An Evening of Enchanting Dialogue

Dancer Jayanthi Subramaniam and painter A.V. Ilango conduct a dialogue at the Tamarind Arts, New York.

Paintings on the wall are part of Ilango's works, on display at the gallery between May 14 and June 21, 2008.

The e-mail I received from the Tamarind Arts Council of New York said that, on May 21, 2008, the council would be presenting a “live dance and painting performance” by two famous artists from Chennai, India. My immediate reaction was: “A painter and dancer performing together? A new kind of jugalbandhi?”

I have attended many a concert featuring jugalbandhi, the form of Indian classical music in which two expert musicians enrapture the audience with a dialogue conducted through their instruments. In fact, I had the privilege of attending one performed by the two maestros to whom goes the credit for making that musical genre so popular: sitar player Ravi Shankar and sarod player Ali Akbar Khan. But never have I attended, or even heard about, a jugalbandhi between a painter and a dancer. Of course, neither the artists nor the gallery that presented the arts called it jugalbandhi. The decision to call it so is entirely mine. I went to the event, not knowing what to expect.

And was I happy that I went! “What a miss it would have been if I had not forced myself to find time for it,” I said to myself on my way back. The Bharatanatyam performed by Jayanthi Subramaniam and the simultaneous depiction of it on canvas by A.V. Ilango were quite a treat. Making it more awe-inspiring was the fact that, unlike in a musical jugalbandhi, the artists in this one were not facing each other. The dancer was facing the spectators and the painter, with his back to them, was concentrating on his canvas mounted on an easel. He was guided by the music and by the theme of the dance which he was already familiar with. Jayanthi and Ilango have been friends for long. Both have won several awards in their respective art-forms and are now household names back in Chennai.

Actually, the May 21 event materialized because of their being home-buddies. Ilango and his wife were already in New York, in connection with the May 14 - June 21 exhibition of Ilango’s works, at the Tamarind Arts. The idea for a joint performance occurred to them when they heard that Jayanthi had come down to Connecticut to visit her son who lives there. Ilango’s wife immediately called her and broached the idea. “But I don’t have the costume and jewelry appropriate for the show,” Jayanthi told her. “All of them can be arranged,” Mrs. Ilango replied.

“We are the lucky beneficiaries of your persistence,” I told Mrs. Ilango after the show, when she told me how it came about and about the conversation she had with Jayanthi. Though Jayanthi was to leave for India the next day, she came down to New York and gave the gathering at the Tamarind Arts an evening of enchantment and education.

The theme for the day’s performance, as is the case with most Bharathanatyam performances, was taken from the Hindu mythology. Before she began the actual dance, Jayanthi gave a lucid narration of what the various signs (mudras) and facial expressions, which are integral parts of the Bharatanatyam, meant. The narration made it easy for the audience to appreciate the pieces she presented. The main piece centered on the Nandanar story, which is very popular among Hindu believers.

Nandanar, though born an untouchable, was an ardent devotee of Shiva, the god of destruction in the Hindu Trinity. Because he was an untouchable, he was denied entry into the Shiva temple. That tormented him. One day, the story goes, he went to the temple and pleaded (what follows, though in quotes, is my paraphrasing of Jayanthi’s translation from the Sanskrit original): “Oh, my beloved Lord, why was I born an untouchable? If I were born a blade of grass, at least animals would have benefited from it. If I were born a slice of garlic, it would have become part of some medicine and cured the sicknesses of many. If I were born a stone, some sculptor would have picked me up and turned me into a beautiful piece of art…. Because I was born an untouchable, I am denied the only pleasure I have been seeking all my life, the pleasure of being close to you and feeling your divine presence.”

It is said that Shiva, moved by the purity and intensity of Nandanar’s prayer, flung open the doors of his sanctum sanctorum and accepted him as a trusted devotee. Since then, Nandanar has been worshiped in Shiva temples as one of the 63 most-blessed devotees of Shiva.

Though the theme of Jayanthi’s recital originated in the Hindu mythology, the way she presented it kept even non-Hindus and non-believers in the audience spell-bound. After all, emotions like love, fear, anger and despair are universal. People’s reactions to them are similar. One could tell from the reactions of those who gathered at the Tamarind Arts on May 21 that Jayanthi did a remarkable job of effectively conveying to them what emotions her mudras and facial expressions represented. And even agnostics could appreciate the underlying message of the Nandanar story: that persistence and purity of purpose will ultimately be rewarded, no matter what stratum of society one is born in. The story is also a social commentary on the man-made caste system in Hinduism, which rational-minded Hindus despise.

By the time Jayanthi completed the Nandanar piece, Ilango’s portrayal of it on canvas was also complete. The bull (Nandi) is an inseparable part of any story associated with Shiva. Legend has it that Nandi is Siva’s vehicle. Nandi also guards the entrance to the sanctum sanctorum of the Shiva temple. In the finale of the piece presented by Jayanthi, Nandi steps aside from the entrance, clearing the way for Nandanar to go in.

Quite coincidentally, the bull has a predominant place in Ilango’s oeuvre as well. The exhibition at the Tamarind was entitled "The Bull and Beyond." Where did Ilango’s preoccupation with the bull come from? In an article by Shankar Natarajan that appeared on July 15, 2001, in the online edition of The Hindu, one of India’s leading English dailies, Ilango is quoted as saying: "These bulls are taken to the slaughterhouses in Madurai or Kerala. The lorries they are taken in are driven fast; the animals are all tied together and by the time they reach [the slaughterhouse], many of them die. It is terrible. The bull is a part of our culture, it toils with man and when it is sent to the slaughterhouse I am very affected, so I keep painting it." Being a beef-eater, I was embarrassed to read it.

However, the show Ilango and Jayanthi presented not just helped me get over the embarrassment. It made me proud and nostalgic. It transported me back to my teenage days in the southern Indian state of Kerala, when I spent the weekends watching my sister learn the Bharathanatyam from her dance teacher, Sreenivasan; when Sreenivasan and his dancer-wife, Seethalakshmi, enthralled the culturati in my hometown, Kannur, with their marvelous dance performances, on all special occasions. For themes for their dances, Sreenivasan picked episodes from Indian history and Seethalakshmi from the Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata.