Brilliant mosaic of song and story
M.RAMESH
|
By any standard, Visakha Hari's two-day Harikatha performance for the ICICI Bank at the Music Academy was a big success.
|
PHOTO: M. KARUNAKARAN
CASTING A SPELL: Visakha Hari.
The old mami seated next to this writer in the front row of the Music Academy hall was constantly wiping tears off her eyes with her handkerchief. Several others in the packed hall were similarly moved, arms folded in devotion or stunned by the powerful delivery from the stage. They were all in a different era, time-warped into the story of Rama, by the magical spell of Visakha Hari's musical discourse.
``My lotus-eyed Rama is not even sixteen, I see no capacity in him to fight the demons," pleaded King Dasaratha to Sage Visvamitra. The Valmiki Ramayana verse, ``Unna sodasha varso me Ramo..." presented in Saveri, must rank among the finest Saveris that ever rang across Music Academy.
From the vain pleas of the tormented King, to Sage Visvamitra making light of the challenge of the bow, Siva dhanush, (``paritha vil evan kaikku podhumo podhado" in the words of Arunachala Kavi) and to the divine union of Rama and Seetha, Visakha studded the performance with perhaps 60 sparkling pieces of literature delivered in as many ragas and in several languages.
ICICI Bank had chosen Visakha Hari for its annual musical concert for this year. It was a two-day event, on the themes Seetha Kalyanam and Andal Kalyanam. Judge it by any measure, such as the audience-reaction as exemplified by the front row-mami, the programme was a complete success.
Something for everyone
Visakha Hari has something for everybody, perhaps everything for some. Bhakti, Carnatic music, literature, wit — all these mix and cook in her cauldron of oratory into a heady stuff that leaves the partaker dazed, but thrilled.
Take for example, her description of how Rama, while fighting the demons led by Maricha and Subahu, shifted the bow repeatedly from one hand to the other in rapid succession as the other hand reached back to the quiver for an arrow, so that in the torrent of arrows he rained on the enemy there was not even a fraction of a second wasted — the way Visakha described this in a staccato of words drew a thunderous applause from the hall.
The portrayal of Andal's sweet hallucinations about Krishna playfully jumping on her little sand-castle and her subsequent lovelorn laments that along with the sand-castle, the mischievous youth had destroyed her heart too, or Andal's calling-awake her friends to worship, entreating some, admonishing others, or how Andal worried herself about how Krishna would not reply to her outcries — this rendered in the famous Khambodi composition of Thyagaraja, ``O Rangasayee" — all bore eloquent testimony to Visakha's prowess as a Harikatha artiste.
There were gems from Tyagaraja's pancharatna and Andal's Tiruppavai (``Aazhi mazhai Kanna" in Varali was movingly rendered).
There were other compositions from Tyagaraja, some presented in full (``Sogasu jooda tharama" in Kannada Gowla, ``Paramathmudu" in Vagadheeswari and ``O Rangasayee"), some in part (``Entha Muddho" in Bindu Malini, ``Aparama Bhakti" in Panthuvarali, ``Evaru Ra" in Mohanam).
There were snatches from Meera Bhajan and nuggets from Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit literature. Many of these were plucked out of the contexts and inlaid into the brilliant mosaic that Visakha made for the audience.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
