Donning Shiva and Shakti

Everyone cherishes to enact a role or two of somebody one adores, all the more with the visual entertainment media taking the world by storm.

I was no exception, having been a member of the then South India Theatres in Delhi. Alas, it was short-lived. My presence warranted the storywriter to conceive a special character that fitted my heavily loaded Palghat-Tamil accent.

Regardless, everyone bides for his time, which seldom goes unrewarded. For me, it came in the form of Aunty and I being asked to don Shiva and Shakti for a Dampati Puja recently. One website chose to call her Shakti, the other Annapurni, and yet another Parvathy. The essence is the same. Again, to draw liberally from websites, Dampati Puja is a process of offering prayers to an elderly married couple, invoking them as Shiva and Parvathy, either within their own family or outside their relatives, or someone who is great at heart.

The last qualifier is far fetched for us. But we definitely were relatives. It was Aunty’s sister and her husband who performed the ceremony. Earlier, a strong contingent of my s-i-l, her husband his two brothers with spouses, and another cousin with his wife (all senior citizens I guess), had set out on an extensive near-non-stop tour of Rameswaram, Kashi, Allahabad, Gaya, Kashi, and Rameswaram. Back in Bangalore, they were supposed to perform Ganga Puja followed by a Dampati Puja to complete the ritual circle, their total exhaustion notwithstanding. One thing emerged. If you wish to shed a chunk of kilos, undertake a long ritual-filled religious tour rather than rely on the evasive diet-exercise duo.

Undoubtedly, the most suited couple in the family for Dampati Puja would have been the eldest sister and brother in law (86). But then they are in Dubai, and already enjoying this very privilege every Friday in a function there. The choice thus fell on the next senior sister and her husband (read Aunty and me).  A stand-by is a stand-by, like the occasion when as young boys we rushed to Kalpathy village one evening to enjoy the melodious Murugadas Bhajan, only to return home content with the stand-by local bhajan group performing instead. Murugadas’ car broke down on his way from Coimbatore to Palakkad. The silver lining however was the four of five varieties of Prasadam on an empty stomach at 9.30 in the evening which somewhat compensated for the loss - a la Dollar nahi to kameez ka collar chalega, a line in an old Hindi song.

Back to donning Shiva and Shakti, Shakti also happens to be the screen name for the heroine of Queen, Gautam Vasudev Menon’s foray (?) into the television world, sharing with us the story of purportedly Jayalalitha. Names have been changed to safeguard against libel. An average movie-goer of yesteryears can however make out, as intended, who the near-original names GMR, Anjula, or Soumya Devi, in real life refer to.

In the few episodes we watched, the narration moves fairly smoothly; tends to be slow or overstretched at times though, and deftly handled at other places. Welcomingly the background score is soothing and prefers to stay in its designated place, the background, not affecting the audibility of the dialogue –a sharp contrast to the current trend where background should more appropriately be hailed forefront. Overall Queen helps viewers to have a peep into the lives of film celebrities with their own quota of trials and tribulations - and far from being a bed or roses. What we see externally is their trying to keep up appearances.

Against the backdrop of such an extensive coverage in the serial, one wonders what will the producer of the full-fledged biopic, “Thalaivi’(Leader), with Kangana Ranaut in the lead, be left with to convey to the audience. But then, these movie moghuls know a little too well which side of their bread is buttered, and to explore uncharted territories. After all, they just will not let their investment go down the drain. Meanwhile we shall keep our fingers crossed.