingam Pillai, Ravana: king of Lanka

15. Chandra Prasad Jidyasu, Ravana aur Uski Lanka

16. Acharya Chatursen, Wayam Raksham

17. Acharya Narandra Deva, Buddha Darshana

18. D. P. Chottopadhyay.Lokayata

19. Prof Hiralal Shukla, Adhivasi Asmita aur Vikas

20. Arvind Kumar, Siteyacha Parityag

21. Navakanta Baruah Ravana

22. Navakanta Baruah, Mor aru prithibir

23. Premendra Mitra, Dashanan

24. K. R. Narayanan, Retelling the Epics

25. Shaonli Mitra, (Desh, puja special publication, 2004), Sitar Uttaran

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For various reasons I am grateful to them:

Shivaji K Panikkar, Rustam Bharucha, Santosh S., Deeptha Achar, Abha Sheth,

Geeta Kapur, Tapati Guha Thakurata, Parul Dave Mukherjee

Shakti Bhatt, Kardam Bhatt, K K Muhammad,

Akhilesh Arya, Santosh Kumar Sakhinala, Abhimanyu Mishra, Bikhan Chudasama, Parvez Kabir, Amitabha Adhikari, Akash Luke, Kaustubh Das, Dharitri Baro, Arundhati Saikia, Jharna, Smita, Gitanjali, Saraswati,

Rahul Jain, Yagnesh Sidvadkar, Lokesh Khodke, Abhijit Paul, Mahanda, Namrata, Saadh Nawab, Nachiketa, Sneha Raghavan, Abhiram Paduel, nirmal Bhagat, Jayashree Venkatadurai, Syed Taufik Riaz, Roshni, Sisir Thapa, Taslima Akhtar, Ankita Sud, Ankuran Dutta, Bedanta Puzari, Tribeni Sharma, Rikimi Madhukulya, Mahan Jyoti Dutta, Sharad Mittal,

Hemachandra Goswami, Ratan Thium, Badal Sarkar, Parnab Mukherjee, Rafikul Hussain, Saumik Nandi Mazumdar, Anshuman Dasgupta, Dipak Mahanta, Jnan Pujari, Rabijita Gogoi, Pankaj Jyoti Bhuyan,

Manoram Gogoi, Diganta Ojha… and many

[1] Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing, LABYRINTHS, Selected Stories and Other Writings, Edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, Pengiun Books, 1970, pp. 285.

[2] The truthful thief of Habib Tanvir’s Charandas Chor.

[3] “Wine Dark Sea”- A Homerian phrase

[4] Navakanta Barua , a celebrated Assamese poet who composed a poetic monologue named Ravana, Madhusudan Dutta, a celebrated Bengali poet, known for his Meghnad Vadh Kavya.

[5] …He is the hero of the same…he is himself like a sign, a long, thin graphism, a letter that has just escaped from the open pages of a book. His whole being is nothing but language, text, printed pages, stories that have already been written down…..

…his whole journey is a quest for similitudes….

See: Michel Foucault, “Don Quixote”, in the chapter “representing”, Order of Things, An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, A Translation of Les Mots et les choses, Vintage Books, New York, 1994, pp. 46-50.

[6] George Luis Borges’s story on the mysterious life of Shakespeare.

[7] Line from Navakanta Baruah’s poem, Polayon (Escape).

[8] Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes”.

[9] Arun kukreja, Dashanan, A Soliloquy on Ravana, Translated from the original Hindi by Neera Kukreja Sohoni, Rupa Ekanki Series, 2004, p. 9.

[10] See preface by Gopalachari, in his Katha-Ramayana.

[11] Acording to Shiva Samhita the word Rama comes from Raman. It can be read as synonym of “love”.

Ramante rasika yasmin divyaneka gunashraye

Swayam chandramanye teshu ramastena gunashraye… Shivasamhita, 18/5

Also see, Keshada Mahanta’s Vichitra Ramayani Katha, pp 26

[12] Lines from Kukreja’s Dashanan.

[13] “Ophelia, her heart is a clock… I dig the clock which was my heart out of my breast”, Heiner Muller, Hamlet Machine, 1979, translation by Dennis Redmond.

[14] Ravana: a non-violent “Gananayaka”,(chief of the republics); Shiddhartha Gautam Buddha and Ravana were contemporary/ Malvi’s PATAN, tr. Dr. K. Jamanadas. See references.

[15] Ravana: a non-violent “Gananayaka”,(chief of the republics); Shiddhartha Gautam Buddha and Ravana were contemporary/ Malvi’s PATAN, tr. Dr. K. Jamanadas

[16] Rgveda, Taittiriya Upanishada, MahaMrityunjay Mantra or Rudra Mantra.

[17] Vaghora is a river in Maharashtra that covers two major art historical sites in India, Ajanta and Ellora. The visual depictions in the caves of Ellora are elegant and graceful what no words can explain.

Ravana Shaking Mount Kailasha- was a popular theme in Indian sculptural practices. Particularly in the Cave No 16 (Kailashnatha Temple) there is a amazing sculptural composition on the theme. Ravana Shakes the Mount Kailasha with his ten hands but Lord Shiva makes it stable with a thumb pressure of his right leg.

[18] These lines were written much earlier and performed in various places. Translated into English by Parnab Mukherjee.

[19] Actors are probably the only art makers who can be told (in response to gestures they make with their vocal and physical apparatus, their own attributes and their responses) by an observer that what they have palpably executed is not real or truthful. Anuradha Kapur

, “Actors Prepare”, Theatre India, N S D. Vol-9

[20] Once B V Karanth explained in a theatre workshop, while dealing with actor’s training.

[21] The actor or actress represents, but what he or she represents is always still in the future and already in the past, where as his or her representation is impassible and divided, unfolded without being ruptured, neither acting nor being acted upon. It is in this sense that there is an actor’s paradox; the actor maintains himself in the instant in order to act out something perpetually anticipated and delayed, hoped for and recalled. The role played is never that of a character: it is a theme (the complex theme or sense) constituted by the components of the event, that is, by the communicating singularities effectively liberated from the limits of individuals and persons. The actor strains his entire personality in a moment which is always acting out other roles when acting one role.

Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense P. 171.

[22] There is time for everyone, under the heaven: from bible, used by T. S. Eliot in his Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock. Pit Seegar composed a famous song “Turn Turn Turn” on it.

[23] A term coined for interior monologue, see discussions on the poem mentioned above.

[24] Majulee’s Samaguri Satra is popular for the giant traditional performing mask of Ravana.

[25] An information about Ayodhya Pathak is taken from From Richard Schichner’s research, Performative circumstances: from Avant Garde to Ramlila. published by Naveen Kishore for The Seagull Books, 26 Circus Avenue, Calcutta 700017, 1983)

[26] Hoffgan is a character from Claus Mann’s play Maphisto, a character derived from the dialectics of Goethe’s Faust.

[27] Line from Milton; Paradise Lost. It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

[28] Line from Premendra Mitra’s Bengali poem Dashanan.

[29] A dilemma from Navakanta Baruah’s Assamese Ravana.

[30] A couple of years ago we interviewed Hemchandra Goswami, a traditional mask-craftmen from Majulee. He said that, Ravana was from a Brahman origin. Again he was a great intellectual of the time, that’s why blue color is put on his face, just like the gods.

Monday, October 7, 2019

RAVANA – KATHA : A Disposable Theatre

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

Contributors