Patiala beyond peg and pagree
LEELA VENKATARAMAN
|
The Heritage Festival that concluded recently in Patiala has grown into a vibrant cultural extravaganza.
|
CONVERGING CULTURAL STRAINS Scenes from Navtej Johar's `Fana'
There is more to Patiala in Malwa district of Punjab than the ubiquitous `Patiala Peg'. Showcasing Patialvi culture, traditional and contemporary, the Heritage Society in association with INTACH crafted the now well-established annual Heritage Festival, celebrating its fourth consecutive year. What makes the event unique is the range of magnificent sites resonating with history as venues for music, dance and theatre. From the `Pagree, Parande and Jutti' to `Tent Pegging', Dog Show and Pop Concert, to a symposium on subjects like how the dreams and fantasies of rural Punjabi women are spun into embroidered Phulkari motifs, the all-encompassing Heritage festival caters to a range of tastes.
Open and polite, the average man on the street reflects the composite Patiala culture, signs of which are in devotees of all religious persuasions offering prayers at the Dukh Nivaran Sahib Gurudwara or in several Sikh devotees flocking the Kali temple established by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh.
It was again a converging of several cultural strains, when the opening evening of the festival featured Bharati Shivaji and troupe presenting Swan Lake in Mohiniattam style to Tchaikovsky's Western classical score - and in the land of the Bhangra! Poetic justice in that the venue was the historic Qila Mubarak, with its mixed Mughal and Rajasthani architecture, not excluding touches of British Gothic arches and marble fireplaces!
Baba Ali Singh in 1763 laid the foundation while grandson Amar Singh completed the fort. And inside the Durbar Hall it is, that Yadavendra Singh in 1947 voluntarily signed the Instrument of Accession. The flame Baba Ali Singh brought from the local Kali temple still burns inside.
Bharati Shivaji's adaptation of Swan Lake at the festival.
An enthralled audience watched, despite the impregnable wall of over-enthusiastic cameramen in front hiding stage-view ever so often. The performance glowed with the lasya-filled swans led by Vijayalakshmi - acting as a foil to the male Chhau vigour of Santosh Nair and Anil Panchal, even for this critic, treated to earlier performances of this production. A discerning foreigner summed up: "Swan Lake ballet is a cliché. But this! It is as if Tchaikovsky had composed for Mohiniattam - and what male dancers!"
If the off-key shehnai welcome of the evening made one wince, the extremely discriminating bouts of applause for the best sarangi, harmonium, tabla and Shubha Mudgal's akaara taans the next evening showed that musical sensitivity on this soil, which nurtured the Patiala gharana, remains. Further corroboration was when a scholar participating in the symposium remarked: "A Heritage festival starting with Gurbani invocation in Charukesi when the Granth Sahib has detailed 65 ragas! No. Modern innovations can come later."
Contemporary perception
Drawing inspiration from traditional love poetry and motifs from myth, but very contemporary in perception and blurring distinctive identity boundaries of region, of gender, or of dance style, brilliantly visualised in a body language fusing Bharatanatyam, Chhau and Modern Dance was `Fana' choreographed by Navtej Johar. While rejecting and negotiating between fixed identities, the dance in its free-flowing narrative, reinvented and reshaped images moving across existential spaces. Poetry and music down the ages have celebrated the ecstasy and pain of love, in manifestations devotional and erotic. In dovetailing the most ancient Tamil romantic poetry of Kutrala Kuravanji with the throbbing Punjabi verses of Heer Ranjha, in the evocative Sufi music of Madan Gopal Singh dissolving into the fluid Carnatic melodies by Elangovan, `Fana' provided one of the most seamless examples. The love of Parvati as cow emptying her udder on an anthill of Sivalinga (round which Pandanallur is believed to have grown) unobtrusively flows into a passionate Heer Ranjha encounter, which merges silently into a Kutrala Kuravanji take. The smooth narration reflecting many moods with teermanams becoming part of the emotive flow inspired highly evocative performances from Navtej, Anil Panchal and Radhika Laukaran. But too much of a good thing too palls, and overstretched production needs editing to avoid repetitions.
The festival over four years has given the common man in Patiala a new concern for the reclaiming and preservation of his heritage.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
