The ideologically insidious Kalu Kumari

By Dilshan Boange

What is an inheritance in one sense may be a baggage from another footing. Much of it is determined from the standpoint taken or given. The ideological essence of how people approach the politics that shape our outlook on the world depends on what we are heir to and inherit as a result of who we are born as. These seemed to be some of the deeper lines of thinking that formed the 'politics' of the play Kalu Kumari by K. B. Herath which came alive on the boards at the John de Silva memorial theatre recently as an entry to the State Drama Festival 2012/2013.

Built on a drama narrative containing song and dance the production had a texture which was appealing to present day tastes when it comes to contemporary Sinhala theatre. It was entertaining without a doubt owing partly to some of the jibes the dialogues had taking digs at the prevailing political climate through the use of certain key phrasal terms, which the audience was immediate to catch onto and responded to with vibrant laughter.

The experience of theatre

Theatre is one of the few forms of art where the artists may come into contact with the instantaneous reflexes of the audience for whom they have laboured to present an artistic vision through live performance. The experience of theatre is after all not only the story that unfolds on stage with lights, music, dance and dialogue against sets and designs that create a representation of the 'space' in which the characters play out their parts, but also the responses of the audience sitting in the gentle darkness, their audible reactions varying from uproarious laughter to muffled laughs to giggles and gasps of disbelief or consternation and of course that very sensible silence where the depth and profoundness of a moment of the drama felt weightily for its poignancy or sombreness which stills the viewer to a moment of soundlessness.

The larger experience of theatre as a medium of live performance art in my opinion is realised at the subtle conflux of the senses of the two spheres of people who come together to make theatre come alive in a chosen space. The two spheres of people being the ensemble of persons as 'characters' on stage, and the people watching them as their 'audience'.

The title of the play, Kalu Kumari which if translated into English verbatim would mean Black or Dark Princess, contained a number of themes that were related to the debates and contentions on class and social stratification as being a factor or force which displaces and complicates human relations. Throw into the schema a heavy dose of the weightiness of the traditionalisms of social hierarchy in the form of 'feudalism' that prevailed and continues to shade contemporary society, and what one finds in terms of ideological grounding is a heady leftwing critique.

The symbol of oppression is mainly found in the character of Janak the chauffer who serves with doglike fidelity his blueblood master Naren. The role of the master, masterfully played by popular actor of the stage and screen Nalin Pradeep Udawela, is the epitome of the feudally opportunistic employer of today whose hangover from the bygone age of feudal rule posits him as a man who seeks to work his way around the system of today to serve his fetishes which carry a strong aspect of obsessing over his family symbols of power and superiority as well as the reputation of honour and nobleness.

There is a saying that a house takes on the character of the people who inhabit it. And when read in conjunction with the truth in the famous quote by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche,'When you look into the abyss the abyss looks back into you', one finds Herath has brought out a very powerful story of what befalls the weak gazer who stares into the enigmatic abyss. The occupant of the house can be affected or made to take on a shade of the character of the house as well. Architecture isn't as inanimate and soulless as one may think.

Janak is a newly wed. His wife Janani who is of a very humble background but dreams of someday becoming a glamorous actress which can be a career symbolic not so much occupation wise in the context of the play but to do with status accorded to celebrities in society. Janak on the other hand sees such dreams of grandeur as utterly ludicrous and despises vying for statuses beyond their station.

Naren is in urgent need of a reliable caretaker to keep watch over his ancestral abode which is fast moving towards decrepitude since his wife who is not of a blueblood lineage like him categorically refuses to move into what had been the abode for many generations of aristocrats related to royal bloodlines, which is his lineal narrative and legacy. The proposition which Naren makes to his servant Janak to move in with his new bride is pleadingly declined by Janak for reasons which he cites as being improper with his own lowly station in life since the home had been the abode of great figures who have even found immortalisation in history as being great rulers.

The outcome is that the arrangement to setup residence is forced upon Janak and he is left but with 'Hobson's choice' if he is to remain under Naren's employment. This is the beginning of the tragedy that befalls the character who represents the toiling masses who cannot afford to voice their own displeasures to any practical effect against the designs of their masters.

Janak ultimately loses his wife to what seems like a personality disorder that is later twisted with the aid of 'scientifically acceptable' verdicts of psychology backed psychiatric examination, to be not delusional but real. It is a twist that gives credence to a state of affairs that is more necromantic than scientific. And their lies the primary thrust in the absurdity the play brings out as a thematic thread to its technique as a stage drama.

Techniques and approaches

Kalu Kumari cannot be grasped as a play built on the technique of realism when looking at the basis of its approach to art. It has an elemental basis of the abstract as well. The opening scene of Janak in the form of a bat claiming that he is among his people is evidence of this factor.

The bats which form a crucial part of the ancestral abode's character represent the eternally oppressed who are doomed to take abode in the nooks and crannies of the abodes of the mighty and powerful as the despised irritations who sadly have nowhere else to go once they have given the best part of their time and strength to serve their masters.

Another 'abstractness' in the play's narrative is found in the labelling given the abode where the action is set. The old mansion is called a walauwwa (the residence of a feudal nobleman or Nilame as per the dialect during the era of the Kandyan kingdom), a maligawa (palace), a bungalawa (bungalow), interchangeably.

The classification of the residence thus seems fluid in a symbolic way in terms of wordings. One must keep in mind that there are significant socio-cultural connotations and variance amongst the terms afore mentioned and they do not necessarily project the same concept of an abode though they are of the category where they serve as abodes for the affluent; the palace being of course the most superior amongst them.

Herath's use of these terms, the wordings to move in a certain 'fluidness' in the flow of dialogue seems to suggest that in the scope of the differentiations being primarily between the haves and the 'have-nots' the masters and the servants the specifics of terminology may be immaterial to the oppressed as to what the abodes of the powerful are called.

The Shakespearean argument of 'What's in a name, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet' may seem the sole sensibility from the point of the servant. Regardless of what the abode is called, regardless of the classification of the master in the spectrum of upper class stratifications, the servant remains the servant.

One of the striking points of contention brought out through the character of Naren in the play is that he despises the bourgeoisie and their attempts to claim noble lineage by virtue of coming into possession of the ancient antiquities of the feudal lords whose ancestral abodes and heirlooms are material testimonies to their former glories.

Herath has thus brought out subtly the collisions in outlooks between groups of the upper socio-economic spectrum in society. In Kalu Kumari the master's muscle for oppression simply isn't monetary wealth alone but the wealth of lineage which works as a tool to subvert the mind of the oppressed, and keep them in awe and admiration of the manifold superiorities of status held by the master.

The role of Mayamma

On the lines of dissecting the elements of abstractness that weave this drama interlaced with satire that relates to a partially realist mode of drama, one attribute Herath has very deftly worked into the concept and narrative of the story is the harmoniousness with which the surreal can blend with what is identifiably the 'representatively' real to craft a facet of 'magical realism' for the stage.

The character of 'Mayamma' the old wet nurse claims a vintage dating back generations that span centuries and whose sole duty has been to be a human cow to nourish all the infants born to the family. Her fanatical devotion to the family makes her the ideal 'old faithful' who observes a religious obedience to her masters whom she has pledged to serve timelessly. She is a creature who defies the logic of chronology and materiality.

Whether Mayamma is a normal person who is simply psychotic or a supernatural being is not made clear within the text of the play.

Despite her surrealist nature she plays on in the realm of 'realness' which is represented by Janak, Janani and their master Naren. Mayamma is acknowledged by Naren as his own wet nurse as well when she presents herself reverentially to the master of the manor whom she addresses with obeisance as Punchi nilame.

The manner in which this unrealistic character, whose existence would seem credible in a dream and thereby very strikingly surreal, moves about coming into full view and contact with the characters who are identifiable as real, marks a layer of the 'magically real' at work.

The character of Mayamma embodies the ethereal. She claims to be a conduit who can see into the future and thereby is not an ordinary mortal. She is a personification of the oppressed who had the privilege to be more 'housebound' and closer to the masters who commanded the labouring masses and at that be the one who could rightfully claim she turned her blood to milk to feed and nourish the heirs of the aristocratic family to whom she was wet nurse. One of the hallmark characteristics of magical realism as devised by South American writers in the like of Gabriel Garcia Marquez is that the fantastical and the real move in harmony in a common sphere of existence. The world of ghosts and spectres aren't negated as unreal in the sphere of human existence, and are considered very much a part of the world perceived through the human senses. This salient attribute of magical realism is brought out with unmistakable clarity in Herath's Kalu Kumari through the role and positioning of Mayamma.

What can be said of the politics Herath's Kalu Kumari discourses for society at present? Is the leftist ideological grounding embedded in the play a novelty? It would be an utter falsehood to say yes. The critique against the traditional setup of master and servant in society of bygone eras continues to this day in a more sophisticated structured system in the framework of modern economics which we are heir to as an eventual progression due to the result of the impositions through the advents of Western colonialism.

The local leftist of today could of course possibly view the bane of the oppression to be the traditionalisms that constituted our systems of old and that the first line of attack must be directed at the bastions which still may hold some semblances of feudality in their outlooks.

Leftist theatrical critiques

What comes to mind when contemplating on the politics of Kalu kumari is the Sinhala drama Rahas udaviya (Secretive people) by Piyal Kariyawasam which debuted on June 12, 2012 at the Lionel Wendt. A brazen outright attack against the establishment from a hard line leftwing ideological grounding, Rahas Udaviya makes no apologies nor holds reservations over attacking the traditionalisms that form much of our identity as a people classifiable in terms of religious and ethnic affiliations.

Although both Rahas Udaviya and Kalu Kumari have ideological foundations that fount from common roots, what is vastly different is the craft of the playwrights in positioning their works as artistic communications through the medium of theatre. Kariyawasam's Rahas Udaviya for all its boldness is crafted as a discourse delivered from a pulpit of intellectuality, and may not really be for the average theatregoer and may not necessarily stimulate the average person not of a leftist inclination to think critically.

Herath on the other hand has considered what speaks to the human pulses of the average Sri Lankan theatregoer as pivotal when weaving his ideologically driven narrative for the theatre. It is without a doubt more pervasive. It is a play which is more potent against the rightwing.

Kalu Kumari is a drama which can be enjoyed by the average theatregoer of Sri Lanka which also stimulates critical reflection about what befalls those who seek to blossom at the feet of the high and mighty, eager to ensure their own survival whilst their masters seek only to exploit the opportunity to entrap the desperate in the webs of 'double edged' power play. The finale being that the oppressed are deprived even of their original identity and made to hang like bats on rafters whose world has been turned upside down.