Kalamandalam Gopi Ashan

Sometimes a picture triggers a series of images inside you. For me, it was this particular one from R K Menon's 'Performing Arts' set on flickr.

It was a picture of an artist putting on his make-up...getting ready to essay his role. The face looked familiar. The description of the picture assured me that it was the same person whom I was thinking about. It was the picture of the legendary Kalamandalam Gopi Ashan.

I was fifteen when I first saw him as the virtuous Karna, the generous warrior. He played the role of the noblest character from the Mahabharata in 'Karna Shapadham' (Karna's Vow). My road to enlightenment on the Indian dance-drama called the Kathakali started that evening, thanks to my paternal grandfather, who took great interest in the art and would risk traveling miles away from home to watch a good performance. It was on his 90th birthday that I saw a live Kathakali performance. Till then it was always on Doordarshan.

Before the performance started Appupan (as I fondly called my grandfather), briefed us on the most popular Kathaklai stories.

One of them being Karna Shapadham, the story of Karna's discoveries before the great Kurukshetra battle. It speaks of his friendship with Duryodhana and the emotional turmoils in his mind on learning that he will be pitted against his own brothers, the Pandavas. The story portrays a distraught Kunti revealing to Karna that he was originally a Kaunteya (Kunti's son)and not Radheya (the charioteer's wife Radha's son). More sorrow lies in store for him on realizing that after all these years of keeping the truth away from him, his mother now values only the lives of his five other brothers but not his and pleads to Karna to spare his brothers in the ensuing Kuruskshetra battle. It is a challenge to portray Karna here as he goes through myriad emotions - pathos, generosity and valor - in a span of a few minutes. And Gopi Ashan did complete justice to the character every time he donned the pachcha (green color - to depict nobility of character).

Now after 15 years I get to see the same man, in a picture, still lively and performing, getting ready to rock the stage as the famous Arjuna. 

Thanks RK for sharing the pictures.

You can see his pictures here.

Relax! Take a deeeeeeep breath.

The last few days were pretty hectic for me.

• shopping for my brother's marriage


• shopping for the new house


• supervising work in the new house


• moving stuff from one place to the other


• a new assignment - that too night shifts


• preparation for the training program


• trips to Chennai and Kerala - two trips to Chennai and two trips to Kerala in one month


• getting the renovation done at mom's place before the wedding


• dropping and picking up Rishi for his rehearsals


• an unwell Amu


• and blogging :-)

Now is the time to unwind. I love my job. It gives me ample time for myself and my family. It helps me take off my slippers and unwind for the day. Doesn't it feel wonderful to rest after a grand session of hard work?

The mysterious brown eyes

I'm back from Kerala after a week of fun with my cousins. Wish I could stay back. Actually it was not a week. I left on the 7th and reached Kerala on the 9th and came back to Mumbai on the 14th. Took three days to reach Kerala. Yeah...our very own, long-forgotten Jayanti Janta (JJ).

Remember? The very dry and hot Andhra, the fragrance of mallikai in Tamil Nadu and some cucumber salads in Karnataka. And finally you reach destination Kerala. But this time as the monsoon clouds decided to extend their stay, Andhra was looking beautiful with a blend of yellow (from the sunflowers) and green (the paddy fields).

The reason for taking up this tiring and tormenting journey was quite silly actually. Long ago when I used to travel to Kerala by the JJ, I would invariably come across this tribal family that sold stuffed squirrel toys. Sounds eerie...right? Well, it's not. These tribals would hunt for squirrels to fill their hungry stomachs and then make beautiful toys out of the skin that remains. Mongooses and squirrels were there forte. And the toys always ceased to look like toys. They looked amazingly real.

In this particular family, there used to be a little girl whom I used to see every year. She was probably my age. She would wait for the train to slow down so that she could display her wares and earn a few pennies. She was dirty and looked as if she hadn't thought of a bath for the last so many years. Her clothes were soiled and they always emitted a dirty stench. But her face was so beautiful that it had the power of taking you into a state of trance. Her light brown eyes would never fail to charm the onlooker. And her lips were always red as she would be constantly chewing on a paan. There was something about this girl that called for immediate attraction.

Now this was long back, around fourteen years or so.

Since the coming of the Netravati Express, the JJ route remained as a historical reference. And so did that tribal girl. Now, when I got a chance to travel by the JJ again I was mighty thrilled.

I was eagerly waiting for the train to cross the Maharashtra border. Once we reached Andhra, I refused to even sleep, dreading the thought that my sleep may come in the way of my encounter with that tribal girl. I had images of her waiting at the station, running towards the slowing train with squirrels and mongooses.

But I was disappointed. The stations kept passing one after the another. My eyes were growing weary and I was losing hope. I was really getting desperate. It was as if I got this last chance to meet a friend with whom I had only shared glances and not a single word, a friend who once SOLD her toys to me, a friend who was like me but maybe not as fortunate. The feeling is inexplicable. My brother kept scolding me for losing sleep for someone whom I didn't even knew, though he too remembered seeing the brown-eyed girl.

Finally the last station at Andhra arrived. I saw those brown eyes and dishevelled hair. My heart skipped a beat. There she was. Still the same. Selling the same stuffed toys. She still bore the look of a fourteen-year old. Her lips hadn't changed colour which meant that she was still addicted to paan. Our eyes met. Maybe she was also waiting for me. She started tracing her steps towards me. There was a sudden pat on my elbow. It startled me. I smiled at the old woman who was begging for something to eat. I gave her a few bananas. She blessed me for being considerate and walked away. I looked up to see my tribal friend. She had disappeared. She wasn't there. She was never there.

My brother looked at me and said, maybe she was there on one of the platforms and you must've failed to recognise her. You were looking for a fourteen-year old. She must have grown into a woman now.

Yeah...quite possible. She must have grown-up into a fine young woman. Maybe she was married to a drunkard. Maybe she had gone through hardships. Maybe she isn't alive anymore.

I think I should end this search. I will always have her in my heart, deep in the innermost recesses of my mind. Beautiful as ever. Then why hunt for her?

Madness, isn't it? Sheer madness.

The Pallankuzhi

...does anyone remember?

On every annual visit to Kerala, this game was one of the things I looked forward to. The Pallankuzhi, a traditional board game. All you needed was a wooden board with fourteen pits and some cowrie shells or tamarind seeds or manjadi kuru (also known as the seeds of the red bead tree, the botanical name is Adenanthera pavonia) or beads.

Soon, other avenues of entertainment paved in and the Pallankuzhi found it's place in the attic.

Now, after years I saw this at an antique shop in Kochi and fell in love with it. It also struck me that I had a huge collection of those red seeds sealed tightly in a bottle, kept safely somewhere in my house. I've been hunting for it....without any luck. I used to be madly obsessed with these seeds and wanted to have all of them for myself. Selfish...isn't it?

I'll be visiting Kochi again this October and this Pallankuzhi is going to come home with me. My dad has promised to get the 'lucky red seeds' for me.

I was wondering, how life changes. The little things that we did as kids are forgotten when the worries of the world start dominating our lives. Thanks to this beautiful shop, I was reminded of something that I was passionate about.

Ok...now let's get over it! How do we play the game?
Very simple. To be honest I had forgotten the rules of the game. I found it on this page:
http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/kerala/people-culture-and-festivals/pallaankuzhi.html

The game:
The houses are in two rows of 7 each. Each row belongs to a player and so is called the player's "side". The central house is called the "Kasi" and is like the players store/ treasure of cowrie shells. The game has many versions depending on the number of cowrie shells each player receives at the beginning.

This number may vary from 144 to 170. The game begins with each player receiving equal number of cowrie shells and with the players distributing them equally in all the houses except the Kasi.

Now as the game progresses each player in turn chooses one of his houses and removes all its cowries and then starts dropping them in all the houses in a clockwise direction. So the house you had initially chosen is left empty leaving the house next to it vulnerable to capture by the opponent.

The attempt is to collect all the seeds of the opponent. Hence, the system of capture of houses. If a player went bankrupt on all his cowries, he was given access to the shells accumulated in his Kasi. And thus the game goes on it one players shells are totally captured. A lot depends on strategic planning and calculation in this game.

I'm so glad I found this piece on information. The next step is to get the pallankuzhi and the manjadi seeds and then have a gala time playing the game.