I watched a Yakshagana on new year’s eve. I was in Udupi for the thread ceremony of my cousin’s son and the performance was on the evening before the function.
Growing up in Mumbai, my experience of Yakshagana was through the performances organized by our community association. These were conducted indoors, in our auditorium. Typically, the performances were of movie length. I used to watch a couple of them every year. For my parents’ generation, the Yakshagana, or aaTa (”performance”) as they colloquially referred to it, held a much greater significance. It was the source of my mother’s and uncles’ encyclopaedic knowledge of Hindu mythology. It was the Amar Chitra Katha of my parents’ generation.
It was only later that I learnt that the full form of aaTa was BayalaaTa. Bayalu in Kannada means open ground. Traditionally, this is where Yakshagana performances take place. The performers were typically itinerant professional troupes. AaTas would go on all night.
These troupes did not have a good reputation. Running away from home to join a Yakshagana troupe was the way for boys from respectable families to fall from grace in a more innocent time when such opportunities were scarce. Being crazy about the art and spending too many nights watching aaTa was considered a road to ruin for boys, though the occasional viewing was a pastime that all families engaged in. The stigma had dissipated by the time of my parents’ generation and has vanished now. Yakshagana artistes are well-respected and the best among them have acquired the status of legends. These days, Yakshagana is also performed by amateur troupes. In the Udupi, Mangalore and Uttara Kannada regions, it is common for parents to send their children to Yakshagana classes in the same way that they may be sent to Bharatanatyam or Tabla classes.
The performance I watched was performed by one such amateur troupe. The vaTu’s father is an aficionado and amateur performer. The actors and actresses were all family members. The father explained that he wanted the audience to get the full bayalaaTa experience, so he had made available the same kind of snacks that are consumed at such events.
Yakshagana is considered a dance-drama. Each scene is first sung in balladic form and enacted via dance by the performers, and then subsequently reenacted by the same actors as drama. The bard (called the bhAgavata) and musicians sit at the back of the stage in full view of the audience while the actor-dancers perform in the foreground. Traditionally, the ballads are the only scripted part of the performance, having been written down many centuries ago in a Kannada that is now archaic. The dialogues are completely improvised. This improvisation is what makes every Yakshagana performance unique, and what brings in the audience, even though they know the story well, having watched the same prasanga many times before.1
It is also one of the things that brings repute to the artistes. I have heard it said about one such actor that he would play Rama in one aaTa and his arguments would make the audience side with him. Then in the next performance, he would play RaavaNa, and his exposition of the other side of the argument would have so much philosophical depth that the audience would have no choice but to sympathise with the asura.
My only experience of the all-night bayalaaTa was the time when an uncle took me to one. I don’t remember much of it. I was but a young boy at the time. I remember eating extremely oily chakkuli and dozing off half-way through the performance.
The performance on new year’s eve did give a taste of why the performances were enjoyed through the night. The prasanga was Chandrahasa Charithre. My cousin’s son, barely 15 years old, played the role of the vidushaka-messenger2, by itself a minor part. But by virtue of being the director’s son, the scene of his meeting with the minister DushTabuddhi stretched for a full 45 minutes. To be fair though, the boy has great comedic timing and seems to have inherited acting skills from his father, so the scene was a lot of fun. But it occurred to me that if all the actors were at similar liberty to stretch their scenes out, it would be no surprise that the performance runs all night.
One of the things that makes Yakshagana fun is that it is completely fine to weave in contemporary references into one's lines. I remember an aaTa where an actor made a comment about kar sevaks being killed and thrown into the river - this was at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The performance on new year's eve was certainly not improvised - it would be too much to expect a boy to wing his dialogues as experienced artistes do. His lines were written for him by his father, who had, however, not neglected to insert the contemporary reference. Describing to DushTabuddhi how Chandrahasa had improved the lives of his subjects, he explains that the prince had built chatushpada heddari (four lane highways), but ಜನರಿಗೆ ಬುದ್ಧಿ ಬೇಕಲ್ಲ, ಹೊಡ್ಕೊಂಡು ಸಾಯ್ತಾರೆ (difficult to translate, but a reference to people being stupid and getting into accidents). A more experienced actor would have improvised further and woven in a reference to Rishabh Pant’s recent unfortunate accident.
Historically, Yakshagana was an all male affair, with women’s roles being played by actors. Many specialized in playing the strivesha. Their acting and graceful mannerisms put women to shame. The Art’s journey to respectability has been accompanied by the entry of women into acting roles. With this, there was a risk that the strivesha tradition would be lost. Happily, that has not happened. While actresses have begun to play some of the female roles, strivesha continues to be a thing. At the same time, actresses playing male roles has also become a thing. Yakshagana thus is perhaps unique among the dramatic art forms where the acting roles are gender neutral. In this instance, the Chandrahasa, the main character, was energetically played by a young woman.
The story of Chandrahasa is recounted in the Mahabharata. He is a boy of royal origin who is born with 6 toes foretelling misfortune. The said misfortune does strike him in infancy and he is left to grow up as a vagabond. Roaming the streets of Kuntala (modern day Karnataka) he chances upon a saligrama stone which he puts in his mouth. This imbues him with Vishnu bhakti and begins to turn around his fortunes. A brahmin takes notice of him on the street and prophesies that the boy would become king of Kuntala one day.
DushTabuddhi, the minister, hears this and realizes that the prophesy coming true would interfere with his plan of installing his own son on the throne. So he charges two executioners with the responsibility of taking the boy to the forest to finish him off. However, the power of the saligrama causes them to have pity on him and they chop his extra toe off to be presented as proof, and leave him alive.
The childless chief of a forest tribe sees him and brings him up as his son. When he grows up, he is formally designated as successor and a messenger is dispatched to Kuntala to inform the king, who is also their overlord. DushTabuddhi hears the news, puts two and two together and realizes that he has been deceived. He goes to visit the tribe and sees for himself that the boy is indeed Chandrahasa. Plotting to get rid of him, he dispatches Chandrahasa to the capital with a sealed message for his son. On the way, the young man takes a nap and is chanced upon by Vishaya, the daughter of DushTabuddhi. She opens the letter, decides that it contains an error and her father meant to write Vishaya, not Visha, so she makes the correction and reseals the letter. So it comes to pass that Chandrahasa is given Vishaya in marriage rather than the poison her father intended. A similar sequence of events causes another of the minister’s plans to backfire and Chandrahasa ends up marrying the king’s daughter as well, putting him in line for the throne.
I knew the broad contours of this story, having watched this prasanga in childhood. But watching it again, the story seemed so unheroic. Chandrahasa doesn't do much on his own. Everything happens to him by the grace of Narayana and he is a passive recipient of His munificence. The story is clearly a Vaishnava text, written with the purpose of depicting the greatness and omnipotence of Vishnu.
One of the plot points in the story is that DushTabuddhi’s suspicion is ignited by the fact that the forest-dwelling messenger refuses his offer of food as he is fasting on ekadashi. He finds this quite unusual and he probes further to find out who has introduced such pious practices among them. He learns that it was indeed Chandrahasa. I wonder what historians can glean from this. Does it speak to a time when Vaishnavism was being spread in the Deccan? Perhaps there are scholarly analyses of the text. I haven't looked, but I would love to know more.
The great Kota Shivarama Karanth, probably in an attempt to purify Yakshagana and take it back to its classical roots, introduced a new style that was purely dance and music with no reenactment as drama. This misguided attempt which would have stripped the artform of its essence has thankfully not caught on.
Like in most Indian drama, the vidooshaka is a mandatory character in Yakshagana. Typically, it is the messenger who plays the role. The humour is usually slapstick, much of it comes from his inability to pronounce difficult, often Sanskrit words. The kings and gods typically speak in a higher register of Kannada than the vidooshaka.
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