#DNAReaderEdit: Malayalam play brings a syncretic Khasak to life

When Deepan Sivaraman started working on his new project Khasakinte Ithihasam (The Legends of Khasak), everybody knew that it would be a great challenge by the much talented theatre director. Creating a visual experience to the novel with the same name by OV Vijayan was a gigantic task as the book was considered one of the master pieces in Malayalam literature.

Trikkarippur KMK Kalasamithi, in collaboration with Drisya Foundation, a Mumbai-based theatre research and practicing organisation, brings this enchanting experience to Navi Mumbai in November 2016, at the Tandel ground, Karave.

The original Malayalam novel had acquired the stature of latter-day mythology. The play recreates the imaginary rustic abode of the legendary land Khasak in the background of north Malabar's village shrines where myths and fantasy still merge together to form the still living traditions of yore.

The theatre is setup in an open-air arena on a large rectangular pit of loose earth with extensive use of fire, soil, water, scent, sky , symbolic use of huge puppets and masks with real feel that allow audience to participate and experience the pleasures and tragedies that engulf in Khasak. The vibrant scenographic experiences of this play bring back ancestors from the legend of Khasak with their community atmosphere in a ritualistic and philosophical plane to tell their tales of celebration of life, earth and myths. The director also perfectly knits the dramatic elements of Theyyam - an ancient ritual art form of worship from North Kerala - into this production.

It also celebrates the syncretic religious life of Khasak and retrieves the folk-Islam embedded in the novel as a counter-narrative to current perceptions about Muslims. The production of the play has become a cultural event with large public participation, evoking memories of an era when theatre was an integral part of people’s political life.

Khasak is no ordinary novel; for generations of Malayalam readers, it was a sculpture in language that Vijayan built with myths and metaphors. A novel, in writer NS Madhavan’s words, that gave a new vocabulary to Malayalam. Its popularity remains undiminished — it has sold over a lakh copies in over 50 editions — and fans continue to make the pilgrimage to Thasarak, a village in Palakkad where Vijayan’s sister taught in a single-teacher school in the mid-1950s and which he recreated in his novel. It is structured as a journey of Ravi, a young man plagued by guilt and uncertainty, who escapes to Khasak. A cartoonist, Vijayan drew a cast of characters, each unique in his/her own way and with a distinct inner life. Even the landscape breathed life: the plant and animal universe throbbed with energy and character.

Early this year, Deepan staged Khasak at the annual International Theatre Festival of Kerala in Thrissur, where hundreds watched the performance.

Deepan subverts the standard reading of Khasak as existentialist fiction. He refutes the notion that Khasak is Ravi’s story.

“I believe that Khasak, the place, defines the book,” he says. “Vijayan drew Ravi as a lustful character. His political positions are problematic. His interest is mainly in sleeping with women. We must be able to recognise the satirist in Vijayan,” he argues. Deepan finds characters like Naijamali, the non-conformist sufi preacher of Khasak, more interesting than Ravi. In Deepan’s hands, The Legends of Khasak is not mere Ravi’s ithihasam (epic) but the epic story of the land called Khasak. “It is not my reading. I genuinely feel that this is what Vijayan has written,” he says.

Deepan shifts the gaze to the subaltern characters, who, so far, were deemed peripheral to the “story”, and constructs his play as an episodic narrative of dead people coming out of their graves to tell their stories. The Khasak fan who seeks a literal interpretation of Vijayan’s novel will be disappointed.

Deepan is a winner of many awards including Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy Award and Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award.

He taught scenography at University of the Arts, London for six years and is presently an Associate Professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi. Deepan is the founding artistic director of Oxygen Theatre Company based in Thrissur, Kerala. He is also currently associated with Performance Studies Collective - a student initiated experimental theatre group based in Delhi.

Deepan's notable works include Lord of the Flies (1997), Kamala (2003), Spinal Cord (2009), Peer Gynt (2010), UbuRoi (2012), Project Nostalgia (2013), Its Cold in Here (2014), The cabinet of DrCaligari (2015) and The Legends of Khasak (2015). He has also worked as a scenographer to some of his famous contemporaries like Vivan Sundaram, Anuradha Kapoor and Neelam Mansingh, to name a few.