Me and my self; A Spiritual Journey

Dr.Satyabrata Rout (India)

Chapter-3

Continued from Chapter-1………….

…………………The next few days were just to know the place, the city, the locality, climate and Beatriz Camargo. Every day she used to pick me up from the hotel around 9am to her work place and sent me through a taxi back to my hotel at night. I used to interact with the students regularly in the dining hall and during their off hours. By then I came to know many students. They have come from different parts of the America and Europe to attend the workshop; from Argentina, Ecuador, Amazon, Mexico, Canada, Italy and off course from Colombia. I have never experienced with students from different countries in a workshop situation. So this is going to be a unique one. Beatriz told me if I want I can read and take rest in a room just adjacent to the kitchen. There were some selves with video cassettes of her productions and posters kept on a table. A small bed was placed there for rest and a table to work. Framed posters of her old productions were hanged on the walls. Among them was a framed photo of Goddess Saraswati. I got curious to know how and why she has kept this photo. She smiled and told that this photo of Saraswati was presented by one of her Indian friends. She knew that Saraswati is the goddess of Art and knowledge. So she kept this image in her library and named the room, “La Casita De Saraswati” (The Saraswati Hall). I was astonished to see her love and respect for Indian culture.

Quite after some time I have marked that all the students were calling her by the name “Cantara”. In the beginning I couldn’t understand but after listing to the word regularly, I ask her one day to know why she is being called Cantara? She kept silent for a while. After a few seconds she began, “Cantara in Spanish is the earthen pot. We human being are like the earthen pot which breaks and mix with the earth every time. While at France I fell ill and I was almost dying. I couldn’t adapt their culture and life. Every moment I felt my throat was chocked. I was longing to breathe fresh air, the smell of my soil. I was completely disconnected from my soul, from my ancestral memory. One research scholar from Sri lanka who was doing his research on Tamil literature there, cured me by applying ayurveda technique. After coming back from Europe I changed my name to “Cantara Abasensuca. Cantara means the earthen pitcher that becomes empty every time. I have many things within me which I want to share and become empty again to be filled again. Abacencuca means sweet in Muiscas language. It means “The sweet earthen pot”. During the course of time I forgot my parental name and became Cantara. I had a strong inclination for language so I went to study it from the National University of Bagota. But I couldn’t express my feelings after completing my course in Language. I wanted to become an actress so that I can express my feelings in my own language. I joined in the National School of Dramatic Art at Bogota and studied theatre for three years. I learnt all the grammars of modern theatre. After I complete my study at NSDA, I joined as an actress at “The teatro La Candalaria” one of the most modern and biggest theatre company of Colombia ran by Santiago Gurcia, the father of modern Colombian Theatre. At the same time I started teaching at the NSDA, Bogota. But after some time I felt restless. I did not want to speak the language of common theatre, the language created through technology, by modern arc lights, high-tech stage designs, etc. I want to speak the language of earth. I want to be connected with the people, with the cosmos. I wanted to speak from within the earth. I wanted to understand the myth and the philosophy leys behind the mystery of the nature. I felt suffocated in a black box with electric lights flooded you every time. I don’t want the audience to be kept in dark all the times. I wanted to go outside far away from the city into the mountains. With the help of one of my student, Barnando Ray I found a land here at Villa de Leyva suitable for my kind of theatre and started doing lots of experiments related to my concept and theory. My students prepared plays and presented in many places over the country and abroad. But slowly I discovered that my plays are not meant for the so called common audience. It is for those who understand the meaning of life, those who can connect themselves with the spirituality and with the nature. So I restricted my plays for the rural and original people. It was received well and my Bio-Drama school, “Teatro itenerient del Sol” started. I became popular by the name “Cantara Abacencuca”. You can also call me in the same name”.

After listening to all these things from her, I felt little embarrassed. In this modern age where theatre has reached its zenith with the help of technology and so called gimmicks, round the world, who will try to miss the opportunity of losing the techniques? There are lots of money and work for those who have adapted theatre in its advanced form. It is a wave that engulfs the whole world of theatre of 21^st century. The design, the technology, use of multimedia and intellectual interpretations! (If is there any) are becoming so common in the name of post-modernism that the real self of the actor and soul of the total production is left behind miles away from the heart of the audience. The simplicity and the aesthetic beauty of the production, taught by our grand fathers, are buried under the glamour of the machinery. In today’s India this kind of theatre is a common practice. Everybody is applying this technique into theatre without understanding the concept and thoughts behind it. Rather they have been pumped and aired to do so. The people who fooled the society by doing this are gaining name and fame, publicity and honour. On the contrary yet there is a kind of people living and practicing theatre from its root and trying to find a connection between the souls to the soul.

As Grotowisky has rightly said in his book “Towards a poor theatre”;

“An actor is nothing but a courtesan or a prostitute till he covers himself with so many glamorous objects, like a public lady applies cosmetics on her skin to cover up her age. By doing this she lost her soul and spirituality. Rather an actor should be like a piece of sculpture which comes out with utmost flagrance by stripping out the unnecessary things on and above it. Give away means we are coming nearer to the soul. This is spiritualism. It gives immense pleasure to the audience as well as the practitioners. This is like a prayer anybody can practice but the process is really difficult”. (Georzzi Grotowisky)

If this is the situation, how can we find people who are ready to give away? In this materialistic world, money, glamour and publicity are everything that counts. Yet, as I told there live a few in this world like Cantara and others those who are ready to give away anything in search of the soul. Though In India we have forgotten the meaning of spiritualism which once accepted as a major part of performance in Natya Shastra (Satwikavinaya), still we can name a few who really tried to go to the deepest root of culture, tradition and confront their audience with simplicity, purity and with utmost dignity.

I recall sitting in the other part of the world the works of my teachers, Ankur Ji, Ratan Da and my beloved Guru Sri B.V Karanth. The glamour of materialism did not pollute these pious souls of my country. These great sons of our culture knew how to give away and achieve the spirit of high energy. Ankur ji populated the narrative form of theatre which was a common practice in the ancient and medieval India. We have the age old tradition of Katha Gayan and Katha Vachan parampara (singing and narrating the stories). The whole story was presented with the help of songs and narrations. It was an improvised form of presentation where the singer/narrator told the story with the help of gesture and mime in front of the audience. Ankur ji adapted the energy of the narrators from our traditions and adapted it in the context of the modern stories. Without the help of modern technology, lights, sets, costumes and objects he succeeded in conveying the story to the audiences. He stripped away almost everything except the three prime elements of theatre; the story, the actors and the audiences. He is the man who made stories and novels popular in common masses. Or else who has the time and patience to read in this hour of time! Because of him only all modern writers became popular in the society.

Ratan thiyam returned back to the root after completing his course from National School of Drama, India. From the very beginning he understood that, the culture of India lays hidden under the soil of the region. A hand is needed to scratch the earth; it would burst out like a stream of water in its purest form. After his return to his home town in Manipur in 1975 from NSD, he purchased a small piece of land, the money he saved for his lively hood and started his theatre; “The Chorus Repertory theatre” which during the course of time flourished into a huge banyan tree and became the Macca of modern Theatre. It attracts theatre practitioners and scholars from all over the world. The campus of The Chorus Repertory Theatre vibrates positive energy all the time and always stay connected with all the elements of the nature and the ether. It becomes a land of spirituality, sanctity and serenity. The “serine” indoor Theatre inside the campus proves these words. A Thi architectural auditorium, designed by Rattan Da himself with motifs of tantric arts from Buddhist manuscripts all ways pulsates with positive energy with the rhythm of the nature. He is the man who really gave away everything in search of the soul of the mother earth. In all of his productions we can smell the sweet fragrance of the landscapes of Manipur. The rhythm of the common life, the gentle flow of the bridge coming from the seven hills, the cristal clear water of the Loctak Lake, the orchid flowers, the air waves inside the corn fields and above all the culture of vaisnavism spread by the great Indian saint Sri Chaitanya Dev in the eastern and north-east valley during 17^th Century, reflect in his productions every time and every moment; sometimes in the physical forms and sometimes as the undercurrent, the force that drives his productions to the correct path. Ratan Da has achieved in getting his ancestral memory in the time, space and creation.

While thinking of these masters, I was connected to a man whom I always adore to; my loving guru Sri B.V Karanth. I learnt life from him and theatre is a small segment of life. Whenever I have started writing on him I couldn’t write, not even a single line. My thoughts jumbled up and waves intersect each other. Every time I got sentimental with my eyes full of tears on his memory. I know that man so much that I could write nothing about him. Many people insisted me to write a memoir on his death. But I couldn’t. I did not want to bind him in words. He should be formless. He should be worshiped in silence. I didn’t want to limit him. (One day I will write on his philosophy of life and work. The time has not come. This will be a tribute to that great soul, my guru). I have seen a rendering yogi in him who is always in search of something, something new, something modern and at the same time original, indigenous, pure and connected with the roots every time and every moment. He remained an experimentalist and blessed by the supreme to create new all the time of his creations. Music was his weapon to achieve the truth. With the help of music he was always hooked up with the waves of cosmos. Unlike Ratan Thiyam he never associated with any organizations, repertories or groups for long. He had the tendency to leave and renounce at the pick of its maturity. As he always used to say, “I can’t stick to a particular kind of life for a longer period. I get bored after certain time. My throat choked and I long for fresh air. I can’t create any thing if I wouldn’t travel. I want to see the world, people, life, landscapes, mountains, temples, Mosques, gurudwara, Church, tribes, rituals and everything that a man can see in his whole life. I want to do mistakes and rectify it by my own experiences. I want to learn anything and everything that I could do”. (Once I found a book on “The art of cooking” in his self). So he became a traveler throughout his life. He didn’t follow any particular style or form. Where ever he went he adapted the native forms and converted that into his own creations. That became the style of Karanth (Karanth effect). He has never followed the grammar rather created his own. His eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul was transformed into a big truth of Theatre; the holy theatre. Theatre became a celebration for him which was reflected every time in his productions; the celebration of life. He called it Utsav dharmi. He had a tendency to forget. He forgot everything very easily. Even some times he asked for my name and felt very much embarrassed for that deed. It became a part of his personality. But it is obvious for Karanth Ji. For him, “If I will not forget, how can I create?” He never repeated anything in his life. There was even no look back. Many times he forgot the compositions he had created few hours ago and made something new. We have to make him remembered about the original one. In this way he had created many compositions for a piece of music or a scene. Even at times he himself rejected his own creation by saying it was not done by him. This nomadic yogi has achieved and acquired that others couldn’t. A sense of satisfaction and dissatisfaction were found always in his gestures. Satisfaction for his achievements and restlessness for the new search were always encountered in him. He gave up everything so he is pulled off with many things.

Sitting in my hotel room I was thinking of these great souls of my mother land and comparing themselves with this western lady Cantara. She renounced almost everything to achieve something intangible. How much Indian she is; in thoughts and actions? My eyes fall on the books lay on my table. I picked up one; “America my brother, my blood”. It was a collection of paintings of Guayasamin and Pablo Niruda’s poems. While looking in to the pictures I was thinking of that man and his keen observation of human struggle and sufferings. How we talk of religion and politics, how we long for power when the common human being is suffering under the sun and dying? How we claimed to be educated and modern when people of my country do not have a single time meal to eat? How can we smile and sleep quietly while my brothers and sisters have no roof over their heads and suffer the whole cold and chilled nights? Did we close our eyes or go blind? Are we deaf so that the scream of my brothers can’t reach our ears? Guayasamin put so many questions in front of us. He is a common man’s painter who must have seen life from all the angles. His way of expressions, bold and strong lines and selection of colours clearly depicts his anguish and passion for humanism. With each of his works I found a related poem of Niruda. This great Latin American poet was banned in the capitalist countries because he wrote for the common man, because he spoke in a common man’s voice, because he told the truth! It is very difficult to digest the truth. His poems definitely have taken away the sleeps of the bloody rulers…………….

While going through the work I found that both the works of these masters complement each other and seams inseparable though they were created at different time and space. I went through the book thoroughly. My eyes stuck at one of the works of Guayasamin and the related poem by Niruda. In the painting, piles of disfigured, grotesque human bodies were laying scattered with crumpled hands, legs and heads. There on the other side written a small poem by Pablo Niruda;

“Thousands of corpses lie there. Murdered hearts laid out pulsing. Opening the moist pit where they tend the trickle of that day. (They entered killing on horseback, they cut off the hand that offered its tribute of gold and flowers, they closed off the plaza, exhausted their arms until they were numbed, killing the flower of the kingdom, plunging up to their elbows in the blood of my startled brethren.)”

I was so much moved with these works that I wanted to present it into a piece of theatrical expression with the students of bio-Drama. So I kept it for my future work.

One day I went to observe the classes of Wilson, the choreographer from Ecuador. I have never gone to the class rooms before. So I was lead by one of the students of the workshop. He took me inside the trees to a place where they were practicing. Wilson was busy with the students. They were doing some exercises related to body. I sat for sometime there to observe. The works which he was doing was not very much new to me. In India we are very much accustomed to these kinds of works. Our choreographers, Bharat Sharma, Sangeeta Sharma and others sometimes do better and innovative works. So it didn’t attract me very much, except the intensity of the work of that Ecuador man. One thing that caught my attention was the space where they were working. They call it Malokha; the ceremonial house.

Continued………………………

Satyabrata Rout/Hyderabad University/India