Sairandhree : The Epical Liminality — Amrit Gangar

SAIRANDHREE: THE EPICAL LIMINALITY Vinod Joshi’s Gujarati Prabandha Kavya Amrit Gangar Draupadi in Southern India and Gujarat’s Search for Her Kerala has the whole dense, lush forest to her name: the Sairandhrivanam, in beautiful Silent Valley. Little away, down hills, Panchali would bathe in the river named after her mother-in-law: Kunthipuzha. And in Kerala’s unique dance form, Kathakali, Sairandhri would re-invoke herself on stage through nights after nights in the festive seasons and the audiences would cheer up the slaying of the evil Keechaka in the play Keechaka Vadham. Woven into katha (story), her Mahabharata persona is part of Kerala’ cultural ethos over centuries. And over more centuries, she is worshipped and adored in as many as 800 temples scattered across villages in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The Draupadi Amman is a cult surrounded by rituals and mythologies with local roots. A popular belief in South India also takes Draupadi as an incarnation of Mahakali, who was born to assist Lord Krishna to eliminate all evil. Around 200 villages in Tamil Nadu celebrate the Draupadi Amman Mahabharata Koothu festival, often over as many as ten days.1 An interesting aspect of this theatre of the Tamils is that it works on the collective memory and consciousness of the viewer.2 An urgent curiosity leads me to my state of Gujarat. Obviously, in Gujarat, the first place to search for Draupadi would be Dwaraka, where Krishna had found his abode and ruled it for thirty-six years after the Kurukshetra battle was over. To reconfirm her absence (idol or temple) there, I made enquiries with friends, and their answers were in rather perturbing negation, affirming the absence! Was she anywhere else? In Gujarati literature? In any of Gujarat’s performing or fine arts? In its popular cinema?3 As against such overwhelming presence of Draupadi (and hence Sairandhri) in south of India, why had Gujarat been fighting shy of her?

These are some of the questions that were disturbing me while reading the exquisite ‘prabandha kavya’ Sairandhree by one of our most eminent poets from Bhavnagar, Vinod Joshi, who has mastery over Sanskrit prosody or the chhanda shastra.

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Gujarat welcomes Sairandhree’s arrival, the āgaman The Year 2018: Sairandhree has entered Gujarat’s consciousness with all her youthful sensuality though she is no longer the Empress of Hastinapur; cursed, she is now the maid-in-waiting to Queen Sudeshna in King Virata’s palace. In Joshi’s prabandha kavya, this is how she arrives in the evening, sangfroid: િવવશ સાંજ, નભ િનરાલંબ, િનસ્પંદ સમીર િનગૂઢ, એક યૌવના નતમુખ ઊભી, વ્યગર્િચત્ત સંમૂઢ.

(Her face sunken, a young lady is standing, her mind agitated amidst inert, inscrutable winds when the evening is perplexed and the sky forlorn.)

We need to wait for a few moments to locate her place, to find her identity, in such environment of non-indifferent nature and its infinity.4 Here Joshi, the poet, seems to be heralding the sense of organic unity and pathos, which sustain through the entire composition along with the embodiment of relationship to what or who is (re) presented. I think, here, the ideas articulated by the Russian theorist-film maker in his celebrated essay Nonindifferent Nature provide us quite productive associations with the much known Sairandhree episode from the epic Mahabharata with particular reference to the way Joshi in his prabandha kavya introduces Sairandhree to us and the way her non-exit happens in the end.

While reading through the book or listening to the poet’s recital, I find and feel the organic unity that binds (prabandha) his metrical composition around the unique Mahabharata woman and her grace. It is Sairandhree’s ‘selfhood’ (nijatva) that the poet is emphatic about and there he has one of his own chosen departures from the epic. In his book’s dedication (અપર્ણ), the poet says, “સ્તર્ી, તને –“ (For you, Woman -). This is no chivalry! In his Introduction (િનવેદન), Joshi makes it clear that in

making such a dedication, he has no conscious feminist viewpoint, but the expression “સ્તર્ી, તને –“ has surround-sound of affirming feminine universality.

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What could be the age of this યૌવના (young beautiful lady) as described by the poet? In chronological way, we only know she has been living her 13th year of exile incognito. But such a speculation could only be stupid because Draupadi was ‘Nitya-yauvana’ િનત્યયૌવના, one who never becomes old . She knew no childhood and hence she was also known as ‘Shaishavmukta’ (શૈશવમુક્તા). Such was her destiny! And isn’t she one of the Five Virgins (પંચકન્યા), the venerated ideal woman and a chase wife?5 And, when for the first time poet Vinod Joshi brings her (as Sairandhri incognito) to Gujarat, I imagine her as a gorgeous young lady (યૌવના) from Gujarat, in typical Gujarati garbs, and not in Raja Ravi Varma’s imagination of a Malayalee woman. To my mind, Joshi’s Draupadi / Sairandhree acquires an elegant, musical garba gait of Gujarat.

Sairandhree and the Sublime Sensuous Joshi celebrates the sharira of Sairandhree, lifting it up to the level of erotic sublimity (reinstalling Kalidasa’s spirit, perhaps), in his ઊિમ િવશ્વ (world of romance), Sairandhree’s body becomes the seductive spring (વસંત) with efflorescence of intoxicating red; she has her own physical desires but tragically as ‘maid’ she had to expurgate them. And in such terrible trauma, she fancies the body of Sudeshna’s daughter Uttara learning dance under her own husband Arjuna, who, in disguise, has turned into a eunuch Brihannala. And here Joshi brings in young Uttara’s sensuality as if fancied by Sairandhree: ચુંિબત મિદત સુરિભત કાયા (it is kissed, kneaded, fragrant body!) મૃગનયની, શ્યામવણર્ કદલી સમ કાયા (her eyes like deer, dark-complexioned, tender, her body so much in shape).

Such sensuous sublime celebration of a woman’s body that the poet evokes; as if the poetic abstraction has become so palpably sensuous. In this triangular geometry (Sairandhree / Draupadi – Brihannala / Arjuna – Uttara) of my own imagination, I find Sairandhree at the apex and Joshi makes her not only sensuously beautiful but also intellectually sharp. Like an accomplished magician and a veteran wordsmith, Joshi metaphorically makes his Sairandhree walk on water like a female swan (મરાલી).

What is also fascinating is the kind of equation that Joshi builds between the two women: Sudeshna and Sairandhree, cutting across their ‘masked’ class difference. The poet is constantly aware that he has

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dedicated his book to ‘Stree” (Woman) and towards the end of Sarga 2, he anoints both the women in seductive sringara rasa (erotic love) and puts both them on equal pedestal: સંગ-અસંગ િવચારતી, જુ એ પરસ્પર નાર, સ્તર્ીપદ સવાર્િધક હતું, શેષ બધું ઉપચાર.

(As the two women look at each other, thinking together or solitarily, it is the ‘womanhood’ that remains supreme; the rest is all service.)

To my mind, Vinod Joshi is the poet of the woman; of her dignity, of her grace, of her holistic sensuous saundarya. And I would venture to say that any woman in Gujarat who reads Joshi’s description of Sairandhree (Sudeshna and Uttara included) would instantly envy her કાયા, her body, her intellect and sensitivity while empathizing at the same time with her predicament, pain and pathos. Joshi makes her sublime, divine. Like in the Epic, Joshi knows the grey zone between black and white. He is as charismatic as complex without predetermined closures.

Composition: A Prabandha Prakrishta The word prabandha presumes prakrishta, a long exalted poem: pra + bandha = prakrishta (પર્કૃષ્ટ), which is constructed in such a way. It was only during 13th and 14th centuries, ‘Prabandha’ acquired its definite compositional form; some of its examples could be cited as follows: Ballala Deva’s well-known Bhoj Prabandha, Jina Madana Suri’s Kumarpala Prabandha, Merutunga’s Prabandha Chintamani, In his Making of Sairandhree conversation, Joshi also refers to Kanhadade Prabandha written by Padmanabha, who wrote this book of poetry about Kanhadade, the ruler of Jalore.6 ‘Prabandha’ has a story and its elaboration and it is placed on a very comprehensive canvas.

Essentially, you find prabandha in short tales or kathānak. The term Kathāprabandha would mean a composition. It is also a form of ākhyān (narrative poetry). आख्याियका उपलब्धाथार् ूब॓धः कल्पना कथा।7 However, to write Sairandhree as a prabandha kavya was not an afterthought. In

fact, Joshi’s previous long poem Shikhandi (1985) was also composed as prabandha. While saying all this, what I want to emphasize is the fact that by drawing such forms from rich

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medieval Jaina and other literary traditions from Gujarat and elsewhere, Joshi not only informs us of their historicity but also of their contemporary productive pollination that could be nurtured with our past. In our times of all-serving, generous Googleshwara, building such ‘new’ relational bridges (Sairandhree Setu?) should perhaps rekindle our imaginations, particularly of our younger generations’. In his unique Gujarati metrical organic lyrical literary oeuvre, the poet Vinod Joshi has been doing that over many years, with Sarirandhree, perhaps, it reaches an apotheosis.

Haptic, Proprioception and the Liminal There seems to be a mutual sense of surrendering between the poet and the princess-disguised as-maid. The inaugural perplexed evening of the first sarga becomes અનંત (infinite) towards the end of the seventh sarga, as the sun refuses to set on the ever-shifting horizon, into the Unknown. That’s the unresolved, liminal epic-condition we have entered into: ગગનમધ્ય ગુંજી રહ્યો, સતત કોઇ ટંકાર, નગર િવરાટ બની ગયું, એક અકળ આકાર. િચતા ચડેલી નારને, િનરખે લોક સમસ્ત, િદશા િવસ્તરી એટલી, સૂયર્ ન પામે અસ્ત.

[As Sairandhree has ascended the blazing pyre to be consumed by flames and to be reduced to nothingness (shunya), amidst multitude of onlookers who had no courage to defend the innocent woman, even the Pandavas remained mute; and under the resonating skies, the city has turned into a splendid (િવરાટ incomprehensible figure.]8 In this last or the seventh sarga, Joshi creates a magnificently moving audio-visual spectacle through mere words as if to invite all the mahabhutas (five great elements) in supreme invocation in a mahayajna (મહાયજ્ઞ). Once again it is the liminal space (ether) that engages us through a universal consciousness.

It is between these two mysterious states of being (ārambhic and antim; inaugural and terminal), also between અવ and ઢવ9 that we keep moving through the states of haptic (relating to the sense 5

of touch), proprioception (perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body) and the liminal (occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold). For me, Joshi keeps on creating word-images that are sonic and they make me perceive રવ (sound) between Sairandhree’s અવ and ઢવ, her in-between-ness. And within all these states of being, it is the liminal state that becomes significant to me and the poet has his own liminal invocation of time and space; even geographical that I find, in the making of Sairandhree in Gujarati language.10 Sairandhree’s state of liminality we do encounter throughout the prabandha kavya but its Sarga 2 that has its own experiential intensity, which, it picks up from the end of Sarga 1: સૈરન્ધર્ી ઊભી રહી, અધવચ ઉંબરદ્વાર, અવઢવ એને મોકલે, નિહ અંદર નિહ બ્હાર. (7, p. 38

(Sairandhree stood up right in the middle of the door, undecided, not knowing where to go, inside or outside.)

This liminal mental state gets manifold in its expansion (Sarga 2), e.g. when she questions about her own independent identity as a woman, free of worldly relations that shackle her, being someone’s daughter (દુિહતા), someone’s wife (ભાયાર્), someone’s sister (ભિગની)? (Sarga 2, Khanda 4, Chaupai 4); the state of dwaita (Sarga 2, Khanda 5, Chaupai 2); again the state being not inside nor out (Sartga 2, Khanda 6, Doha); and the state of being in dilemma / threshold (ઉંબર) reappears (Sarga 2, Khanda 7, Doha).

Being Sairandhree is being liminal, I would like to think. And it becomes spatial, too. As revealed by the poet, Sairandhree was born in two different continents as he was travelling to Australia (to be with his son and his family there). In this context, what he said is also liminally interesting, “In the Indian surrounding Sairandhree had to remain as Sairandhree, but in Australia, Draupadi could become ‘Draupadi’. There Sairandhree could see herself as Draupadi.

I could see these locational signs in my creation. What was ‘khanda’ here became ‘akhanda’ there. It is so surprising that when I went there during March-April 2017, I wrote about three sarga there, and then I had to return to India. I thought the work would move much brisker in India but to my surprise it did not. I felt vexed. Work that had gathered its velocity got halted.

And then again I had an unscheduled tour to Australia in January-February 2018, and there the 6

remaining work found its fruition. We may not call it a miracle, but from the decade-and-a-half long mental churning was born Sairandhree in Australia, in about three months’ time.”11 It is the liminal state of being that I find Sairandhree illuminated with Joshi’s elegant lyricism that celebrates the sensuality of Sairandhree’s sharira (body) and soul, which, I think, is in complete harmony with the poet’s svabhava (temperament). And in our meandering peregrination through the prabandha kavya, we see Sairandhree standing not with sunken face as she began with but with her head high and proud, on her own terms. She battled with the evil Keechaka alone and faced the wrath of the mighty alone.

It is Karna, the son of Surya (Sun), she loved and that Surya wouldn’t leave her in the end. As if Sairanhree, with her lock of black, dense hair, had buried herself firmly into Karna’s mighty, loving arms; in eternity! The liminality between ‘desire’ and ‘devotion’ has moved into the resonating infinite skies with shifting horizons.

Poet Vinod Joshi’s Sairandhree who had earlier walked on water like a leisurely female swan (જાણે જળ પર મંદ મરાલી, Sarga 1, p. 24) will now walk on earth like a blazing flame, negotiating the liminal spae at her own will and volition…

SAIRANDHREE (Prabandhakavya) Language: Gujarati Author: Vinod Joshi Publisher: Pravin Prakashan Pvt. Ltd., Rajkot, Gujarat Year: 2018 Price: INR 275/1

A cinematographer-scholar friend from Chennai, Sashikanth Ananthachari has been studying and documenting this agrarian theatre form over the past ten years and I have seen some of his documentation and listened to his stories. I have also seen a Therukoothu performance.

2 Therukoothu, where spectator is part of the spectacle, V.R. Devika, The Hindu, 22 March 2018.

3 In the Maharaja Fatehsinh Museum, Lakshmi Vilas Palace, Vadodara (Gujarat), thre is an 1890 painting (oil on canvas) of Keechaka and Sairandhri by Raja Ravi Varma. In his recent book Rangtirtha, dramatist, actor, director Mahesh Champaklal lists some Draupadi-centric Gujarati plays including Chinu Modi’s one-act verse play Matsyavedh, Hasmukh Baradi’s one-act Draupadi nu Dhyut and Ramji Vania’s Draupadi: Aankh, Aavaran ane Samraangan.

4 Nonindifferent Nature, Sergei Eisenstein, Tr. Herbert Marshal, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

5 These five icononic heroines include Ahalya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara and Mandodari. Ahalya, Tara and Mandodari are from the epic Ramayana, while Kunti and Draupadi from the Mahabharata.

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Prabandha Sahitya ane Padmanabha, Kantilal Vyas in Gujarati Sahitya no Itihas, Granth 2 (AD 1450 – 1850), Eds. Umashankar Joshi, Anantrai Raval, Yashwant Shukla, Gujarati Sahitya Parishad, Ahmedabd, 1976. Bhoja Prabandha is the story of Bhoja, the king of Malwa during the 11th century AD; a Chalukya king, Kumarpala was a disciple of the Jaina scholar and grammarian Hemchandra; written in 1455, Kanhadade Prabandha was written in Apabhramsha.

7 The story of the Making of Sairandhree as told by Vinod Joshi to Bhadrayu Vachchharajani, Shabdasrishti, Gujarat Sahitya Akademi, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, , િડસેમ્બર ૨૦૧૮.

8 Here the word ‘virat’ in Gujarati also has the resonance of the Matsya king Virat, to whose wife Sudeshana, Sairandhree had been serving as a maid. Virat would also mean the universe looked upon as being a manifestation of the Supreme Being.

9 In fact both these points of entry (inaugural) and departure (terminal) remain open-ended.

10 This singular term, derived from the Latin word ‘limen’, meaning threshold, is able to describe the characteristics of any in-between state, regardless of the context that it is part of. A place, a time, a situation, a being, all can be liminal. In his fundamental work Les Rites de Passage (1909), translated into English as The Rites of Passage as late as in 1960, Arnold van Gennep includes time and space in his notion of ‘liminality’.

11 The story of the Making of Sairandhree as told by Vinod Joshi to Bhadrayu Vachchharajani, Shabdasrishti, Gujarat Sahitya Akademi, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, December 2018.

(All translations from Gujarati into English by the author).

Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based Writer, Film Theorist, Curator, Historian. Widely published, he has been writing both in Gujarati as well as English languages.

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