Notes - Chapter 38
I want your help to design for me a bharathanatyam performance. This is a hypothetical performance, that I will ultimately describe in prose as part of a short story.
This theme/overarching story of this performance is: Lord Shiva convincing his wife Parvathy that he is willing to change and work on his rage for the betterment of their relationship.
The music for this performance is played by Ganesh, who is orchestrating the interaction through his music so that his parents can communicate in the way they know best, through dance.
The performance starts with Ganesh carrying his musical instruments and setting up in the middle of the garden of their humble home, as Parvathy is tending to the plants.
He picks up the veena and places it over his lap on onto his shoulder.
He plays the first note that. It is sharp and catches Parvathy's attention. He follows up with an arohanam/avarohanam.
Parvathy ponders on the tune and gestures towards Ganesh with a few finger movements. Ganesh nods and repeats it with a changed node. Parvathy nods in satisfaction and continues to inspect her plants.
Ganesh starts to play. The music starts slow. And Ganesh purposefully moves the melody in sync with his mother's movement. A twinge of surprise is evoked when his mother found a caterpiller eating up her tulsi plants. A hit of frustration, when her cat rolls on the dirt, etc.
The music follows his mother's movements. It ebbs and flows.
After a while, Parvathy stands and starts to walk home with a basket of flowers, freshly harvested. The music decrescendoes as she moves away.
She stops, and the music halts.
She turns and looks at Ganesh. His finger strikes a note as his mother's brow raises inquisitively.
Ganesh responds with a smile. His mother matches him.
She bends over and places the basket to the side, ties her sari around her waist and lowers herself into an arai mandalam stance.
Ganesh moves the Veena away and picks up the Mridangam. Two ethereal arms sprout from his back and grab a tanpura. The arms strum the tanpura, evoking a flat, monotonous hum.
The mother and son exchange a look, and Ganesh's hands strike the leather at the percussive instrument.
Ganesh's fingers dance rhythimically, and his mother collaborates in a seamless partnership.
The performance is a pure display of Nritta. Ganesh cycles through a myriad of rhythmic motifs and combinations, and his mother follows with precision and grace. As the performance crescendos, the gate to the garden opens and a pleasant chime echoes as his father steps in.
He halts and looks at his wife engrossed deeply in her dance. Ganesh proceeds to stop, but his father quickly motions for him to continue and reveals an enamoured smile as his gaze returned to his wife.
Ganesh suppresses a smirk and spawn a pair of additional arms that reach forth and pick up the Ghatam, an earthen pot. He places it against his belly and starts to interlace the deep and resounding bellows of the Mridangum with the short and twangy strikes of the Ghatam.
To that, his mother responds with a seamless alternation between forceful, expressive steps and short, quick movements.
From he corner of his eye, he notices his father's foot tapping on the ground. His smile becomes visible. Ganesh starts to change the rhythm, turning it more inviting.
A sequence later, he notices his father's expression growing firm. He grabs this queue and transitions into a sequence of introductory beats so his father can dance into the scene with four large strides.
Shiva approaches his wife and assumes a stance next to her. Parvathy glances at her husband, and the elated expression on her face softens into neturality. She exits the arai mandalam and nods to her husband in affirmation. She picks up the basket and turns to return home. Shiva's expression drops with sadness.
Ganesh doesn't stop playing the percussive instruments. Instead he starts to crescendo the intensity from a silent whisper to audible booms. As it grew, Shiva's sadness turned into resoluteness. Lord Shiva dances towards his retreating wife and blocks her path, challenging her to join.
Parvathy bows and side-steps, continuing her path. But Lord Shiva blocks her path again. Parvathy tries to evade again, but Shiva splits into multiple forms and surrounds his wife, assuming various stances as he blockaded her.
Ganesh, in turn quickly split into multiple ethereal forms. Each form wielding the same instruments and playing a harmonic rhythm that overlaid with impossible perfection.
Parvathy look around her, and an irritated scowl twists her brows. She lets out an exhale and splits into multiple forms as well, one for each of her husbands.
A beat passes. And then all the Ganesh's slap the leather surface of the instrument at the same time, and the husbands and wives descend into an impromptu yet precisely choreographed sequence.
Over ten different rhythms resonated in the garden, each at a different tempo and motif, but each working perfectly alongside the other.
As the intensity of the performance started to plateau, Ganesh dispersed one of his copies, forcing his parents to dismiss one pair. This pattern progressed until all that remained were the originals.
At this moment, Ganesh transitioned the beat. From an expression of prowess to a intimate conversation. He spawned another set of arms an picked up the Veena, as the performance was no longer a display of nritta, but a deeper conversation.
Shiva looked deep into his wife's eyes. She returned a gaze, but only for a moment. A faint shimmer of hope flickered past her face before disappointment drowned it and she averted her gaze.
Shiva captured his wife's chin and gently lifted her gaze to meet his again.
'Wife...' Shiva's eyes called.
Parvathy returned a blank, blink.
'I'm... I'm sorry,' he conveyed.
'What for?' Parvathy countered, unbothered.
Shiva's head dropped and turned to look at Ganesh playing percussion.
Parvathy sank deep into arai mandalam. With her hands, she form the Simhamukha mudra, fingers curled into taut claws, while her elbows flared out to suggest the breadth of a massive chest. She moved with a slow, heavy gait, placing each foot specifically and silently. Her eyes did not show anger (Raudra); instead, they held a steady, unblinking focus that conveyed hunger without malice.
She switched instantly, as her hands shot up in Mriga sheersha, mimicking an animal's pricked ears. Her neck darts from side to side. She trembled, and her eyes widened as she sensed the shifting air.
She snapped back to the predator. Without a mudra of hesitation or a glance of pity. She sprang forward. Her hands slash downward in a violent diagonal arc, tearing through the space. She froze in the aftermath. Her chest heaved, but her face remained impassive showing no guilt or remorse.
'A tiger does not apologise to the deer before it mauls it.'
She transitioned into a posture of deceptively calm submission. She sat on her heels and suppressed her presence. She was a "tamed" beast. She accepted food as it was offered to her, and bowed her head to her master's beck and call. Her eyes were lowered, and her movements were rigid and mechanical. Perfectly mimicking a creature that has learned to suppress its spirit for survival.
Then, Ganesh pushed the rhythm in a slow crescendo in both tempo and amplitude. A shift occured. Parvathy froze. Her nostrils flared as a scent in the wind slithered in. The mechanical rhythm of her body stopped. Slowly, the Simhamukha mudra formed at her side, once again trembling with repressed energy. She looked at her master, and her expression changed from submission to recognition.
The facade shattered. You rose slowly and shed her domestic posture. She paced the garden, marking her territory with heavy, sweeping steps. She lunged with a ferocious speed that suggested the training never truly took hold.
'To hunt is a predator's nature. No amount of domestication can erase that.'
Shiva understood the implication of his wife's expression.
Shiva approached his wife, who stood frozen in the rigid, unyielding stance. He circled her slowly. He searched her face for even a trace of Raudra (anger), but past the expression of bloodlust symbolising the predator's gaze, he could only see blank apathy. He waved his hand before her eyes. She does not blink. His body recoils as though impacted by an invisible weapon..
He reached out and gently touched her shoulder with an open palm. Immediately, he recoiled as if burned, not by heat, but by the coldness of her resignation. He retreated a few steps and used the Suchi mudra (pointing finger) to recall her past fury. He mimed her speaking up animatedly with her chest heaving and her eyes flashing fire. He clutched his own chest and smiled sadly at this memory, showing that her anger proved she still claimed him as her own.
He pointed to her now. He traced the flat line of her mouth. And finally he shook his head violently. He looked at your own hands, still holding the faint shape of the "tiger" she described. And he immediately rejected it. He slowly unclenched his fingers and smoothed them until they were completely open and vulnerable.
'It pains me to realise that my behaviour has made you apathetic towards me. I realise that my actions have created this distance between us. But I want you to understand, that I am changing.'
Parvathy stepped backward slowly and deliberately, creating a physical gap that mirrored her emotional distance. She held her hands in the Sarpa Shirsha mudra (snake head) and enacted the shedding of old skin. Then, she revealed the "new" skin underneath, but then she struck forward with the same venomous bite. The creature remained a serpent regardless of its gleaming new appearance.
Next, she moved to a metaphor of elemental stubbornness to drive the point home. She cupped her hands to gather imaginary water and poured it over a clenched fist that represented a stone. She repeated this motion rhythmically to show the passage of eons. Finally, she opened her hand to show that the stone was wet, but it had not become soft; it was still a hard and cold rock.
She turned her back on Shiva in Vimukha, refusing to witness a transformation she believed was impossible. She walked away in a straight, unwavering line, signaling that while his moods may fluctuate like the tides, her understanding of his nature is as fixed as the shore.
'People don't change'
Shiva stopped pleading. He understood that words were useless. In fact, even plain actions were meaningless for Parvathy. She needed to see something concrete.
He planted his feet wide in the warrior's stance, steadying himself for what must come. His gaze fell to his own chest. He clenched his right hand into a tight fist, knuckles whitening, turning his hand into a weapon.
With a sharp breath out, he drove the fist deep into his own solar plexus.
Ganesh's hand stopped and the music ceased altogether. Parvathy turned around and her brows twitched in shock.
Shiva shot Ganesh an urging look. In hesitance, Ganesh tapped the percussive instruments and resumed playing.
Shiva's body folded inward and curled around the blow. His face twisted in pain and disgust. His eyes rolled back. His left hand grasped his right wrist, and contrary to one's expectation he did not pull it out but to pushed deeper - past flesh, past bone, into the very core of his being.
Then came the extraction. Slowly, he began to pull. Using a subtle hand gesture within his chest, he gripped the 'Rage' itself. He drew it out inch by inch as his whole body shook violently. At last, he held it before him. It was a jagged, pulsing ball of red energy, clutched in his fingers.
He looked at Parvathy. Then he looked at the Rage in his hand.
The climax was quiet. He did not wind up. He did not throw with force. He simply flicked his wrist, casting a crucial essence of his power away - as if it were dust, or a dead insect. He watched it fall from Mount Kailasha. His face showed no victory, only the hollow stillness of a predator who had torn out his own fangs.
She wavered for a second. The sight of Shiva's self-inflicted wound pulled a gasp from her. She took a single, impulsive step forward. Her hand reached out in Alapadma (the blooming lotus) to stanch injury. She almost touched him, but the shadow of the past stopped her hand mid-air. She withdrew. Her face hardened from pity back into resigned clarity.
She lifted her left arm, holding the Sarpa Shirsha (the cobra hood) mudra high. With her right hand, she mimicked the act of defanging the serpent. She acted out the extraction, tossing the invisible fang aside just as Shiva had cast away his rage.
But then she pointed to the empty gum. She crouched low and brought her face close to her hand. Using her index finger, Suchi, she traced the gum line. She pulsed her hand rhythmically to show the blood pumping and the life force returning to the wound. Slowly, agonizingly, her index finger unfurled from the fist once more. She did not rush; she showed the sharp, white calcium of the new fang pushing through the skin, as long and as sharp as the one before.
She looked at Shiva with Shoka (sorrow). She snapped the "jaw" of her hand shut and struck the air, proving that the poison sack refilling was not a choice, but a biological imperative.
'Your rage is like the fangs of a snake. It may be gone now, but it will come back again.'
Shiva stepped into her space ignoring the invisible wall she had built. He sank into Muzhu Mandi (the full sitting stance) at her feet, lowering himself beneath her gaze. He gently took her right hand, still held in the Sarpa Shirsha. He turned her palm upward, opening her fingers into Alapadma (the blooming lotus).
He placed his own left hand beneath hers to support it. With his right index finger (Suchi) he touched the centre of her open palm. He slowly raised the finger, mimicking the fang rising from the gum, just as she had shown him. He watched it grow, acknowledging the truth of her words: the nature would return.
But the moment the finger fully extended, his right hand snapped into Mushti (a tight fist). He gripped the invisible fang resting on her palm. Without flinching, he jerked his hand back with a violent, snapping motion, miming the tearing of the tooth from its root. He cast it aside into the void.
He did not stop.
He immediately returned his finger to her palm. He raised it again to show the fang regrowing. He ripped it out once more. He raised it a third time. He ripped it out a third time.
Shiva stood in a neutral stance and met Parvathy's gaze. With his right hand shaped like a swan's beak, he reached toward the air as if catching an invisible thread. The symbolic thread of her words about unchanging nature. His wrist twisted sharply and snapped it apart.
He stepped forward. His left hand clenched into a fist. His right index finger became a chisel, striking the stone again and again. The stone cracked. It softened. It reshaped itself beneath the blows until it became something new, something transformed. He showed her that even the hardest substance could yield.
He raised two fingers, holding them apart to mark a choice between two forces.
For the first, his body stiffened. A shudder ran through him. It wasn't a shudder of cowardice, but of awe before an endless void. His hand pushed outward, warding off a darkness he could not name. A tremor rippled from his shoulders down to his fingertips, the body betraying what the will could not.
Then, the tremor ceased. His hands softened, pressing together near his heart. His eyes half-closed. He swayed gently, like a flame sheltered from the wind. The rigidity melted away, replaced by a quiet warmth that flowed through his limbs.
He turned fully toward Parvathy. With a gentle hand, he traced the outline of her form in the empty air between them - her shoulders, her face, the curve of her presence.
Slowly, he covered his own eyes with both palms. When he drew them away, he looked at the space where she stood - but his eyes searched as if she were no longer there. He reached out yet his fingers grasped at nothing. His breath quickened. His head turned left and right, hunting for what had vanished. He pointed to the emptiness before him, then pressed his palm hard against his own chest - as if to say: without you, what remains here dies.
He sank to his knees. His hands fell to his chest, feeling the pulse beneath the skin - the rage, the nature she feared. He looked up at her with his expression stripped bare. From the air, he gathered something delicate - a garland of flowers - and pressed it against his heart. He held it there as if willing it to sink into his flesh. His body tensed once, as something wild stirred within, but the weight of his devotion pressed down, stilling the beast beneath.
At last, he extended his hands toward her asking for a boon. His eyes lifted, glistening with devotion. In that silence, he did not offer a promise of change, but a plea to trust the chains he had forged with his own hands.
'You are wrong to say that people cannot change. People can change. In this world there are only two forces powerful enough to motivate change: fear, and love. I know you cannot believe my promises of change.'
'But I want you to know that in this entire cosmos there is only one thing I fear the most. And that is losing you - the only thing I love most. So I implore you. If you cannot believe in my words, at least believe in my affection for you. Believe that it is strong enough to motivate a change in me for the better.'
Parvathy hesitates, but only for a moment. She reached forward and held her husband's extended hand.
Ganesh gradually faded out the music. Once there was nothing but silence and the chatter of the fauna inhabiting the garden, Ganesh picked up his instruments and walked home with a satisfied smile on his face.
"If there is one thing in the world I have no doubt about, it is my husband's devotion to his family," Parvathy expressed with a bittersweet smile.
The duo exchanged a meaningful gaze, until Pravathy broke away with a faint blush on her cheeks. "It is nearly time for lunch. I must go prepare it."