A reasonably comfortable bus ride and later an economical, prepaid and organized rickshaw service, all still concepts in Bangalore, landed us at Kalamandira, Mysore for Bahuroopi – their annual theatre festival, celebrating drama on and off stage. A week long venture of the Government of Karnataka to bring the glory back to traditional theatre in the conventional set-up. As the image conjures, there are kurta clad men and women with beads and desi prints pacing about between films, different modes of theatre and culture reinforcements in cozy campus. Tucked away in a lazy part of Mysore, Bahuroopi was a peaceful whiff of fresh atmosphere and an extremely subdued violent form of rebel from mainstream.
For most parts the festival took us back to several time periods in history, including the reign of Mahendra Varma, the old Bangalore, Kanchi, Pitaka, the peak of yakshagana culture and several other South-Indian-Mysore doses of tradition and culture to name a few. The dramas staged had a string of influence no doubt, but what really made one escape to these times were the costumed actors going about their business with such ease and grace. Yes, we really did dine with the Yakshagana versions of epic war heroes, but spoke of cricket controversies.
Just when it got too south-indian, a dose of the rest of the world came beautifully blended together in the guise of a hindi-play on Galileo. And not to mention the impressive screening and dissection of Austrian grey scaled war movie ‘Shame’ at the film festival. That made up for all that one missed about the world outside of Mysore.
The magnitude of the experience was completed with the straw stalls that sold Khadi and Mysore Munches, Wood and clay art, beads and coir ornaments and of course books. And the thing to do is read the sub titles of the war movie followed by a reflective discussion, watch a period play, laugh at a street play rehearsal, eat akki roti and glug down sugar cane juice, which the guy by the way lets you extract and take back a much required refreshing escape and new contacts. I never before had such inspiration on a weekday.