Now, two days before Sivakami’s dedicated Ramayana dramatization is to commence, Muchami brings unwelcome intelligence: another Ramayana will be performed in the village at the same time as hers, a different version.
Sivakami straightens from bending over a vat of oil, where eight vadais bounce and bubble. “Another Ramayana?” she repeats after him. “There are two Ramayanas: one written by Valmiki and one by Kamban, one Sanskrit and one Tamil, but they are one and the same. There is no… what did you call this?”
“It’s called the Self-Respect Movement, Amma. They call this the ‘Self-Respect Ramayana,’” Muchami reiterates shamefacedly. “I have heard it’s a version where Ravana is, well… ahem, the hero.”
Sivakami grimly squats and plunges the tongs amid the vadais to make them flip. Visalam squats beside her, patting vadai dough into sticky dumplings on a round, oil-blackened board, pressing her lips together and looking down, to keep herself from laughing.
“Will people go to see this, this… spectacle?” Sivakami demands. She lifts the crisped vadais from the vat and drops them into a vessel of yogourt, using her sari to wipe sweat from her upper lip and the corners of her eyes. Visalam slides a half-dozen more raw vadais into the pan, where they sink, begin to emit streams of bubbles and rise. Visalam starts to giggle, and when Sivakami asks, “What?” points to the pan.
“Please, Sivakamikka,” Gayatri says from the main hall, blowing on her coffee. “Don’t be discouraged.”
“Who is discouraged by these dirty, low types? Will Rama and Sita pay attention to these Brahmin-haters?” She stops herself from saying aloud the rest of her thoughts. Would my husband have gone to the “other” Ramayana? He used to go with them, the ones who said there is no caste. Did they say “Long live Ravana”? What appeal is there in a topsy-turvy world?
“I’m sure I don’t know, Amma,” Muchami solemnly replies, and Sivakami realizes she may have spoken her last question aloud, though sometimes, with Muchami, it doesn’t seem she has to.
Visalam has patted out two more batches of vadais.
“Go,” Sivakami tells her. “The kitchen is too hot.”
The girl springs out to the courtyard and douses herself with well water, guffawing with delight.
The performance troupe Sivakami invited is setting up a stage in a mango grove about two hundred paces east along the cart track that leads from the southern exit of the Brahmin quarter. A number of children lucky or devious enough to have escaped work or school are goggling at the performers, who, even without makeup or costume, display a high theatricality of bearing. Several tease the children and make them shriek with gorgeous terror.
A mile directly east of Sivakami’s back door, beyond the canal and the tracks, another stage and canopy are being erected, by performers physically indistinguishable from the first group in any significant way, though Sivakami’s supporters will claim they are crude in looks and comportment. Even if they hadn’t been so congenitally, the supporters splutter, they would have become so as a result of their crude tampering. How dare they touch the untouchable, alter the unalterable? The Ramayana is a foundation stone, a touchstone, a hero stone inscribed with the glorious events of some bygone day so they may never be erased nor forgotten, nor changed.
It’s probably coincidence that the interloping troupe has come to play in the same week as Sivakami’s scheduled performance, but both sides claim it’s deliberate. The performers Sivakami hired are silent in the face of all political questions, while the other troupe and its citified supporters proclaim their mandate loud and proud:
“While Rama is seen by the ignorant Brahmin-followers to be a valiant hero, we will show him to be a cowardly schemer!
“While the ignorant Brahmins and the uneducated masses they have duped see Ravana as a licentious demon, we will show him to be an honourable man, taking no more-and no less-revenge than he must to vouchsafe his reputation!
“While the ignorant and the duped exhort their young virgins to uphold Sita as the model of virtuous womanhood, taking no initiative, living by the word of her husband, as instructed in that vile manual, The Laws According to Manu, this drama will expose her as the wanton and lusty strumpet she really was!”
The most skilled of the criers explain and extemporize; the least skilled recite, halting but loud, from block-printed, hand-sewn booklets. They thrust their manifesto into the hands of numberless unlettered villagers, cajoling, mocking, seducing them into attending. They roam and comb every caste neighbourhood, except the Brahmins’, where they dump piles of the pamphlets at each exit.
In the hands of any other caste member, the pamphlets look like invitations. Littering the Brahmin quarter, they look like warnings. The wind blows them through the street, plastering them against the red and white stripes of the verandas. Some blow up beyond the reach of indignant reactionaries gathering them to thrust in their fires; some blow into eavestroughs and the little space between roof and walls. Perhaps they will be forgotten there for seasons on end and then discovered by an inquisitive grandchild in a time when all such conflicts are obsolete.
“Come one, come all!” the pamphleteer politicos scream.
Understand how the stinking Aryans flooded our Tamil country from the north with their weapons and their myths of our inferiority. Come and we will reveal what the Brahmins really mean when they say “all the monkeys of the southern country welcomed Rama and pledged their services to him. ” What do you think, noble citizens? These Brahmins see us real Tamilians as monkeys! And devils! Who is this Rama who is so celebrated for overcoming the rightful ruler to the “monkey” throne by devious means and waging war on the “devils ”? Ravana might have been a king from any of our luminous dynasties: any regal Pallava, valiant Pandyan, noble Chola, or high born Chera, who once ruled and battled and upheld our Tamil pride. Are we so stupid that we will continue to accept these distortions?
“Invaders out! Down with Brahmin raj! The day of the elite has ended! They don’t respect us-we have Self-Respect! Long live the real Tamil people!”
Tonight, the seven-night-long performances commence. Which will draw the larger crowd?
Vairum overhears men taking bets at the Kulithalai Club, when he goes to play tennis. Manifold factors weight the odds. As with bhajans or big temple events, only a small proportion of audience members attend Ramayana recitals or dramatizations out of religious devotion. Most come for entertainment, but devotion and diversion usually need not be separated. Tonight, the townsfolk face a strange choice: should they or should they not go to the new Ramayana, which, as a novelty, is a much surer source of entertainment than the smooth and well-worn passages and postures of the classical presentation? Will it be blasphemous? Worse, disrespectful?
And there are other concerns: Will there be violence? Riots? What does this performance signify?
The members of Minister’s political salon have, as always, an irreconcilable variety of opinions on the matter.
“It’s an insult and an affront,” foams Dr. Kittu Iyer, “and quite wholly unnecessary and-”
“False.” Mani Iyer interrupts, agreeing emphatically with the older Brahmin man. “It’s all lies.”
Vairum, since returning to Cholapatti, has been a regular attendee at the salon, though he doesn’t come daily, because he is too busy with his work and because he prefers to maintain a slight distance from these men who are nonetheless useful to him.