PEBET

Rustom Bharucha, the trained dramaturg from the Yale School of drama introduces the readers to the theatrical world of Heisnam Kanhailal through his work, The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet and Memoirs of Africa.

Heisnam Kanhailal’s contribution to the field of contemporary theatre is immense. He is mainly noted for the establishment of the theatre of Kalakshetra Manipur. With the help of this theatre group he was able to propagate his ideas concerning non-verbal or gestural theatre. As the name indicates, the focus is on stylized gestures, dance, mime, music and song to create productions that communicate at several levels with the “text” of the play being only a part of the whole process. Unlike the traditional playscripts the meaning is conveyed through body, silence, sounds, rhythm and this indeed contributes to the totality of performance.

Heisnam Kanhailal in his performance oriented play Pebet incorporates the cultural issues and conflicts residing in the Manipuri soil so as to establish his Meithei identity. The play derives much of its material from the phunga wari or fireside stories that are told to Manipuri children by their grandmothers. The framework of the play is generated from the simple story of pebet, a small bird that was once visible in Manipuri jungles and now an almost extinct species. This miniscule representation of life is the protagonist of the story.

Pebet is a folktale deeply entrenched in the psyche of the Manipuri people, in which a mother bird fights to protect her children from a predatory cat. Kanhailal politicizes this familiar story, turning it into a struggle against the political and cultural colonization of Manipur by the addition of a fantasy sequence in which the politics of the play is revealed.

Mother Pebet, the protagonist of the play is in charge of her children, the Pebet Children. This family of Pebets represented in the play symbolically stands for the traditional Meitei or meetei cult of Manipur. Meitheism was originally the official practice of the people belonging to both hill and valley of Manipur. The time period witnessed a flourish in both art and literature. The serenity and calmness of the period is indeed reflected in the initial parts of the play. The romantic song sung by the Mother Pebet accompanied by her coy movements towards her invisible lover and the following “Birth cry, bird cry” mentioned in the prologue of the play announces Mother Pebet’s leitmotif to the world.

The birth and development of Pebet children and their learning of how to fly depicted in the play can be seen as an indirect expression concerning the peaceful inhabitance of the Meiteis. But everything changed with the arrival of the deadly cat. The man playing the role of the cat in the play wears a short yellow dhoti and holds a mala of wooden beads in one hand. Thus in the play, the cat is represented like a pseudo-monk that symbolically stands for the Vaishnavite power. Vaishnavism as a movement or religious practice was propagated in Manipur during the ruling period of King Garib Nivas (1709-1748) and Bhagyachandra (1763-1798). The period witnessed wide spread destruction of traditional lai (gods), the burning of ancient manuscripts, the banning of the Meithei script and its replacement by the Bengali script, the introduction of the Hindu calendar and system of gotras, enforcement of Hindu dietary laws, and the sanctification of the first recorded instances in Manipuri history of sati. All these historical events point that the indigenous culture of Manipur faded away with the entry of Vaishnavism. A similar occurrence happens in the Pebet family with the entry of the predatory cat.

At first the Mother Pebet acts submissive to the cat out of her fear concerning the safety of her children. She makes use of the art of flattery to divert the cat’s attention from her children. All her strategies change at the moment when she realizes that her children have become experts in flying. The very moment she starts to throw verbal daggers upon the deadly cat. The cat exits from their life for a short interval with a heart filled with a deep sense of shame and anger. The happiness of Pebets lasted only for a short span of time as it was soon interrupted by the cat. The cat tricked the young Pebet and made him an agent and appointed him with the mission to capture the other Pebet children. The young Pebet was successful in his endeavor and eventually they all became part of the “cat culture,” an idea that the Mother Pebet resented.

Through the anxiety of Mother Pebet regarding the cat-culture, Kanhailal tries to emphasis the importance of Meithei identity. The real politics of the play appears before the spectators through a fantasy sequence. It is this addition of fantasy sequence that alters the play from the original folk tale. The pathetic cry of young Pebet freezes the Mother Pebet and she enters into a dream sequence where all her children are captured by the cat. Soon she witnesses her dear children becoming mere puppets in the hands of the savage cat. All their unity, love and affection for one another merely dwindle and they act according to the wishes of their new master, the brute cat. This disintegration of the Pebet children that occurs in the play symbolically stands for the disintegration of the seven clans that formed the Meithei community with the arrival of Vaishnavite movement from India. This hinduisation process faded the glory of the indigenous culture.

 Kanhailal’s Cat is clearly Vaishnavite in his rhetoric and tactics. The most savage irony of his indoctrination occurs when he brainwashes the Pebet children with the famous words from the Sanskrit sloka, ‘Janani Jammabhumichha Swargadapi Gariyasi.’ The Pebet children enter into mad and cruel fights with each other and they all blindly follow the instructions given by their master. The fight scenes shown in the play are purely based on the rich martial arts tradition of Manipur. The action sequels in the play derive much of the material from the martial arts tradition of Thang-ta and mukna. The cat makes use of many violent and savage methods to torture the Pebet family and all such cruel methods adopted by the cat reveals the sadist nature of the cat. At the command of the cat, the Pebet children pellet stones upon their mother. Here the cat uses his language and strategy to make the Pebets abuse their own mother. The most humiliating episode in the play is that of the Pebet children licking the cat’s arse in a ritualistic manner.

The conversion of Pebet children to the cat culture and their resulting denial of traditional roots clearly match with the condition of modern Manipuri youth. One of the searing images of Imphal is the sight of its rickshawallahs: youths with their faces swathed in cloth, sporting dark glasses and improvised hats, the fashion of an “underground culture.” These young men cover their faces because they don’t want to be seen. They are ashamed of themselves. It is this deep sense of shame about their own identity that makes them prey to the deadly plans of the cat. The Pebet brothers fighting aggressively for the sariks awarded by the cat clearly matches with the real life situations in Manipur.

Every tale of oppression and tyranny is met with strong resistance. This indeed is reflected in the play. Unlike the eldest and youngest Pebet brothers, the middle brother bites the cat’s arse. This act of defiance bears a striking resemblance to the emergence of various movements that aimed at the revival of Meitheism in Manipur. The clarion calls from different layers of Manipuri society for the establishment of an autonomous Meithei state exists as a manifestation of the antagonism against the oppressive domains of power.

The act of resistance put forward by the middle brother makes him subjected to extreme levels of torture. But soon the fantasy sequence breaks and the Pebets move to the exact positions to which they were standing before the starting of the fantasy sequence. Once again the Mother Pebet cries for her child, the young Pebet, who is still under the custody of the cat. The Mother Pebet tricks the cat and saves her child. At last the Pebet family is reunited and the Mother Pebet once again proves that “she is a pillar of strength supported by all her children.”

Thus Kanhailal makes use of the simple folktale and thereby adopts the technique of “subverting the familiar” to deal with the larger cultural and social issues of Manipur.

                                                                                                        SAKSY JOY