Sadanand Menon: Two deaths, no wedding

CRITICALLY INCLINED

The death of Malayalam poet Kadamanitta Ramakrishnan, on Monday, revives memories of a time many young Malayalis today would be unfamiliar with. I first met Kadamanitta at the historic 'Peechi Sargasamvadam' (The Colloquium at Peechi) of 1974.

It was historic for the fact that despite a sense of polemics and contestation, the finest Malayali poets, writers, filmmakers, visual artists could actually put their heads together at one of the most crucial moments in the life of the young Indian democracy. Remember, this was just a few months before the draconian national Emergency of 1975. And the air was thick with premonition and a lurking sense of danger. And artists were entirely conscious about the need for radical positions, for politicising art, and for resisting all attempts at either marketisation or censorship.

The presiding deities at the Colloquium were M Govindan and O V Vijayan "" eloquent masters of ceremony and troubleshooters rolled into one. Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Aravindan, M T Vasudevan Nair, John Abraham, Mankada Ravi Varma, Namboodiri, Vishwanadhan, Thoppil Bhasi, Padmarajan, Satchidanandan and K G Shankara Pillai were some of the star list in attendance. And then, there was the typhoon called Kadamanitta.

As someone just out of college and into a new career in journalism, I listened spellbound to his recitation of 'Kurathi' and its alliterative, onomatopoeic cadences. He was peeling off the veneer of bourgeois smugness and scooping out its entrails. "Now you think about how you came to become you," was a line that would resonate for long in my consciousness. Later, over the years, we met on a few occasions. But my hero worship was such that I could never get down to having a straight conversation with him.

It was amazing how his verses entered the consciousness of the best creative minds of his generation. His passing away provides an opportunity to the contemporary poet to rethink location, priorities and agency "" something they seem to have become totally confused about.

The news of Kadamanitta's death came in the wake of quite another kind of death I had been reflecting upon the last week. On March 26, came the news that a young performer D Prakash (30), originally a part of the Koothu-p-Pattarai theatre group in Chennai, and now a percussion artist in the international production of A Midsummer Night's Dream by British director Tim Supple, had died in Australia.

Prakash died, in Sydney, of alcohol abuse, on the last day of their three-week tour. The rest of the group (of pan-Indian actors) reached the airport to return home. Prakash was inebriated and brought upto airport security in a wheelchair, but not allowed to board the flight. He was taken back to a hotel by a couple of Australian managers present, so that he could be put on the flight the following day. Scandalously, he was left alone in his room. And there, he simply drank himself to death.

The death of this artist, of course, raises a different set of questions. At a time when the Indian artistic product is becoming a high circulation commodity in the global market, it is also creating some life-threatening situations, which are turning increasingly bizarre.

For example, many successful Indian visual or performance artists (and cricket players) seem to come from small towns, villages and the tribal fringes. Being catapulted overnight into unfamiliar contexts of food, lifestyle and fame, they find it difficult to adjust. A soul-sapping alienation sets in. Pushed to being abroad for long stretches, they have no one to talk to or share language with. There are no support systems. They turn to brooding, alcoholism and depression. And if there is no one around to pick up the signals, the consequences are turning increasingly fatal. The tragedy of Janghar Shyam, the brilliant Gond tribal artist from Madhya Pradesh, who committed suicide in Japan as he was not able to cope with his loneliness and alienation, is well-known.

One needs to seriously question directors like Tim Supple, who treat Indian artists as so much raw material for their expensive productions, without any monitoring of the emotional state of the artists. As a counterpoint, one can mention legendary theatre director Habib Tanvir, who works mostly with tribal artists of Chattisgarh and, when he travels with them, is alert to the minutest of changes in their personality. A tribal girl changing from a wooden to a plastic hairpin alerts him to the possibility of an emotional turmoil she might be going through and leads him to paying her individual attention.

In contrast, lead Indian members of Tim Supple's company tell me that it is quite lonely out there. Within the group, there are several sub-groups and they hardly interact. They have had over 215 performances till now; yet the differences persist. The non-English-speaking members of the group feel particularly marginalised. On long tours, they feel left adrift with no one to talk to. Their life is summarised into so many stage entries and exits, punctuated by soulless hotel rooms. There is no psychiatric care available. Alcoholism is rampant. And the alienation is so deep that even actors who are together in the same scene on stage, have no time for each other off-stage.

Prakash's wasteful death seemed inevitable; the story of a traditional performer from a poor family, catapulted overnight onto international performance contexts, for whom the experience is unable to offer anything more than a new cash economy of 500 British pounds a week.

I'm left pondering darkly over the two exits.