Antaram - a surreal saga of sacrifice & struggle at HICC, Hyderabad

It was a magical winter evening filled with storytelling. The narrator was actress Suhasini Maniratnam and the audience was Hyderabad’s well-heeled art lovers who sat in rapt attention as she transported them from a modern film studio to an Air India plane bound for Dubai, to 13 century Madurai to 16 century Bijapur empire. Titled ‘Antaram’, this mélange of visual graphics, sand art, tolu-bomalaata and air-suspension acts weaved in with classical dance forms and music was held on Saturday as part of Hydrouite.Suhasini kick-started the evening enacting an air hostess, who encounters a young Hyderabadi girl Amina being taken off to Dubai as a child bride for an aged Arab. The airhostess gets the Arab arrested, but Amina is sold off again. “This has to stop,” says Suhasini, as the scene shifts to ancient Penugonda.
The young Goddess The story of Vasavi, a young girl from Penugonda, is narrated through Yamini Reddy’s Kuchipudi combined with elements of the native Tolu Bomaalata (leather puppetry). The beautiful Vasavi attracts the attention of the evil king Vishnuvardhan, but she resists his advances. Yamini Reddy switches effortlessly between the roles of the young, innocent Vasavi and the haughty, lusty Vishnuvardhan drunk on his power. Her performance reaches its crescendo when depicting the burning Vasavi inside the agnigundam, her facial expressions changing from feisty to sublime to divine, showing Vasavi’s transformation from a mere mortal to Goddess.
The woman who got everything she wanted; even Lord Vishnu! In act 2, Suhasini is a housewife, grandmother and mother who keeps her IAS officer husband’s life in order. Yet her husband thinks ‘she’s just a housewife’. As you reflect on this reality of Indian women today, you are taken to ancient Tamil Nadu, to hear the story of Andal — a woman who did everything she wanted; even if it meant marrying Lord Vishnu. Bharatanatyam exponent Kritika Subramaniyam plays the impish, playful Kodhai, who fancies Lord Vishnu as her soulmate. Kritika bounces about the stage gracefully, capturing the mad abandon with which a young woman in love dances. Her devout father forbids her from entering the temple after learning about her love. Lord Vishnu appears to the father in a dream and forbids him from stopping Andal!
The woman who set Madurai on fire In a goose-bump inducing act 3, Suhasini appears as Attukal Bhagavathy, who burned the city of Madurai down, after being widowed because the king unjustly put her husband to death. To further elaborate the legend, Gopika Varma puts up an evocative Mohiniyattam performance showing the journey of Kannagi, from a wife, to a heartbroken widow to an angry woman who curses the king and tears her breast out and flings it on the city, reducing it to ashes. She then swims across the river to take refuge in Attukal, Kerala, where she is revered as a Goddess even today...
Rambha, the woman who bewitched emperor Adil Shah In the final act, Suhasini played the talented 16 century scholar-dancer Rambha, who comes to Bijapur from Kandy, Sri Lanka. She becomes Bijapur Emperor Adil Shah’s lover; his soulmate; but refuses to become his 12th wife. When Rambha learns that Adil Shah did not build a place for her in his tomb, Gol Gumbaz, she leaps to her death from its balcony! Suhasini owns this act with her depiction of the mystical, beautiful Rambha. She leaves the audience spellbound as she leaps from the sky, twirls around the stage and is suspended midair.