part0011

W e knew the poem, we wanted to see the country. India. We had read the Mahabharata at length, Peter in English, Marie-Hélène Estienne and I in French, in Hippolyte Fauche’s version. After listening to Philippe Lavastine’s long and marvellous accounts; after one year of reading—in Paris, while travelling, everywhere. Another year of reading together, around a table. Comparing versions, eliminating certain digressions, some preliminary accounts (‘Yayati’, for example, not without regret).

The Mahabharata had been, for eight years, our constant companion. I took it with me to Mexico when I worked with Buňuel (Portolés, the Spanish filmmaker). Always one or two volumes in my suitcase, since the whole work is impossible to carry—sixteen times the size of the Bible! I remember a day in New York in 1983, auditioning tenors for Carmen . Seated beside Peter in a theatre. At an audition one knows immediately whether a singer is good or not. Then, out of politeness, one listens for another ten minutes. Peter leaned slightly towards me and whispered something about Karna, ‘Don’t you think that?...’ I don’t remember exactly what it was about. But he could think only of that. I, too.

And the tenor carried on singing.

In India now, together, familiar with the story, the characters. Capable of discussing them with the Indians, even with the specialists.

But needing India. Needing to see how the Mahabharata is still acted, danced, sung, lived. During several preparatory journeys, Marie-Hélène had been in touch with a large number of schools, artists who sang, danced and acted in episodes of the poem. And who, indeed, does not do that? And some who even do nothing but that. We were to see plenty of them.

But above all we needed to see and to hear India. Meet, gather all the images. Not to have, for the moment, any idea of the spectacle, of the play. To remain open, curious, a little childlike. Go everywhere.

We had the advantage of knowing nothing. No a priori . We were not experts.

September 1982. I find myself in India for the first time.

I arrive in Delhi in the middle of the night. I have an address, that of a cultural attaché who is supposed to look after me for a few hours. I have to take a flight at dawn for Bombay where Peter awaits me.

No money, no loose change to make a phone call. Nobody at the airport. Pay the taxi in dollars (exchange counter closed).

In the long avenues of Delhi, in the dead of night, my first sight of cows, like pale ghosts.

I find Peter, Marie-Hélène, our music director Toshi, and Simon, Peter’s son. We are to travel together, all five of us.

My first newspaper, my first bizarre news item: a factory owner swears before the judge that he did not throw the workers into the river.

The first night, shots of firing wake us up. The next day Peter inquires at the front desk of the hotel. Gunshots? Are you sure? Peter is sure, so am I. But the boss has heard not the slightest sound of any shooting; nor have any of his employees. When Peter insists the man replies, ‘It was the storm.’

The first day in Bombay. Into the swing of things immediately. Plunging into the chaos of the city, encounters with directors and actors, with Girish Karnad, with Vijaya Mehta. Dancers too. We announce our plans: present the Mahabharata on the stage, in French. And why not? First tricky questions. But it is all right, we know the work. It is familiar territory.

In the evening, the popular theatre. Girls dance on the stage, men get up and give them rupees. Like an age-old game of seduction, easy and open, without tourists. A lovely wooden hall.

At night, on foot, in the streets. Vendors sitting in their stalls, surrounded by fruits, dressed in white.

No torpor. On the contrary. A vibrant vitality.

We are told we must not miss Ellora and Ajanta. An obligatory tourist circuit. The plane up to Aurangabad, then chauffeur-driven cars, one day for Ellora, one for Ajanta. But tourism is also a part of travelling. Pointless to deny it.

Images fashioned in stone. Ellora is mixed Hindu and Buddhist. Ajanta only Buddhist. Groups of Japanese on a pilgrimage to these sacred sites. Toshi speaks to them.

Our driver is Muslim and does not hide it. His disdain for Hindu festivities (marriages, processions) which we encounter on the way, and which we want a closer look at. Many stops, which exasperate him.

Ellora, a frieze-like mountain. With the landscape like an ornamental backdrop. Sculpting the earth (the temple of Kailash is entirely cut out of a single piece of rock. But how could anyone know that there was a temple in the mountain?).

A few days in Bombay. Film screenings. The Mahabharata in Hindi films adapts itself easily to the modern world: for example, two families of bankers destroy each other. Not for us.

Heat and rain. End of the monsoon. We are leaving for the south. Everyone tells us: ‘It is the best season.’

Bombay, Chor Bazaar, an incredible collection of bric-a-brac. It seems that one finds everything here. Everything is carried, or pulled, by men. People, things, everything everywhere is on the move. It is like a miracle. It feels as if the streets will freeze with the surcharge. But no. A surprising fluidity. The dharma of the masses. The present is sometimes very ancient.

First of all Shravanabelagola, in Karnataka. Twenty-five kilometres away, across the vast plain, one sees the gigantic statue of the Jain saint, Gomateshvara, a very illustrious personality. Every ten or fifteen years he is given a ritual bath; very special ablutions.

We walk six hundred and nineteen steps up to the top of the hill. Toshi arrives first. The towering stone giant stands in the courtyard of a temple. More than seventeen metres high. The gentle hermit is totally naked. Plants sculpted in stone snake up his legs.

His penis is enormous. I imagine it, from time to time, under the effect of certain astral conjunctions and accompanying prayers, swelling and rising, spraying the audience with semen which impregnates all the women present.

It is time to start inventing Indian myths. The best is that these myths, still very much alive, are open to the imaginings of people faraway.

The next day, inevitably, the temples of Belur and Halebid, also in Karnataka. The usual state of wonder in front of this ‘lacework in stone’. Bare feet burn on the stone floor of the courtyard; a puja in Belur; eroticism of the sculpted dancers and, in some places, episodes that we start to recognise. At Halebid, for example, Bhishma on his bed of arrows. And here and there, a little sodomy in between other practices going back to eternity.

And then, Udipi, close to the Indian Ocean, still in Karnataka, for our first visit to a school of dance, the Yakshagana.

Here a tradition going back several centuries has been completely revived and revitalized by a great master. We watch the classes (training starts from the age of six) and, on two successive evenings, performances accompanied by commentaries.

Emotion: suddenly recognising ‘our’ characters but in the land that gave them birth. Recognising also scenes and episodes, trying to identify the language, the signs. Each dancer here dances the same role all his or her life, until the dancer and the character become indistinguishable one from the other. Arjuna is over sixty, something that does not seem to upset anyone—especially not him!

Costumes and make-up are lighter than in Kathakali. But the need for transfiguration is obvious. The dancer, the actor, is someone else. Long discussions on techniques of gestures, of the eyes. They show us their Mahabharata . For us to find ours.

At first we had planned to take two cars for the five of us. In the end one suffices. It is an Indian Ambassador car. In any case, India has only that. Towards the end of the 1940s, a model had been found which was perfectly suited to the country: slow motor, heavy body, very sturdy. A driver always with us (steering wheel on the right, inherited from the British). Two sit in front with the driver, three at the back. Since the seats in the middle are the least comfortable, we change places now and then. Long distances, frequent stops. A carrier on top of the car for the baggage, Toshi’s instruments, our shopping. The driver can stay eight days with the clients. In the evenings he disappears to eat and sleep, who knows where. It’s a secret.

The eroticism of the Mahabharata . As soon as a rishi retreats into the forest to do penance, a stunningly sexy woman emerges from the river to distract him. But for that at least two or three beautiful women would be needed. There is something humid and hot in the poem, something primeval. Almost everything starts with a royal hunt, with a king who falls asleep, dreams of his wife and his sperm escapes. Not to be missed. Ganesha might say: ‘It is a good beginning.’

The force of destiny, the strength of desire. One often pitted against the other, alas.

They say it is in Kerala that the traditions of the Mahabharata , at least in the performances, are the most faithfully preserved.

First of all in Kathakali, the dance form best known in the West (several visits to the Kathakali centre, several performances). It is perhaps to a Kathakali performance that Peter saw in London to which we owe our presence in India today. He recollects a particularly striking moment: a strangely dressed creature thrusts his head ferociously into the entrails of another creature and comes up with a red ribbon—the intestines—between his teeth. He wondered what it was all about. Today we know that it was Bhima settling accounts with the terrible Dushasana.

In 1975, an Indian company came to Paris. We went to see their performance and we showed them ours— Ubu aux Bouffes (Ubu at the Bouffes Theatre) it was called at that time, then Ubu Roi (king), then Ubu Cocu (cuckold). Naturally they did not understand a word of French. At the end, we kept them back in the theatre and Peter asked them to tell us in their way, in their language (without make-up or costumes), what they had understood of the play. One of them started, with beautiful hand gestures, ‘There was once a powerful king surrounded by courtesans.’ He had understood perfectly the idea of a conspiracy against a cruel king. One thing struck them as an obstacle: the fact that an actor could play several characters without—almost—changing his appearance. An impenetrable convention.

In that same period we had started taking some dance lessons from Karuna (Kathakali guru living in Paris, and Peter’s brother-in-law). To get used first of all, to bending the knees, the weight on the outside edge of the feet, the back straight. Learning some hand gestures and movements of the eyes. What the body can express—when one forces it—of another culture and which the mind cannot conceive of! 1