the art of story telling

For the past few months I have been downloading old movies, old songs ; mostly 70s and 80s but also some from 60s, Tamil, English and Hindi. They are so different from the current fare you get.

But one thing that has hardly changed  over the past 50 years, if not for centuries, is the art of story telling, the 'katha kalatchebam'  way. The other day , looking for some carnatic music, I stumbled on 'nandanaar caritiram' by Sowmya on You tube. The clips were of 'Margazhi Mahotsavam, 2009' . When you download from you tube it takes a while to collect all the parts, and put it together for viewing leisurely on the TV screen.

The experience took me right back to my childhood, to a large old fashioned, house, in North Madras , Though, we stayed in a small portion , as kids we had all the open spaces for ourselves, and spent most of our time outdoors. The prominent part of the premises was a large hall, with a high ceiling, called "The Samajam ". While the main hall was cemented, a vast area extending up to the main gate, was covered with nice beach-sand where people could sit and listen to a 'kathai' or katcheri' .

This Samajam was the scene of many a of social activity, mainly, kathai, katcheri and kalyanam. As I remember katha kalatchebam was organized twice or thrice in a month and occasionally we had a katcheri , Villupattu or Vikatakatchey (a kind of stand-up comedy, done sitting down ;) ) and radha kalyanam was an annual event. The land lord I belive had bought the property in the beginning of the century. I admire his foresight. The 'samajam' , besides hosting Radha Kalyanam' 'Sita kalyanam ' and 'Ramar Pattabhishekam' , saw the 'kalyanams' of all four daughters of his and I don't know how many grand daughters.

We also had a 'Veda Class' , as we called it . Here's a photo of our Veda Class in the Samajam , circa 1967.

Coming back to Nandanar caritiram, nothing really has changed from the microphone less days to web camera times. The style of narration, style of singing, accompanying instruments, nothing at all seems to have changed since the first performance of the 'musical play' , in the times of Gopalkrishna Bharathi, the composer. Only the medium has changed. Seeing young people in Sowmya's team, one feels that there will always be a small group dedicated to this unique art of story telling.  Of course, there are changes in the external appearance. There is no one with a kudumi, and one of the singers even sports a nice french beard. Some of them may look like corporate executives, but when they sing, they are just the 'bhagavathars' of yesteryears.