To spin a yarn

Since pre-historic times, it has been a legacy of mankind that the hunting men would not merely tell, on return, about their exploits against deer and boars to children and womenfolk eager to listen to their oral tales, but would also illustrate them with cave-paintings on the rock-faces. Story-telling has been the oldest of oral arts everywhere — describing events in words and images, often by improvisation or embellishment with music and dance. Narratives were shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and story-telling included plots, characters and narrative points of view.

In India for instance, groups of singers, musicians and painters, called chitrakattis, moved from village to village in Andhra to tell the village-dwellers, the great stories of Hindu mythology. Progressively they illustrated their accounts using large bolts of canvas painted on the spot with rudimentary means and dyes extracted from plants. Thus, the first kalamkari was born. Similarly, one found in Hindu temples large panels of kalamkari depicting the episodes of Indian mythology, akin to the stained glasses of Christian cathedrals

Story-telling with frescoes and dance, recently organised by India International Centre was an illustrated lecture by the scholar MV Bhaskar. The latter took three forms of plastic arts — figurative (incidentally, a taboo in Islam), narrative and pattern (floral and geometric), presented his work on “alternative forms of re-construction and restoration of mural paintings”, and recounted many fascinating episodes of the dying art of murals, frescoes and bass relief. Utilising field camera and ancillary digital-lens technology — to solve the distorted-vision problems around pillars and cornices — his illustrations came from a group of prominent south Indian temples, whose vaulting roofs abounded in serial narratives of Ramayana and the Puranas.

In an absorbing story-telling mode, many erased portions of the overhead panels of Ramayana stories were re-created pictorially in kalamkari form. Skeletal sketches of Rama, lakshmana and Sita were fully fleshed out and coloured right before the viewers’ eyes; an image of Hanumana sprang alive to become a shadow puppet and leap over the high seas; and, surprise of surprises, Angada was seen actually disrobing Mandodari, Ravana’s principal queen, as described only in Kamba Ramayana.

In the second part of the evening, Bharatanatyam dancer Justin McCarthy etched out brilliantly stories of Mohini — using only angik (physical expressions), but absolutely no aharya (costumes and jewellery) and very little sattvik (facial expressions), the latter being covered by kalamkari cardboard-masks of the female Mohini or the male Bhasmasura and Shiva. The well-known mythical tales of the Shiva-worshipper demon and the churning of the ‘Ocean of Milk’ for nectar by gods and demons together, ending in a fierce fight — both saved by Vishnu assuming the form of the enchantress Mohini — were narrated superbly by the solo dancer, supported by kalamkari images projected in the cyclorama.

Excerpts from interview with the scholar

I have been working over ten years. Over this time, I’ve been not merely trying to arrive at my products, namely, continuous  images of epic stories depicted on the vaults, but also constantly improving upon my process. 

When kalamkari artists re-created the lost sections, we constantly got them evaluated by scholars and experts in shilpa shastra and checked authenticity from the context.

As a resident of Chennai, I found the living kalamkars of Srikalahasti located not too far away. Another reason was that although they are normally used to small canvases, there were a few who could adjust to my large screens for drawing. Above all, their styles suited my purpose of re-creation.

Excerpts from interview with the dancer

The idea came in 2014 when I was invited for the get-together in london for Alternative Sexuality. It was a wonderful experience at the Blackbox Theatre, without any regard for race or community. When Bhaskar mooted the theme, the mythology of Mohini occurred to me at once.

I reckoned that a hand-held figurative mask is the easiest means to communicate to an uninitiated audience. Since kalamkari has very clear lines and since I have always been fond of this art, we selected P Ramakrishnarya from Srikalahasti to create the projected paintings and design the hand-held masks. Since Mohini is not familiar to kalamkars, the artist had to depend on crude sketches drawn by me.

I used female songs for the Mohini portion and support of only musical instruments of tavil and nadaswaram for my dance as male characters. 

I am enamoured of Kathakali and Kutiyattam. I found use of some Kathakali eyes in the sitting postures and body-shakes in the standing postures for male characters appropriate.