FICTION
A blend of Kathakali and the novel
M. MUKUNDAN
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Anita Nair writes about man-woman relationships and complex Kathakali aesthetics with equal felicity. M. MUKUNDAN
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Mistress, Anita Nair, Penguin India, p.428, Rs. 350.
This wasn't how he was meant to die: the water swirling above his head, cascading into his ears and nose, filling his mouth and rushing to his lungs, stilling forever his flailing arms and legs. Salt in his eyes, salt lining the back of his throat, salt poisoning his blood.
STRAIGHT out of a Latin American novel? No, it is from Anita Nair's new novel, Mistress.
So what's it all about, Nair's new novel? To narrate the story of a novel under review is a clichéd way of reviewing. So this reviewer doesn't tell you the story. But let the protagonist of the novel, Koman himself, do it for the benefit of the readers. Says Koman: "That's Chris Stewart. He is a travel writer and is researching a book about Kerala in which I figure!" So is it about the travel writer Christopher Stewart, the Kathakali maestro Koman and Kerala? It is. But there's a lot more to it.
Mistress is set in the surroundings of the river Nila — Kerala's own Ganges — that are well known for art and literature. Many immortal writers and Kathakali artistes have lived and died there while some still live on. Not far from the river is the famous Kerala Kalamandalam, the cradle of dance and music. The dance institute where Koman trained as a Kathakali artiste is, it seems, the Kerala Kalamandalam.
Changed lives
The institute attracts every year a number of students from abroad, in particular from Europe. French girls wearing their hair braided the Malayali way, clad in a sari, walking the Arcadian countryside provide an added motif to the region dotted with Namboodiri illams and snake temples. The influx of foreign students in the early 1970s transmuted the lives of Kathakali artistes who had known until then only indigence. The disciples took their gurus home — Europe and the U.S. — who came back after a stint there carrying Sony tape recorders and bottles of Red Label Scotch whiskey. What is sad about it is that while their lives changed for the better, their art got corrupted. An art form that requires at least 12 years of rigorous training was supposedly learnt by the foreign artistes in a year or so. They presented it in their countries on their return while many European dancers — bad and good alike — drew extensively from it for their choreography. Taking advantage of this situation, some Kathakali artistes migrated to Europe, married European women and prospered. Mistress is to be read against this backdrop.
In much the same way Kathakali eclipses other dance forms by its grandeur, Koman shadows all other personae, even though they are woven in a style combining ease and elan. It is apparently a book of love and passion, but it is also a novel about Kathakali. As this age-old dance form — whose repertoire draws mainly from the Hindu mythologies — progressively freed itself from all its rigours, Racine's play "Phedra" and even Mary Magdelene found their way into its fold. Inversely, in Nair's novel, Kathakali itself finds its way into the novel.
Mistress is divided into nine broad chapters, each one named after one of the Kathakali navarasas — sringaaram (love), haasyam (contempt), karunam (sorrow), raudram (fury), veeram (courage), bhayaanakam (fear), beebhalsam (disgust), adbhutam (wonder) and shaantam (peace). In each chapter, the novelist creates the correct mood of the corresponding bhava.
Even Koman's parakeet Malini is a vivid character. At the sight of anyone entering the gates of his house, flapping her wings in the cage, Malini would shriek: "kallan, kondhan" (A thief, a moron). Caught as they are in their searing passions, almost all personages at one time or the other take recourse to thievery and conceit. In a lighter vein, we can say that they are all kallans and kondhans — and we, too!
Creativity and passion
The Nila stirs not only creativity, it also ignites love and passion. That's why the Kathakali guru Koman gets trapped in torrid love affairs with many a woman, including Angela, even in his old age. That's why Radha, deserting her ever-loving husband Shyam, develops with the travel writer Chris "an intimacy with a million nerve ends". And in another time and space, there's the subtle love story of Sethu and Saadiya. It takes place in the mythical town of Arabipatnam — where ten thousand horses from Arabia had landed of which nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine died — somewhere in Tamil Nadu beyond the reach of the Nila. But as Sethu hails from the Nila heartland he can't escape from the surging love the novel is redolent with.
What's interesting is the fact that the Nila is almost invisible in the novel, having been reduced to a mere name, that of the holiday resort called "Near-the-Nila", where Chris is put up. There is a poetic scene of Chris and Radha making love in the resort on a moonlit night. Not only the river Nila, even a resort carrying its name can make you amorous.
After the performance
Moments of intense passion and love are seen through the eyes of Kathakali artistes: Seeing Radha and Chris together, Koman remembers the burning love scene involving Duryodhana and Bhanumati in Uttara Swayamvaram, one of the most beautiful episodes in Kathakali repertoire.
Kathakali is a complete art wherein you will find everything that is there in life. Like a true Kathakali spectacle performed by master veshakaars that lasts all night, Nair evokes in her readers wonder, delight and grief. She writes about man-woman relationships and complex Kathakali aesthetics with equal felicity. When you put down the novel, you feel as if you are walking back home in the pale early morning light at the end of a nightlong Kathakali performance. What fills your soul, then, is shaantam — the last of the nine bhavas.
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