La Maloca (The ceremonial house)

Me and my self; A Spiritual Journey

Dr.Satyabrata Rout (India)

Chapter-4

Continued from Chapter-3

La Maloca:

It reminds me our Nam Ghar of Assam or Akhada Ghar of Orissa or Bengle where we do a kind of rituals or practice something. It is like the village community centre where the elders meet. Malokha is an old muisca name given by the tribes. It was their prayer hall. They prayed and were connected with the cosmos inside the malokha keeping fire in the centre. This concept of Malokha was adapted here for the practice room. It was a round hall with 12 feet diameter made up stones. The roof was conical. There was an opening on the top of the roof which was opened to the sky. On the line of that opening on the ground, we can find a round pit having 2.5 feet diameter and 4 feet deep. Sometimes they fill the pit with water depending upon the requirements. Most of the Bio-Drama productions are presented here. At the time of presentation they cover the pit with wooden planks or use it creatively. During the prayer they lit up candles inside the pit. In this way this pit has a multiple use. One can find many conical glass windows on the walls of the Malokha to supply enough lights and air inside. Towards the north of the hall there was a huge fire place for warship. I found a very small door may be 4 feet height for entry and exit. This was the only door leads to outside. One thing I observed that anybody taking entry to the hall comes in back foots by bending down bowing through the door. I asked somebody to know the reason. He cleared my confusion. According to him, “The door opens to the east. In the eastern side of the Villa de Leyva there is a hill called the Sacred Mountain. Muisca people were living near by the hills. These ancient tribes used to pray the mountain. So when they enter inside the Malokha they entered facing the mountain and the Sun for good furtune. This is a kind of ritual everybody has to practice while go inside”.

This seemed interesting to me. Now days we are forgetting the rituals and prayers which was a regular practice among our ancestors. By doing this and offering prayer to the spirits they always achieved positive vibrations from the ether which kept their mind and body in balance. Indirectly it used to solve one big human problem which becomes the most problematic condition of the world now, i.e. stress and tension. It happens to be the root of all human trouble and disorder now. At least at Malokha they are mentioning the concept!

I came to know that malokha has been used in many ways in different productions. Sometimes they present plays inside while the audiences sit in a circle or in three sides like arena theatre. Occasionally they also use the roof of Malokha for the acting area when the audiences sit or stand and watch the play from a little distance. This multiple use of the space interests me much. As a designer Space is something that hunts me always. Every time my eyes are in search of some new and innovative space. While moving here and there during these days I have selected some spaces for my work and now I added Malokha in the list.

On 10^th July Wilson gave the demonstration. A few people from nearby areas were invited to watch the programme. The presentation was held inside the Malokha towards the afternoon hour. The main focus of the presentation was on the body dynamics of the actor. How a human body reacts and behaves in different situations and time was the subject. Though this kind of work is not new to me but it seemed to be interesting particularly the last two exercises. 1. The flow of water, 2. Breaking the sticks. They were new to me. Both the exercises were related to sound. In the water exercises an actress started pouring water from one container to the other not evenly but in an uneven manner. The group of actors started reacting to the sound of the water pouring. They presented the exercise through the body. With different sounds created at different times of water flow the actors behave accordingly. In the 2^nd exercise an actor brought a dry tree branch and started breaking the sticks from it which created sound; tuk…….tuduk….. All the actors by closing the eyes started reacting to the sound came out of the break; sometimes hard and sometimes soft. There was another exercise which hold my interest is the actor and space. Here in this game music was played and an actor fixed himself inside a very tight and closed chamber. He started moving his limbs inside the chamber which was really very small to be played. The actor moved inside that tight space and tried to use all his joints to keep his mobility. Since the exercises were related to human body, no voice was employed into that. After the demonstration all the actors sat on a circle inside the Maloka and narrated their experiences with Wilson during these days. What I found in the discussion that the students tried to discover the possibilities of the human body in the context of movement and the relationship of the body in a given space. One or two students tried to link the body with the universal space and time but to me it was nothing but a brain exercise. At the end Beatriz gave thanks to Wilson who was suppose to leave the next morning. Then she closed the circle with the word of the day. For me this word of the day was a new concept. I tried to ask her but kept quite at that moment.

Now it was my turn to lead and continue the workshop for another one week for which I was preparing myself for a long time after getting the invitation from Cantara 5 months ago. Doing a workshop was not a quandary situation for me. Most of my career is spent on traveling and conducting theatre workshops in different regions of India and sometimes in the nearby countries viz. Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh and Mauritius etc. I have also come once to Bogota, Colombia to carry out a workshop that led into a full-fledged production. Doing a workshop is always easier than teaching the students in institutions and Universities because those who come to attend a theatre workshop are either fresher or practitioners without any theoretical knowledge. So generally we teach them the basics of theatre, the ABC of drama which becomes enough for a workshop situation. Sometimes we directly jumped into a production and the students learn through practice. But here the situation was bit tricky. I came here to contribute to Bio-Drama, a new concept and idea that we in India don’t practice or we may have practiced in some other names. In the beginning I was confused. I searched in the net and other sources to know more about this terminology but unfortunately I couldn’t gather much informations. At the beginning I related this concept with Mayor Hold’s “Bio-mechanism” and prepared a number of exercises related to the topic to be carried out with the students here at Colombia. During those days I came across with a short biography of Beatriz Camargo in a book in which I found that this lady is working far away from the city in an environmental situation. Something clicked in my mind. “To practice Body mechanism, it is not essential to go to an open environment inside the mountains and jungles. It must have something related to nature, atmosphere, open sky, sun, moon, stars, air and cosmos”. Slowly my research process took a U turn towards my own culture and heritage. I found out our oriental, particularly Indian tradition is much closer to the ethereal vibrations than the western culture and tradition. In our Vedic Richas and Mantras we always found a strong bonding of pulsations with cosmos and ancestral waves. Indian dance, music and theatre constantly indicate towards liberation, salvation and the union of the soul with the supreme. Our ancient practices of rituals, festivals, yagyans and offerings prepare us to stay in balance with the harmony of nature and with its 5 primary elements (Pancha Tatwa); the earth, the fire, the water, the air and the ether. Our human body consists of these five elements as well as the other forms of nature irrespective of animate and inanimate. We should find a linking thread between these elements with our own soul in order to live harmoniously with the cosmos. “To get into the meaning of life through the medium of theatre could be the purpose and the sense of Bio-Drama”. After discovering the concept and the philosophy behind the project I decided to prepare a syllabus based on the theories and practice on Natya Shastra and other ancient Indian scriptures viz. Vedas, Vedanta and myths. The focus of my project turned towards Satwikavinaya (The spiritual performance).

In the month of February I had to go to my ancestral village in Orissa to see my allying aunt (She expired after some days). There at my village I had a strong interaction with nature. I used to go to the fields every day in the early morning to glimpse the due drops above the grasses. The rising sun and the reflection of its golden rays on those drops and the presence of seven colours inside it made me moved from within. These colours inside always kept changing with the reflected rays. It seems to me the eternal dance of Lord Siva. Then I would travel to our firm nearby to see the groundnut plantations, my uncle had planted which were in their growing stages. I fall in love with the natural almond green colours of the ground nut leaf. The sweet fragrance of the mango flowers, the sound of the buzzing bees, the changing colours of the morning and evening sun and above all the spiritual silence and serenity of my village awakened my mind to understand the meaning of Bio-Drama. During my stay in the village once I happened to visit my Father in Law’s house five kilo meters away from my home. The village is situated on the bank of the river Baitarani, a mythical name derived from Hindu belief. While crossing the river by a small boat I became attached to the water. “Like the waves created by the movement of the boat on water which reach the bank one after the other, similarly our human mind must have generated vibrations that must be reaching somewhere, may be in the ether. It means we are always connected with the universe through electromagnetic forces as the boat is connected with the river bank through the waves. The memories which we acquire in one life span are an extension of thousands and millions of years of our ancestral memories obtained by our great grand fathers. We bring in our blood all these ancestral memories with us which we called traditions or “sanskara” in Sanskrit language”, I thought. Slowly and steadily I tried to establish a link between our custom, tradition and ancestral memories.

Coming back to Hyderabad I started noting down my experiences of my village and prepared a project based on “Body memory in relation to the space and its elements”. After reached here at Colombia I was astonished to found that Beatriz Camargo is working on the same track for the last 22 years with much clarity and conviction. Followed by so many experiences of life during these days and after a thorough discussion with Cantara I was fully prepared to go through a complete spiritual experience with the students of the Bio-Drama. I told Cantara to work with the students from morning 7 am to late evening and it will be a continuous process for a week. We will start the morning class with the voice practice. The forenoon session will be focused on human body and abhinaya. The afternoon will be devoted to conceptual discussions which will be followed by video screening of any productions related to Indian culture and traditions. She said, “Wonderful!”………………..

We started about6.30 morning towards the Malokha from the hotel. In the previous night it was raining heavily but by the morning the rain had stopped and the sky was almost clear. The sun has already come up behind the mountains and started shining on the drop of waters that were yet sticking on the tree leafs. But the roads were slippery and muddy. The students made a straight line. Manuel, the team leader announced each one must follow the foot prints of the other. One shouldn’t look here and there except the heels of his/her precedor and they all started walking. I was at the last. I asked my front students to know more about this but he couldn’t give any answer and kept quite. We all were walking down the street like a chain. After a while we left the main road and started climbing the hills. There was pin drop silence among the team. I saw a student who was leading the line came back behind me. I was so exusted by climbing up that I told him to walk on leaving me behind and came out of the chain. Now I moved along with them but on my own. In each succession the boy/girl who was leading the team came to the back. Now I understood it was a game of theatre which we call “follow the leader”. It took 40 minutes to reach the Malokha. I was so tired by walking that I did not go to Malokha with them. Rather I preferred to have a cup of tea at Beatriz’s residence. Beatriz was preparing herself for the class. By seeing my condition she laughed but I got little irritated. I told her that, “It was impossible on my part to walk on to Malokha every day. If I would be tired like this I couldn’t teach. My purpose wouldn’t be solved”. “But it was your choice”, She told. “I didn’t know that it became so difficult to climb up the hills to Malokha” I argued. (From then every day she picked me up in the morning by her jeep from the hotel) While drinking tea I told her about the chain walk. She explained, “It is called the power walk. It transmits energy from one person to the other and becomes one unit. It takes lesser time to climb up. During the time of Spanish rulers they made their slaves to walk like this to climb the mountains”. I thought, “After 200 years of independence also the slavery yet remained somewhere in the blood”. But I kept quite. “We were getting late for the class” By saying this she led me to the class.

We enter into the Malokha through the hurry door. By that time all the students were gathered there and sat in a circle. A big candle was burning in the centre. Cantara placed herself on a kushan designated for her. I sat next to her and by my side the Colombian girl Luisa positioned herself for the translation. It was a fine morning as if the sun was waiting for me to share its energy which I would be going to transmit the students for the next couple of the days. Cantara opens the circle with the thought of the day. It is a practice which appears to be completely new for me. Afterwards I came to know that it is a regular practice by her to offer a positive world to the circle so that everybody can contribute their thoughts to the idea in a sentence. That day it was Sun. After the ceremony is over Cantara handed over the group to me and told me to elaborate my project and explain my idea behind that. Since I have already prepared a written project in English, Lusia, my voice of India, translated into Espanol immediately. Then I told the students the concept behind my project. I told them clearly that all the work in this week will be based on oriental theatre and philosophy. I recited them the opening sloka from Natya Shastra:

“Angikam Vubanam yashya, Vachikam Sarva Bangmayam, Aharyam Chandra Taradi, Twam namah Satwikam Sivam”

……………(Natya Shastra)

I explained them the meaning and concept behind these shastras. I told them about the kinds of Abhinaya according to Natya Shastra which can be practiced separately and together also. Since it was break time I called them to be gathered after the breakfast.

The fore noon session was devoted to the voice practice. I started the class with “OM” and told them to repeat the sound for many times. After a while I stopped them but these American students were very much interested to know what this sound is. Then I started my topic with Nada. I told them, “when the universe was formed and there was a great explosion out of which all the galaxies, stars, planets and moons were formed which we called “The Big-Bang theory”, at the very moment there must be generated a huge amount of sound as a result of that explosion which we called Nada or Nada Brahma in Sanskrit language”. I demonstrated it by hitting a brass gong, hanging over there. Then I explained, “When we hit some object with another object or when air is being obstructed by some kind of objects, it generates sound. The sound spreads in waves and while hits our ears we are able to listen to it which is called Ahada Nada. Sometimes our ear couldn’t listen to a particular sound but feels its existence in the ether. Our ear is conditioned to certain decimals of sound. Any sound that does not fall within that decimal couldn’t be audible to our normal ears. That doesn’t mean that there is no sound beyond the reception of our ear. There exist huge quantities of different sounds which human ears may not receive. It is termed as Anhada nada. One can think on this way that when a motor bike or a car crosses nearby us; we can hear a clear sound of friction that comes through the contact of the vehicle with the air. Similarly when the earth and other planets move in their orbits must be creating enormous sounds that our ear can’t receive due to many scientific reasons. But the sounds are there and some of them travel through ethereal waves. Our fore fathers and grand fathers, the rishis and yogis of India, were able to listen to the sounds through the process of dhyana and Yoga. They have discovered that every time there is a constant vibration of waves that comes from the cosmos which is received through our body. If you close your eyes in silence you even can listen to that sound or at least feel the presence of it. It is called the voice of silence. It needs a lot of concentration to receive the vibration. OM is that vibration that constantly coming from the ether. It is the primordial voice of the eternal power that governs everything. This sound is the mother of all the energy and creation”.

After giving a clear description of “OM”, I started with the basic voice training. I told them about the resonators and how it works in different situations. We have 5 points in our body which becomes responsible for voice reproduction. They are 1. Naval point, 2. Chest, 3. Throat, 4. Nose, 5. Talu or brain. In different emotions a particular resonator gets tensed and gives pressure on the vocal cord to produce a kind of sound similar to the situation like in fear our throat and nose get resonated while in love the chest vibrates. Naval centre becomes responsible for producing the base voice. At the time of Humming and high pitch we take the help of our brain. As a student of theatre we must be aware of our resonators to modulate properly. After giving a brief note on sound resonators we did some exercises related to the topic (Breath control, contraction and expansion, relaxation etc.).

After a small break we go on for some kinds of exercises related to theatre. This time we gave emphasis on body and movements. Start and stop, look and walk, making human bond with the designated numbers, contact with objects, and group activities with objects were among some of the games we played to open up our imaginations and awareness.

Post lunch session was devoted to theories and discussions. I opened the session with the basic understanding of Indian culture, religion and its geographical conditions. I started my discourse with the invasion of Aryans to this land and called it‘The Aryavarta’ (land of Aryas) and how the native pre vedic culture of the land was mixed with the new civilization and gave birth to a religion named as “Sanatana Dharma” (it was recognized as Hindu Dharma in the later stage). In my conversation I told them that…………………………

Continued………………………………..

Satyabrata Rout/Hyderabad University/India