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DEEPRA THAMAS written by SamkuttyPattomkary
Deepra Thamassu- A
Reading
“Imagination
is more important than knowledge; for knowledge is limited while imagination
embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand”
–
2oth
century Physicist Albert Einstein said this.
For
humanity that gets crushed between dichotomies of philosophical systems which
distanced light from darkness, which separated mind and body, and which closed
down the inside from outside, Kanthakan
in Deepra Thamassu becomes a grand imagination- the heart to be reclaimed by
philosophies. The horse that died breaking its head at the exit of Thathagatha from home to the homeless
world…by dragging this flame of eternal waiting, still burning underneath
Achiravathi River, to the Enlightened One, what question is being put by
Vidurdabhan before the Dharma Samhitas?
By
picking up some rare stories related to Buddha and going beyond the boundaries
of history, new possibilities of experience are created by Samkutty in this
script. Connecting script writing with possibilities of performance and
presentation process and fields of experience in an experimental structure,
many important questions are raised in this venture. In a decisive path of
resistance and self-representation of the people marginalized by the Indian caste
system, Deeprathamassu illuminates certain dark passages of history by the
sparks of new democratic conscience.
11
Jambu
Island is not an even terrain. Inside the new emperor of Kosala, who burns in
rage on the twilight banks of the river Achiravathi that flows down from the
Himalaya ranges, its highs and lows and its twists and turns are clear like
daylight. That is why Vidurdabhan – the mixed progeny of the Sakya and the
Kosala – captures power from his own father after having kept him in captivity and
sets out unflinchingly to wage a war in revenge of a big humiliation that had
cast a shadow on his sense of freedom.
On
the one hand, like a song book of water, Achiravathi, and on the other, 101
pots of water of purification ritual that melt out of the snows of yester
years…As Vidurdabhan is in conflict, not with the fact that his mother was a
servant of the Sakyas but with the fact of Sakya emperor’s deceit and the
purification rituals that reinforce the hierarchies of races, this character is
carved in intense complexity by Samkutty.
111
Samkutty’s
training and experiences as a painter as well as a director have given great depth
and grandeur to Deepra Thamassu. The character of Mahanama Sakyan, who foresees
the impending tragedy in the form of the dark shadows of the snow mountains, is
drawn in a canvass full of lyrical quality and intense imageries. The
nature-selves whose interiority and exteriority flow into each other have given
it a frame that creates deep dimensions of space.
Reading
through Wallace Stevens’s poem, ‘Blanche McCarthy’ that begins as “Look into
the terrible mirror of the sky; not into the deadness of the glass that can
only reflect the surface…” Anthropologist Don Handelman says: “sky is a
polymorphic topos, a terrible mindscape of the shapes of innerness and a
landscape of shapes of outerness and the incessant movement between them”. When
the living sky can illuminate the deep darknesses of the selves, it’s an
infinite possibility of viewing; the expansivity of creative process. It is to
such an expanse, to the inner views, that the heart of Mahanama Sakya pushes
him by urging him to look into the sky. And his revelations are dense moments
of performativity that can be experimentally visualized on stage.
1V
The
woman who breaks the congregation of male characters in Deeprathamassu is the
mad figure of Vasabha Khathiya’s mother that reveals in Mahanama Sakya’s
subconscious mind. Her burning curse is the anger of the deceived woman, not
just by the Sakya, but that of womanhood deceived by the social systems and
made invisible in philosophies. While in Buddhism too, the status of women is
that of subjugation under patriarchy, here in Deeprathamassu it highlights the
presence of absence.
As
the female chorus who narrates the story come and go as witnesses to time and
place throughout the play, in another place, the male chorus who makes costume
changes into women sings satirically to question the social role of women ,
“We
are the perfect maids who know
How
good the national duties are
Where
is Madhavi? Vijaya? Shakthika?
Forget
not, girl, this is war duty
Service
is for the King’s welfare
Let
us act this part in a hitting way!!”
V
About
the decline of Buddhism in India by the second millennium CE, D. D Kosambi, the
Marxist son of Dharmananda Kosambi, one of the modern Indian thinkers who
converted to Buddhism, has written eloquently. While Hinduism became capable of
adopting partially, the major tenet of Buddhism, i.e., non-violence, in forms
of Bhakti Movements, Kosambi argued, Buddhism decayed because of the wealth
tied up in the monasteries and also because of the alienation of the Sangha
from the lives of ordinary believers. As Gail Omvedt pointed out, Kosambi
however had never been so sarcastic about the Brahmanic rituals. Kosambi who
believed that the lasting influence of Buddhism was its non-vioent path- a
useful principle for rulers, had not questioned the violent intolerance of
Brahmanical Hinduism towards Buddhism or
the brutal social system of castes in India with such eloquence.
A
major figure who explained Buddhist Thought in terms of a guideline for the
social revolution of the dalit-bahujans in India in the 20th century
was Dr. B.R Ambedkar. Ambedkar saw the relevance of rational thought and the
ideal of human equality in Buddhism as against Brahmanical Hinduism rooted in
magical practices and a hierarchical social system. He also argued that
Buddhism had more relevance as a social philosophy than the Marxist ideologies.
Ambedkar who began with his early studies of Marxism with great deal of
inclinations to it, had but argued vehemently in one of his final articles such
as “Buddha and Karl Marx” that the Marxist economic interpretations of history
and ideology failed to analyse and resist the Indian caste system effectively.
He valued the Buddhist Sangha society as a model society and he believed in its
potential for transforming the individual and society through Dhammapada. 52
years ago, in 1956, Ambedkar accepted Buddhism as his new religion and led the
mass vow, leading thousands of dalits to Buddhism.
Vidurdabhan,
in Deepra Thamassu, does not advocate killing or violence as the natural
desirable path of resistance, rather, he externalises the magnitude of riot in
the selves of those who were subjected to the violence of caste system. The
anger of the oppressed becomes riotous here. He argues that the response of
Buddha to the inequalities of Varnashramadharma is insufficient. Sakya’s deceit
and the purification ritual that he conducted following Vidurdabhan’s visit to
his ‘maternal home’ are taken lightly by Buddha, but they are unforgettable
humiliation for him, Vidurdabhan reveals. The instances of Pasenadi not only forgiving
his son even after having been dethroned and kept in captivity by the son, but
also declaring that he was reborn through this captivity, and the people of
Kosala rallying around Vidurdabhan after the initial shock of his self-proclamation
as the new emperor, are complex truths of the memories of suffering.
V1
Samkutty
uses tools from the classical Nataka
Rupakam without sanskritising the text. They are used in such a way that
they become means through which the world of Deepra Thamassu becomes
multi-layered and expansive. The segment, “Aswahrudayam Thedunna Bodhikal” (The
Enlightened Ones in Search of the Horse’s Heart) is the performance of the
selves, splitting through the techniques of ‘athmagatham’ and ‘prakasam’. When
Buddha appears as lacking an understanding of whatever human passions rejected,
Vidurdabhan becomes the embodiment of those rejected concerns…and when
Vidurdabhan appears as walking to create history by evading the dharma ideal, Buddha
stands there as the living symbol of it….and it is Kanthakan who awaits in the
layers of these selves to unite them in a future of mutual understanding. It’s
the decisive great moment in the performance process to see the ‘other’ in the
‘self’ or the ‘self’ in the ‘other’. Before that grand finale of its
realisation attained, Vidurdabhan crosses the river of blood.
Kanthakan
is the lamp. When Vidurdabhan recognizes that his sacrifice was not merely
loyalty to his master; rather, he went beyond the greatness of Buddha through
self sacrifice, that is to rejuvenate an understanding about the miseries of
the dejected in the form of waves of water that should moisten dry
philosophies. When Kanthakan becomes the uniting link that connects in the flow
of time, Vidurdabhan and the Buddha, the erstwhile diverging branches, that
union becomes the grand finale of the play. Thanks to Deepra Thamassu, and to
dear friend Samkutty, for keeping the flame alive.
Sreekala
Sivasankaran
Theatre
anthropologist, Teen Moorthy, Newdelhi.
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