CHENNAI: Ramayana has been narrated through the verses of Valmiki, Kambar, Tulsidas and other forms of prose and poetry; the main character has been seen through the poets and sages’ eyes and their portrayal has been in different ways, although the story revolves around the same premise.
The protagonist, Rama, has been the central character in all of them. How would it be, if Sita was the main character? It was put together in a nutshell on Friday, through a play, with the whole story of Ramayana narrated from Sita’s point of view. Just us Repertory’s Aham Sita (I am Sita) – threw in the voices of four other female characters, whom one would have not paid much heed to while following the epic – Urmila, Ahalya, Mandodari and Shrupanaka. Gowri Ramnarayan, clad in a red sari, essayed all their roles and with her histrionic skills, recited the dialogues, while danseuse Vidya Subramanian performed a bharathanatyam counterpart for the same sequences. Backed by the classical music vocals of Nisha Rajagopalan, the show was presented for an hour and a half to an audience who knew the Ramayana like the back of their hand. It was not a great task to satisfy their expectations. With Gowri’s vocal dialogue delivery at its best, her powerful words complimented them as she projected wrath, love, pain, disappointment and repentance. One of the scenes wherein she was Mandodari crying over the dead body of Ravana, after Rama won over him and rescued Sita, the audience applauded unequivocally.
However, the best scene and the one that received maximum ovation was the finale, when Vidya and Gowri together subtly, yet powerfully conveyed the injustice meted out to Sita when she had to sacrifice herself to the pyre, to prove her purity. One of Sita’s dialogues that said, “How can you accept my sons as yours when I am under your suspicion,” left the audience immensely satisfied. Appreciative nods and plenty of applause followed.