An Introduction to Yakshagana Performance in Bangalore.

Last week on a quiet walk through the streets of Koramangala, because I usually find myself walking towards the towering wooden gates to the Ganapathi Seva Samiti Temple. This cold grey temple premise built in 1979, with its sculptors, and the smell of burning camphor is a refugee camp in this polluted and populated city. They have other amenities for solitary walkers, fresh drinking water from large copper decanters and the free desserts every evening for all visitors.

I have digressed to describe the temple premise, but it was here I encountered the spectacle of an ongoing Yakshagana Natya performance for the first time. It resembles an Opera except the hysterical dancing or an affect-inspiring duel between Indian God and Demons (depends which way you look at it). It works with dance, music, dialogue, costumes, make-up, and stage-techniques. I was not inspired by the music because the priest wailed too loud. I was not inspired by the dialogue because I understand next to nothing of the Kannada language. But I was fixated by the aesthetics, the skirted and pot-bellied gods, the make-up, the costume and the mesmerizing stampede of dancing. As far as meaning making went, I could classify the acts as— The struggle between Good and Evil, as the metaphoric Gods and Demons battled and intimidated each other through dance. The demon’s skin was green and his eyes and cheekbones were highlighted exquisitely blending tones of yellow, ochre, and red of a ripening mango.

The Gods was swaying with chalky talcum white Mudras*, and his sulking companion Goddess (a man dressed as a woman) with sandalwood orange skin and a head full of fake Mullapoo's. * The second act comprised of the mortals procrastinating, so a shy dance of the crowned king and his nervous messenger, almost a relief after the lofty opulence of the immortals. The Natya of the Gods and Demons would interrupt the human conversations—with the Asura's (demons) angry stamping and bellowing, alternately the calm and foxy God would take turn to sway his benign potbelly centre stage. This was enough to keep me engrossed for an hour or two, overhead the moon remained waning gibbous, if you stared at it long enough, all that remained in your iris was its missing crescent.

Mudras: Symbolic or ritual hand gestures in Indian Classical Natya Performances Mullapoo: Jasmine Flowers.