Malavika Sarukkai shines brighter than stars

Photo: Ridwan Adid Rupon

On the opening night of the Bengal Classical Music Festival 2014, a growing audience watched renowned Bharatnatyam dancer Vidushi Malavika Sarukkai alight the stage with a fiery solo performance.

Malavika started off with Nrityanjali, a piece about Nattarajan, the dance God, his devotees and their pilgrimage to spiritualism. The short piece showed her excellence and grip in Bharatnatyam. In minutes, she conquered the entire stage. What she did after this piece and the audience really enjoyed was that she narrated the next story with the dance hand gestures before actually performing it. This helped reach out her story to those who did not know the gestures, and made them feel more attached to the narratives. Her first narrative piece was Marich Vadham, a story about Ram, Seeta, Lakshman and the golden deer. Living in harmony in their forest dwelling, Seeta sees a golden deer while plucking flowers. Unable to catch it herself, she asks Ram to get her its skin. The climax of the story is when the deer is shot and reveals to become a demon, Maricha. The entire shimmering stage rendered to a daunting purple and all eyes focused on Malavika culminating into a demonic aura. According to the story, the demon cries the name of Lakhsman and Ram realises that even in the deepest pits of the demon, there was goodness. Ram blesses it, the celestial gods shower the two with flower petals and once again the ambiance of the stage shifts into that of golden celebration.

The next narration portrayed the beautiful relationship of a mother and her child, of the loving Krishna and Yashoda. Narrated and sung in Tamil, on the Carnatic Raga Kapi on taal adi, the story starts with Gopi praising Yashoda about young Krishna. With the piece, in fine details showing Krishna's small footprints on the butter that fell on the floor, Malavika won the audience over, particularly with her abhinaya (expressions). She switched seamlessly between characters -- a loving stern mother and a young mischievous Krishna. She closed with a Tilana and her famous Vande Mataram, often looking like she was floating inches above the stage, while displaying inimitable poise and grace on one hand and agility and vigor on the other.

Vidushi Malavika Sarukkai was ably accompanied in her performance by Balaji Azhwar on the Mridangam, Neela Sukhanya Srinivavasan on the Nattuvangam, Venkataramani Srilakshmi on the violin, Murali Parthasarathy's vocals and light and sound management by Suresh Rajendran.