MANIPUR, HIS TORTURED, MESMERISING MUSE

One engagement of the many I had with Ratan Thiyam that had history revolving around it was on October 30, 1984.

- SAMIK BANDYOPADHYAY

One engagement of the many I had with Ratan Thiyam that had history revolving around it was on October 30, 1984. I recall sitting with Ratan at a shoddy restaurant in Bhubaneswar, as we together translated into English his song 'Dharamkshetra Kurukshetra', sung at the close of the prologue by the flagbearers in his play Chakravyuha, now considered a classic of modern Indian theatre.

The play was scheduled to be staged the next evening at an East Zone Theatre Festival sponsored by the Sangeet Natak Akademi.

I was part of a national jury asked to select from the lot one play, or maybe a couple at the most, for a national festival of young directors to be held at New Delhi a few months later. The performance needed a synopsis in English for the viewers, none of whom knew a word of Meiteilon (or Manipuri), a language that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group and is radically different from the languages in the Indian mainstream.

What else was radically different? The visuals: Ratan was an excellent painter and designer in his own right. The soundscape: with the dominance of cymbals, conch shells, and the single-string Manipuri lute pena. The rich dance movements: the delicate, slow movements of the Vaishnava raasa woven together (and clashing at the same time) with the rhythmed violence of the Kuki-Zo martial practices.