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Saga in dance and song
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Jaya Subramaniam travels widely and taps local talent to popularise her late husband Prof. V. Subramaniam's works on the Buddha
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CREATING AWARENESS Jaya Subramaniam PHOTO: S. R. Raghunathan
Ordinary mortals sing lullabies to their children. But someone as talented as Prof. V. Subramaniam would compose songs of his own. When his four- year-old son questioned the late professor why there were no songs on the Buddha, he picked up the tiny gauntlet. Word, rhythm and melody flowed as an integral whole, shaping themselves into full-scale dance dramas. The result was a massive corpus of work — 23 dance dramas in Sanskrit and five in Tamil on the most sculpted but little sung about prophet of peace. "These are primarily to be judged not as religion but art, they are musical compositions glorifying the Buddha through song and dance," says his wife Jaya Subramaniam who has devoted herself to creating awareness about the work of the former Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He died 18 months ago at the age of 83. Jaya, who is Executive Director of the Lumbini Arts Society at Ottawa, has been travelling widely since his death getting local talent — dancers and musicians — to stage his works whether in India, Canada, the U.K. or the U.S.
"On May 15 , Buddha Purnima Day, we hope to present his dance drama "Buddhavatara" in Chennai, says Jaya. The dance dramas, which are mostly women centric, have songs set to classical ragas and include those based on women in Buddhist literature such as Madhavi and Manimekalai, those who propagated Buddhism such as Asoka's daughter Sanghamitra, and the women who played a crucial role in the Buddha's life such as Ambapali, Maya, Sujata and Yasodhara.
Recently at the Music Academy mini hall, veteran dancer C. V. Chandrasekhar brought scenes from "Angulimala" to the audience. The dreaded dacoit was unveiled in all his ferocious hues before he adopted the peaceful path of the Buddha. Charulatha Mani sang a selection of compositions by the dramatist.
Good response
"These dance dramas draw a good response in Canada. Shoppers in malls would stop my husband to enquire when the next one would be presented. French Canadians have a great affinity for culture. But in the West, though people are eager to know about Buddhism, they are not too keen on learning about India because they feel India is too complex and has too many details," says Jaya, who also conducts fashion shows for charity. These shows "sing the glory of the sari" which fascinates Westerners. Most NRI women have a fabulous wardrobe of saris and she makes full use of this. "I am now planning to put up fashion shows to generate funds for staging my husband's works. Funding is our main problem so we sometimes do only character sketches," says Jaya. "Sanghamitra" by the Dhananjayans is the best known among the full scale productions. It has toured various countries and been presented innumerable times.
Among other dancers who have brought the music and the words to life are Usha Raghavan of London, Vasantha Krishnan of Montreal, Vasanthalakshmi and Narasimhachari of Chennai. Parvati Ravi Ghantasala, Anita Guha and Leela Samson have all expressed interest as have leading singers. Lakshmi Viswanathan will be presenting the moods of Yashodara soon. Jaya has accompanied Prof. Subramaniam many times to Chennai to give lec dems during the December festival. "My husband always said it would take 15 generations of appreciation for any work to be accepted as part of the repertoire," says Jaya, who wants to republish the books of the professor "who pioneered the sociological study of the performing arts of India."
"This year, the world is celebrating the 2,550th birth anniversary of the Buddha and we hope the dance dramas will have a good response everywhere," she says.
KAUSALYA SANTHANAM
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