KOCHI: Born into an agrarian Christian family in a nondescript village near Tripunithura, K G Poulose was hardly aware of either the cultural heritage of the temple town or Devabhasha Sanskrit. But he was destined to revive the dying Sanskrit theatre, koodiyattam. Eighty years on, Kerala considers Dr K G Poulose as the apostle of koodiyattam.
In the third week of March, Tripunithura witnessed a rare, week-long festival of traditional arts. Artists from across the state gathered at the Sanskrit College, discussing the revival of traditional art forms in the mornings and performing koodiyattam, nangiar koothu, chakiar koothu, kathakali, and Sanskrit plays during the evening hours. The programme was organised by art enthusiasts and artists to celebrate the ‘aseethi’ (80th birthday) of Poulose and his wife, Prof T K Sarala, who together laid the foundation for the revival of traditional art forms. Almost all senior koodiyattam artists in the state performed at the event without remuneration as a tribute to their master, guide, and mentor.
On Thursday, former students and koodiyattam artists of the Sri Neelakanta Sanskrit College in Pattambi will organise a programme, titled Guruvandanam, to felicitate Poulose.
“It’s an honour to be felicitated in a college where I worked 40 years ago. Now, fourth generation students are studying there,” Poulose tells TNIE.
Born at Vandipetta near Thiruvaniyoor in Ernakulam district, he enrolled at the government school in Vennikulam for formal education.
“The school had two streams of education and I was admitted to division A where Sanskrit was the language of instruction. When I passed SSLC, my teacher Sarada asked me to join the Sanskrit College in Tripunithura for my Pre-University course. As I was good at studies, the principal T K Ramachandra Iyer was affectionate to me. When I completed Pre-University, I got admission for TTC, but he asked me to take up the BA Sanskrit course,” he says. After Poulose had acquired a master’s degree in Sanskrit, Iyer helped him get appointment as a Sanskrit lecturer at the Neelakanta College in 1968. Two years later, he received a posting through the Public Service Commission and was able to return to his alma mater, the Sanskrit College in Tripunithura.
“Tripunithura was then the cultural hub of Kerala. I got involved in the theatre movement, including that of kathakali and koodiyattam. That helped me blend into public life and cultural sphere. At the time, Pareekshit Thampuram was the patron of the college. Though the princely state had ceased to exist, he was a towering personality in Tripunithura and used to attend the scholarly discourses in the college. Tripunithura had acquired the status of a centre of Sanskrit learning in entire south India,” he recalls.
After the demise of Pareekshit Thampuram, the old league of scholars retired and the new lecturers were not too knowledgeable about the heritage of Tripunithura.
Taking over as the principal of the college in 1986, Poulose decided to regain the lost glory of the town. He organised the Pareekshit Thampuran Memorial Lecture and famous personalities from across the country, including Kapila Vatsyayan and Padma Subramanian, participated.
“We decided to publish Natangusa, an 18th century critique of dramaturgy. But the person who promised to do the work backtracked because of health issues. As we had made an announcement, I was under pressure and decided to shoulder the responsibility. I completed the work in six months and that opened the gates of koodiyattam theatre for me,” Poulose says.
In 1995, he organised a theatre festival in Tripunithura, with former Polish ambassador Maria Krzysztof Byrski — who was a koodiyattam enthusiast — attending it. “During an informal meeting, Byrski said it is our responsibility to see that the theatre that survived for 2,000 years does not die in front of our eyes. He told me that I should shoulder the responsibility of reviving the art. So we established the International Centre for Koodiyattam and started organising programmes to popularise the art,” he recounts.
He says koodiyattam lacking an audience is a misconception. “The problem is that we aren’t serving it in a digestible way. I started giving lecture demonstrations to popularise koodiyattam,” he says.
So, Sanskrit being a Devabhasha, has religion posed hurdles in his journey? “I’m not a self-made man. But I’m not bound to anybody. From my childhood, I have been part of the progressive movement,” Poulose says.
He and Sarala were colleagues from their Pre-University classes. “Our friendship grew as we started working together as teachers. Our marriage was arranged and there was no conflict. I’m not a practising Christian but you cannot say I’m irreligious. I have not imposed my religion on my children. They have chosen their own ways,” he says.
In 1996, he was appointed the first registrar of the Sree Sankara Sanskrit University in Kalady, and in 2007, he became the first vice-chancellor of the Kerala Kalamandalam Deemed University. “I had the opportunity to make koodiyattam an academic subject at the Kalady university and I appointed three koodiyattam artists as professors. There was criticism that they haven’t even passed Class 10, but I pleaded with the UGC and got the posts sanctioned.”
It was his intervention that helped appoint kathakali artists as professors at Kalamandalam. “I got the qualification rules waived through the intervention of the Prime Minister’s Office. That had been an issue affecting the dignity of the artists and I was able to save their honour,” Poulose says.
‘Vyangyavyakhya The Aesthetics of Dhvani in Theatre’ is considered Poulose’s magnum opus. “The grammar of Kerala art forms was not in sync with Bharata’s Natya Shastra. The intrinsic traits of these theatres could be explained only on the basis of ‘vyangya vyakhya’. In Kerala art forms, we find the actor transgressing the text through transformation and creating his own text or ‘manodharma’. This is a contribution of vyangya vyakhya,” he says.
He has authored 20 books in Malayalam and 15 in English, apart from editing around 40 publications in Sanskrit, English, and Malayalam.